*giggle*... (I wonder if the cop got it?)
The best metaphor I've heard for the HUP is: tomato seeds. Let's say that tomato seeds are our metaphorical particles and in order to determine their position you must touch them with your knife. Well, what happens, as soon as you locate their position (you poke 'em) they start to move. In other words, the measurement of position directly affects velocity (being speed and direction). The effect is symmetrical so attempting to measure velocity we'll naturally affect direction (roughly equivalent to the seed bouncing off your knife or something -- though I don't think tomato seeds ever reach such high velocities. At least not in my house (young man!).)
As for the Romantics, though Heisenberg didn't begin the Downfall of Scientific Method, he did, however, end classical determinism. In the Newtonian world, it was still possible that the grand equation for all particles could be written out starting at the beginning of time and and tell exactly what things would be like in the future : determinism. But Uncertainty broke down the movement of particles to probability functions (known as wave functions). Now, instead of classical determinism, we can do no better than quantum determinism - meaning if it's at all possible to write such equations then they will have to come in the form of the probabilities where particles could be.
The HUP also explains why a transporter will never work (though those tricky people at Star Trek mention something about a Heisenberg Compensator. Harumph!!)