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I've just finished Derren Brown's absolutely charming and fascinating book "Tricks of the Mind," which is one of those impossible- to- pigeonhole, eclectic nonfiction books that pulls together its subject matter in a genuinely novel way and ends up influencing how you see the world around you.
Brown is a "mentalist" -- a magician and street-hypnotist who uses misdirection, hypnotism, sleight of hand, and other tricks to achieve astonishing and delightful effects. Tricks of the Mind starts off explaining many of the mentalist's techniques for remembering things, from long lists of numbers and names to grocery lists to memorizing entire packs of cards. Brown delves into simple mnemonics and goes all the way up to memory palaces, offering a tantalizing glimpse into the kind of memory you can develop if you set your mind to it.
From there, it seems like a straight technique book that explains the principles behind Brown's flavour of magic, the way that magicians can exploit out brain's own blind spots, minor malfunctions and quirks to fool us about what we've seen. This section is engrossing as anything, coming across as a kind of owner's manual for your brain, illuminating much about how we know what we know -- and how much of what we think we know is not real.
This segues neatly into an even-more-fascinating section on performing hypnosis on your friends and yourself and what hypnosis can and can't do. I've used clinical hypnosis and self hypnosis to solve some of my most pernicious problems in life (writer's block, smoking, stress) and while I've done a lot of reading on the subject, I found Brown's take on it more lucid -- and practical -- than pretty much anything I've read in the field.
This section leads into the concluding third of the book, which is -- improbable as it may seem -- an impassioned manifesto for rationalism, empiricism and respect for science and the scientific method over newage, faith healing, crystals, homeopathy and other hokum. Brown uses all the material he's taken you through to this point to explain the plain old explanation for many of these "miraculous" experiences, the way that our brains, our friends, and unscrupulous hucksters conspire to make us think that the anecdotal trumps the real. Combining statistics, cognitive theory, and applied magic, Brown makes an excellent case for the natural world as being perfectly miraculous -- quoting Douglas Adams's maxim, "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Link
See also:
Derren Brown's Tricks of the Mind video -- baffling mentalism
Derren Brown, mentalist
Hypnotist kidnaps gamer and drops him into real-life shooter
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I got some more info from the folks at cafepress and according to them, a law firm representing Ford contacted them saying that our calendar pics (and our club's event logos - anything with one of our cars in it) infringes on Ford's trademarks which include the use of images of THEIR vehicles. Also, Ford claims that all the images, logos and designs OUR graphics team made for the BMC events using Danni are theirs as well. Funny, I thought Danni's title had my name on it ... and I thought you guys owned your cars ... and, well ... I'm not even going to get into how wrong and unfair I feel this whole thing is as I'd be typing for hours, but I wholeheartedly echo everything you guys have been saying all afternoon. I'm not letting this go un-addressed and I'll keep you guys posted as I get to work on this.LinkI'm sorry, but at this point we will not be producing the 2008 BMC Calendar, featuring our 2007 Members of the Month, solely due to Ford Motor Company's claim that THEY own all rights to the photos YOU take of YOUR car. I hope to resolve this soon, and be able to provide the calendar and other BMC merchandise that you guys want and deserve! This thread will remain open for you to comment however you wish, and I'll update it as needed.
Tetrical is a 3D Tetris game in Flash that you can play in your browser. I had a roommate who was obsessed with making a 4D Tetris once -- he got as far as Pong, which made my mind melt.
Link
(via Wonderland)
In case you haven’t heard, director and producer BJ Davis and his wife Julia Davis want to sue me over a negative review I wrote of the mob comedy Forget About It. Seriously. Despite BJ officially serving me “legal notice” through an e-mail, I still don’t know what I’m being sued over. The original e-mail sent to me by Julia Davis said, and I quote, “illegally using artwork to the feature film “Forget About It” and disseminating fraudulent, misleading and materially false information about the film in question.” For one, using artwork in a review would undoubtedly fall under fair use laws. Secondly, Allumination Filmworks likely owns the artwork used to promote Forget About It to U.S. DVD buyers. And third, court papers posted at Big Screen Entertainment’s website cast doubt on whether or not BJ Davis even owns the movie’s copyright at this point.Link
What was remarkable was that this was the point where the enemy - forces that want to lock down culture and knowledge at the cost of total surveillance - realized they were under a serious attack, and mounted every piece of defense they could muster. For the first time, we saw everything they could bring to the battle.Link (via /.)And it was... nothing. Not even a fizzle. All they can say is "thief, we have our rights, we want our rights, nothing must change, we want more money, thief, thief, thief". And shove some poor artists in front of them to deliver the message. Whereas we are talking about scarcity vs. abundance, monopolies, the nature of property, 500-year historical perspectives on culture and knowledge, incentive structures, economic theory, disruptive technologies, etc. The difference in intellectual levels between the sides is astounding.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.