How Vine Genius Zach King Pulls Off Eye-Popping Magic Tricks in 6 Seconds ..and makes a six figure income doing it..
(Source: http://abcnews.go.com/)
The Power of Magical Thinking.. David Copperfield on the Enemies of Art
By David Copperfield for the New York Times.
In 2012, a man in Saudi Arabia was executed for practicing witchcraft; last year, guest workers were put on trial in Saudi Arabia for “witchcraft and sorcery”; already this year, reports surfaced of the Islamic State’s having beheaded a street magician in Syria; and, of course there was the attack in Paris on Charlie Hebdo.
The most recent events overshadowed North Korea’s Christmastime hacking of Sony over “The Interview.” Yet the people who hacked Sony, the men who reportedly murdered the magician, and the terrorists in Paris all share a hatred of free speech and democracy. They also share the wrongheaded belief that brutality and force can suppress the human spirit and its inevitable expression through art. They’re fighting a losing battle.
As a magician and a student of magic history, I can attest that magic has often run afoul of zealots. I have numerous copies of “The Discoverie of Witchcraft.” It was written in 1584 to show that what people thought was the devil’s work was sleight of hand. King James I wasn’t persuaded. He ordered every copy burned… Read more..
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/opinion/david-copperfield-on-the-enemies-of-art.html?_r=0
The science behind magic: Study reveals psychology at work during card tricks..
A good magician never reveals his tricks, but that hasn’t stopped Jay Olson from trying to understand the science behind them.
Mr. Olson, 28, a professional magician and graduate student at McGill University, is the lead author of a study that explores the psychological factors that make card tricks work. The goal was to learn how outside factors influence decision-making.
“Magicians usually know the secret, but they don’t know the psychology behind the magic trick,” said Mr. Olson, who is in McGill’s psychiatry program.
For the first part of the study, published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, he performed a card trick on 118 people. The trick is simple: The magician flips through a deck of cards and asks the subject to pick a card, intentionally showing one card for longer than the rest. Read more..
Joe Bonamassa – You Shook Me – Muddy Wolf at Red Rocks
There’s not much magical about this… except the extreme guitar playing from a guy who gets a little better with each passing year, and a song that lends itself to those ‘12 notes’ like almost no other. Haven’t enjoyed “You Shook Me” so much since Jeff Beck’s masterful playing on “Truth”.. many years ago…