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How An Industrial Designer Is Using Magic To Invent Amazing Objects

How An Industrial Designer Is Using Magic To Invent Amazing Objects

By Jill Comoletti for Business Insider

As a kid, Adrian Westaway loved two things: magic and making inventions. Now, as co-founder of a London-based design and invention studio called Special Projects, he has combined both of those hobbies into one fascinating career.

At Special Projects, Westaway has worked on all kinds of endeavours, from designing an interactive user manual for a smartphone to creating a physical calendar than can transform into a digital one when photographed. As a magician in the elite magical society the Magic Circle, he is able to bring his expertise into the field of design.

“Magicians are the real experts at designing experiences and hiding their technology, and that’s exactly what we have to do as designers,” Westaway said in an interview with Business Insider. “People don’t really talk about how much memory is in their iPhone — they talk about what they just did with it. That’s the important thing.”

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Longtime assistant to magician David Copperfield dies at 61..

Longtime assistant to magician David Copperfield dies at 61..

Thanks to Ed Koch and the Las Vegas Sun for this article. Certainly, this is not the type of news we look forward to reporting. Our prayers go out to her friends and family. 

Joanie Spina, longtime assistant to magician David Copperfield, died Sunday at a Houston hospital while awaiting lung and liver transplants. She was 61.

Spina, a Las Vegas resident who also coached young magicians and was an aspiring filmmaker, suffered from pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung disease. She also had been treated for cancer.

She left Las Vegas this year for Houston for the planned replacement surgeries.

A fundraiser to defray Spina’s mounting medical costs was held in Las Vegas in September and attracted a number of luminaries from the magic community, including Lance Burton.

Since 2009, Spina had penned the Directions column for Las Vegas-based Magic magazine. She gave tips to aspiring magicians on stage presentation and technique to help them fine-tune their acts…

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Magic, not football, saved Jon Dorenbos…

Magic, not football, saved Jon Dorenbos…

By Mike Florio for NBC Sports..

You’ve probably heard of Jon Dorenbos (long snapper for the Philadelphia Eagles). But you probably don’t know his story.  You should.

At the age of 12, Jon’s father killed his mother.  Jon found comfort not in football, but magic.

“I would record these magic specials on TV,” he tells Bryant Gumbel of HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.  “And then I could put the VCR in late at night, and I could watch the magic shows, and I could try and figure them out. I would go in my room for hours and hours and hours.  I would literally have a little flashlight.  And my sister and I shared a room.  And she’d fall asleep.  And I’d click this flashlight on.  And then all of a sudden I’d look over at the clock and it’s six in the morning and I gotta go to school at, like, 7:40… .  It was this place that I could go that nothing else around me mattered. It gave me a purpose…

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MEET THE KING OF THE INTERNET SKEPTICS..

MEET THE KING OF THE INTERNET SKEPTICS..

By Hope Whitmore for Vice News

If you don’t know his name, you’ll probably know Richard Wiseman’s videos. They’re those handy YouTube clips—all of them still racking up millions of views—that teach you how to successfully hustle strangers into buying you drinks (or just how to win a bet, depending on how much you like swindling people you don’t know).

But Richard is much more than the oracle of online betting advice. The professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, a magician, a skeptic, and a best-selling author, he’s been called “the most interesting and innovative experimental psychologist in the world today.” His brand of psychology touches on everything from magic and the principles of luck, through the deconstruction of myths around paranormal phenomena and astrology, to undertaking international experiments with the aim of finding the world’s funniest joke.

I met with him in Edinburgh to chat about some of that stuff….

Watch videos and read the interview at:  HERE