The Tricks of Art and the Art of Tricks

Reality can be disturbing.  I watch television sometimes as a relief from reality.  I prefer historical programs - almost anything will do because almost all programs are historical in the sense of being concerned about the past.  Television producers seem to believe that the past is real, concrete and unchanging. This is, of course, rubbish.  Anyone who watches television or reads newspapers knows that.  Stories about events are told in many different ways.  The “facts” keep changing.  So the past is whatever the author says it is. And as George Orwell said: Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Oh, too deep.  I just wanted to talk about stories of crime and criminals.  They are fascinating.  I pretend they are true because mostly the criminals are caught and brought to justice….by the police. This is, of course, quite hilarious since that old spoil sport, reality, tells us that there have been, and almost certainly still are, as many criminals at large in the police forces as there are freelancing as common criminals.

I can see the benefit in being a crooked cop.  The people pay you to protect them from the criminals so you have a permanent, steady wage. But you can also make a nice earner from protecting the criminals from yourself.  Everyone wins! (If “everyone” means you and excludes all others.)

Is all this true, meaning does this happen in reality (whatever “reality” means)?  Well, if you believe what you read in the newspapers and on TV and film then, yes, it is true.  My references are wide ranging.

Firstly, legend: In Sherwood Forest, the Sheriff of Nottingham was royally screwing everyone while carrying on a personal vendetta against the honest Robin Hood;

Secondly, a few movies: Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) in “Touch of Evil” (1958); In “Batman” (1989) there is a crooked cop called Lieutenant Eckhardt;  Detective Alonzo Harris in “Training Day” (2001); Almost the whole NYPD in “Serpico” (1973).  (I have obviously omitted many other films because there are too many crooked movie cops and in any case I don’t know them all. But I have purposely left out the Hong Kong movie “Infernal Affairs” (2002) because Inspector Lau was, strictly speaking, not a cop gone bad because he was bad from the beginning. Ditto the US copy “The Departed” [2006])

Thirdly, and more recently, many TV shows: “Blue Murder” (1995) which focussed on Detective Sergeant Roger (the Dodger) Rogerson; Chief Wiggum in “The Simpsons” (1989 and continuing);  and The Strike Team in “The Shield” (2002-2008).

Finally, public reports of inquiries into corruption in Australia:  Just read the report of the Wood Royal
Commission into corruption in the NSW police and the Fitzgerald Royal Commission in Queensland.  Currently, the Victoria Police are in the spotlight for, among other things, their policy of shooting first and asking questions later as well as the political infighting over the Police Union.  Also, just watch the news any week for the latest report on crooked cops.  We truly have the best police money can buy.

Which brings me to my point: Intelligent criminals join a police force and have a longer and more prosperous criminal career.

Actually, Melbourne is cold.  I was there last weekend in a suburb called Moonee Ponds.  I used to think this was a fictional place because Edna Everage hailed from there.  But it is a real place.  It has a shopping centre called, imaginatively, Moonee Ponds Central.  It has a poster of Edna at her fetching best with the caption that the centre is “the greatest thing to happen in Moonee Ponds since….ME!”  Maybe.

The last time I was in Melbourne, February, it was frying pan hot.  This time it was refrigerator cold… with rain.  Not rain as we get in Cairns, but a kind of cold, miserly drizzle.  And the days were so short it seemed that if you blinked it was dark again.

During moments of daylight I travelled by train into the city.  Getting around is not too hard.  The streets are set out in a grid.  As the city is mostly flat, walking is easy.

Mt first target was the Southgate building on the southern (naturally) bank of the Yarra.  This is a busy area with lots of tourists of whom I was not one.  I had a purpose.   I was headed for The Magic Store in the Southgate building.  The store is run by three magicians - Dean Atkinson, Glenn Hamilton and Kamal Bhushan.  All the details are on their website www.themagicstore.com.au which is linked to my site.

It is these three who make the store such a great place to visit.  I have not met Dean in my two visits to the store - he was doing a cruise ship gig this time.  Dean and Kamal used to host Magic Mornings each Thursday but, because of Dean’s absence it is in hiatus at the moment.

On my first visit, in February, Kamal helped me with some card handling and coin handling tips and was very patient in demonstrating tricks and answering questions.  On my latest visit, Glenn was behind the counter and demonstrating some tricks to a young audience.  I can see why he is a premier childrens’ entertainer.  He managed a group of charming, hyper-active little brutes firmly but with grace and humour.

After the kids went he answered my questions and demonstrated some tricks of which I bought a few.  I probably spent forty minutes in the shop and it was the highlight of my trip.

I suggest, with as much cliche riven panache as I can muster, that you should “do yourself a favour” and drop in and see the Magic Store when next you visit the Paris of the South - “You’ll love it!”

Do you find yourself saying “I am disinterested in going to the movies”; or “I am disinterested in saving the polar bears”?  If so, in the interests of gooder grammar, please note that this is an error. (Croakers please note: “gooder” is a deliberate solecism or “clanger”, as it were, to illustrate that I am no better than you.)

If, for whatever reason, you are not interested in going to the movies or in saving polar bears then you must say “I am uninterested in going to the movies…saving the polar bears” or whatever.

When  do you use the word disinterested?  The answer is: whenever you are unbiased.  So, the umpire of a sporting match must be disinterested in, but must not be uninterested in, the match.  That is, the umpire must not care who wins or loses but she must care a lot about how the game is played and make sure it is played within the rules.

Quite possibly most people ignore the distinction between disinterested and uninterested.  We rarely talk about whether an umpire is disinterested.  Umpires are usually “mugs” or “should be given sunglasses and a white cane”.

Lawyers, however, should be careful to use these words in their proper sense. Otherwise, educated people, such as yourselves, will think a lawyer is quite a dill, a real dimwit, if he bleats about being disinterested in going to the movies or saving polar bears. In such a case, scoff, jeer and lambast said lawyer as a skulking oaf without the brains of a gnat and even less of an education.  Do so with as much malevolence and vigour as you can muster.  Because, for once, right is on yor side.

I realised this morning that it is along time since I saw a dog chase a car.  I came up with some possible reasons for this: I don’t actually spend a lot of time sitting on a porch watching cars drive by (if I don’t see it does it happen anyway - you know the tree falling in the forest that no one hears thing);  The car-chasing gene has been eliminated by selective breeding; Dogs are more secretive about their car-chasing and do it when no one is watching; Cars no longer have a taste or smell that is attractive to dogs; Dogs realised there was no point - they caught a few cars and didn’t know what to do with them.  I dunno.  Feel free to posit your solution in a comment.

This observation inevitably leads one to thinking about the word “catch”.  Think about these sentences using the word “catch”: The dog is trying to catch a hairy nosed wombat. The dog is trying to catch a bus. The boy tried to catch a conestoga. The man is trying to catch a horse.  The woman is running to catch a plane.  Silly eh?

Incidentally, I have noticed that just about every day for the last month I have received a notice from WordPress of a new user registration on this blog. I have no idea what this means. But I can’t help getting the same presentiment of impending doom I get when I am eating an apple and find I have eaten half the sticky label that someone has helpfully put there to tell me what kind of apple I am eating.   And many of these new users have gmail or .ru addresses. The .ru signals a Russian host.  Ivan the Bear, my friend.

I read something on a web page somewhere suggesting these new registrants are not really people but “bots”.  And bots are to be shunned, if possible.  I somehow feel like a rabbit caught in the headlamps of a rapidly approaching semi-trailer.  Rather, I feel like I imagine the rabbit feels.  Maybe rabbits just think “Ooooh! Pretty lights! Must wait and see what happe..” SPLAT!

Should I be really worried or would mere paranoia suffice?

I think I have achieved ultimate apathy.  Looking at this blog, it is days.. no weeks… no months.. a really long time since my last blog.  Even if this is not the last word in apathy it must be getting close.

However, be that as it may (which it certainly will) things have happened since then.  Christmas has come and gone, a Global Financial Crisis have broken out and lots of other important things have occurred.  Including that I have travelled around the country.  Around Tasmania, Melbourne and Brisbane, to be precise.  All very interesting places with many, many different and varied people.  Once such person is a magician in Melbourne.  He is Kamal of “Magic Mornings with Dean and Kamal” fame.  “Fame” may be putting it a bit high.  Magic Mornings is a web thing on http://www.magicmornings.com.au/ and I guess not many people watch it.  Certainly more people than read this blog but that is not saying much.

I did spend money on my magic in Melbourne.  Kamal has a shop called the Magic Store.  He demonstrated some tricks and described some instructional videos that I JUST HAD TO HAVE.  Also there were some very handsome packets of cards crying out to be taken home and stored away for future use.

I, therefore, have my hands full of things to practise so I can generously display my mastery of these miracles of illusion for the entertainment and delectation of the privileged few.

Time and apathy are both against me so I must stir myself.

Searching on the web often turns up a lot of….dirt.  But, occasionally, searching patiently reveals a nugget of gold.  Such a nugget is the website Mallusionist (http://www.mallusionist.com/), a clever parody of the Ellusionist magic products website.

The person lurking furtively behind this site writes a blog under the name Presto (http://www.mallusionist.com/blog/).  If you have an interest in magic and think that some magician folk take themselves too seriously, then Mallusionist and Presto’s blog are worth a look.

Paul Syvret is a writer for Brisbane’s “Courier Mail”.  His writing style falls into the usual newspaper category of inane drivel.  On the Courier Mail website he revels in the tag: “He might make you angry, but he’ll certainly make you think.”  Actually, he makes me want to swallow my own tongue.

So when I saw his column in the 4 November Courier entitled “Scarcely sexy, Senator” I prepared myself for yet another expedition into the mental wastelands.  Surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with Mr Syvret.  He was arguing against the Communications Minister’s plan to censor the internet in Australia.  Minister Stephen Conroy has been seduced by the allure of North Korea, China and Iran in leading the fight against internet porn.   Mr Syvret mounts a stinging attack on the Senator in his column which, for me, was mainly spoiled when I read this sentence:  One presumes that by real sexual activity he means what occurs in the bedrooms of millions of Australian homes every day…in fact it was highly likely real sexual activity contributed to Conroy’s very presence on our mortal coil. Conroy’s very presence on our mortal coil? Pedantry beckoned.  The last time I heard mention of a mortal coil was in Hamlet’s soliloquy:

To be or not to be …. blah blah blah…..

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

Mr Syvret seems to use “our mortal coil” to mean our world, Earth, our planet, our street or whatever.   I always understood the “mortal coil” in question was the trouble and strife that come with life.  That is, the burden of being a mortal human being.  Mr Conroy may, perhaps,  share this mortal coil but I don’t think he can be present on it.

If anyone reads this and thinks I am wrong, please feel free to abuse or disabuse me.

escape-body-blow3

In June this year a helicopter carrying four passengers crashed in forest in Far North Queensland.  A photo of the crash site with the caption “Escape from Disaster” was featured on the front page of the Brisbane “Courier Mail”.  All well and good.  But below this photo (which had a brief description of the miraculous survival of all four passengers) was the headline “BODY BLOW  - Transplant patients miss out on organs”

Now, perhaps it’s just me but this particular front page, at first glance, seemed a trifle … wrong.  You see the story it seemed to convey was of eager transplant patients lusting after the organs of victims of a helicopter crash only to have their hopes dashed when it was revealed that no one had actually died.

That kind of interpretation would, in fact, be typical of the writing in the Courier Mail. Anyway, check out the PDF and see what you think.  Am I way off target here?

I recently travelled to Brisvegas to visit my son, chill out, visit the art gallery and interview an architect on my project about the impact of air-conditioning on the design of the North Queensland house.  This is not to imply that there is only one “house”.  It is not like the stickers I used to to see on the back of Jeeps - “There is only one Jeep”.  What a lie!  I saw dozens of them.  Misleading advertising I call it.

No, in referring to ‘the North Queensland house’, I mean the typical North Queensland house.  This used to be a house built of timber with a corrugated iron roof, on stilts and with a verandah on most sides.  You can see one version of it here: http://www.upfromaustralia.com/typqueenhous.html

That’s the way houses in North Queensland used to be built. Now, the typical house is built of concrete block, rendered on the outside and lined on the inside with plasterboard.  Roofs are typically corrugated zinc-plated steel - “Zincalume”.   Tiled roofs are not uncommon despite the generally held view that tiled roofs do not stand up well to the strong winds of the cyclones that often occur in the summer months.

Why the change?  My research so far does not suggest that the availability of air-conditioning was the reason.  Other factors were at work: the ready availability of concrete blocks at a reasonable price and the simplicity of this form of construction combined to make concrete block houses competitively priced in relation to wooden houses.  Maybe the “new” look of block houses and their monolithic nature suggested to Northerners more permanence.  Perhaps it was thought such houses would be resistant to two of the scourges of the North - white ants and cyclones.  In fact, any wood (and there is a lot) in concrete block homes is just as exposed to white ant damage as the timber of a wooden house.  And it is much harder to detect white ant intrusions in a concrete block house than it is in the old-style wooden house on stilts where ant trails over the metal stump caps are more easily observable.  As for cyclones, there is no reason why a wooden house cannot be constructed to be cyclone resistant.

I need to do a lot more work but at least I can see a way forward.

I have noticed a bit of air play given to magic lately.  The first item I found was a paper published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience - Attention and awareness in stage magic: turning tricks into research (http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nrn2473.html).  The article was written up in various electronic print media (is that an oxymoron?) including the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/science/12magic.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=190e4385d2978d97&ex=1219204800&emc=eta1&oref=slogin)

According to the paper, magicians often have a “deep intuition for and understanding of human attention and awareness.”  Neuroscientists can learn from magicians some “powerful methods to manipulate attention and awareness”. They could use these methods in the laboratory to study “the behavioural and neural basis of consciousness itself, for instance through the use of brain imaging and other neural recording techniques.”

One reference in the paper is to Prof Richard Wiseman’s “amazing colour changing card trick” which is on You Tube and also on his website http://www.quirkology.com/UK/index.shtml.  It is given as an example of change blindness.  This is different from inattentional blindness, an example of which is the experiment where people are asked to pay attention to something (people in white shirts passing a basketball) they may miss something. One version of the test is here  viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html.

Magicians would call both these things “misdirection” There is a lot more information in the paper and, if you are interested in making magic, it is worth reading.

This set me off onto searches to do with the mind and magic.  I came up with this site that had a video of “Brain Magic”: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/keith_barry_does_brain_magic.html.  This is a talk from TED.com - standing for Technology, Entertainment, Design, a site which looks good but which I had never heard of before. It dates from 2004 but was posted in July 2008.

This is a good talk with some demonstrations of “brain magic”. I understand the very first trick and there is a spoiler explanation on TED about how to do the bottle trick.  There is a method for the cup and spike trick although I don’t know it.  I do know, however, that it is dangerous and can go wrong.  But I am clueless about the blindfold driving the remote touching and the other hypnosis-type effects.  It’s well worth a look.

When I followed up on this topic of mond and magic, I found The Magic of Conciousness Symposium held by the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and the Mind Science Foundation in Las Vegas in 2007.  There are some great videos of demonstrations by outstanding conjurers.  You can see them and download them from this site: http://www.neuralcorrelate.com/smc_lab/.  I especially like the pickpocket sleight of hand of Apollo Robbins and the style of James Randi.