The Tricks of Art and the Art of Tricks

I saw a performance of Sam Powers at the Casino recently.  It was very impressive.  In case you don’t know, Sam Powers is a magician/illusionist.  He performs a variety of effects but his escape from a locked trunk routine has to be one of the fastest on the planet.  I was one of the audience asked onto the stage to check out the trunk and handcuffs before the trick and I could find nothing amiss with the equipment (which, of course, is to be expected). You may watch the performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUAPvshOkyU

Powers also does an excellent series of dove productions and some nifty close up magic including a torn and restored card effect. I can see why he won “Magician of the Year” five times.  If you get the opportunity to see his show you will certainly not be disappointed.

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.