Mr. Deity Complains about The Book

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This latest episode of the funny Mr Deity web show has Himself complaining about how bad he looks in The Bible.

Funny, mean, true. Love it!

(Mr Deity is a satirical series about goings-on at God's HQ; hard to describe, easy to enjoy! Highly recommended. Here's a snippet from the Wikipedia entry: "...A series of short comedy films about God surveying the universe with his assistant. The first episode, called Mr Deity and the Evil, features only Dalton and his friend, cinematographer Jimbo Marshall, making decisions about what evils to allow.")

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Mark Mason Dazzles Fellow Magicians

Mark Mason demonstrated his magic prowess to members of the Society of American Magicians, Assembly 112 (Diablo Chapter, SF Bay Area, CA) in June at a special lecture sponsored by the Assembly at the California Magic showplace in Martinez, and he dazzled, delighted, charmed, and amused us – and knocked us over with amazing trick after eye-popping trick. And then he knocked us over again showing the magicians how each trick is done.

Among the amazing effects he showed, and then explained, were his Ace of Hearts; the Think-of-a-Card trick; the signed card in the shoe; Blind Spot, a wowser in which he transferred a coin from his hand into a soda bottle; and a bit where he placed a card between two other cards that had large holes cut in their center, so the sandwiched card could be seen; a flick of his wrist, and the sandwiched card—disappeared, right in front of our eyes! The trick was amazing – and his demonstration of how he did it was even more amazing!

There were more clever gimmicks and astonishing bits of magical imagination stuffed into one two-hour evening than you can imagine. It was very worth the $20 ticket price (and for your correspondent, the 45-minute drive through rush-hour traffic!).

SAM112 sponsored the lecture, and while we got a decent crowd and broke even financially, we were disappointed that more members didn't take advantage of this rare opportunity to learn at the hands of a real master. Mason was not only informative, delighting in showing his clever gimmicked coins and cards to an appreciative audience of magicians – he was also witty and entertaining. Members should try harder to make time for these lecture events, as they are all top-quality evenings, vetted by Dr. P and guaranteed to be worthwhile.

Mark showed another effect using a unique method of holding a coin hidden in the hand, using a crooked thumb. He showed an adaptation of Ben Harris' Fandango involving flicking a card through a cut deck just as it is being put back together.

Mark's Double Deception uses a unique form of coin clipper; in performance, he has two audience members hold open a silk between them, drops a pair of coins into the center, reaches under the silk, and yanks – the pair of coins in the silk instantly becomes a single coin, and Mark shows the second coin which he magically "pulled" through the silk. He demonstrated "Perfect," with a very unusual gimmicked deck of cards that manages to turn up a "2" card every time, though when spread out on the table the deck seems perfectly normal.

His flair for adding his own twists to classics was obvious when Mark did the torn-and-restored newspaper gag—but instead of tearing up a newspaper in front of us, he started with bits of torn newspaper sticking out of various parts of his outfit—put them together one by one, apparently just reading off funny headlines from each one – then restored the stack of torn papers and surprised the audience.

He also did an interesting twist on "Pocket Money," where he displayed six coins, each a different size and from a different country, had an audience member choose one, then put all six into his pocket, only to find, when he took the coins out one by one, that the one he had selected was now missing—from his own pocket!

Mark did his amazing Come Fly With Me, a sleight of hand in which he appeared to transfer three coins back and forth between his wide-spread hands. He finished up his wow performance with Cardiograph, where he shows three cards, signs one, has an audience member sign another, then somehow both signatures end up on the same card – which the audience member had been holding down on the tabletop the whole time.

Mark offered for sale DVDs and packaged versions of most of his tricks, including a truly baffling one involving a card that ends up inside an empty card box sitting to the side on a table. (His material, including DVDs detailing many effects, is available at http://www.jbtvusa.com.) It was a satisfying evening of magical performance and education, evidenced by the many exclamations of astonishment by our members during the evening. Thanks to Mark Mason for coming by, to Dr. P for persuading him, and to Gerry for the use of California Magic's facility for the evening.

Are Tweets and Facebook updates telling burglars when to strike?

Sam Diaz blogs on ZDNet: "The burglary of an Arizona video editor made headlines because he thinks that his Facebook and Twitter update habits may have led to it. He not only told his network of social media friends that he was going out of town but also shared some adventures of his road trip."

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Personally, I find this a very plausible scenario -- It can be like putting up a sign on your front door, "We are out!" It's like the old stories of people who go on cruises only to return to a burgled house, thanks to tipsters at the docks selling to gangs info about who's just headed off on a cruise and won't be home for a week!

Fair warning, folks!

Digital TV Conversion Disaster Still To Come: USING Is CONFUSING!

All the info you hear and read about the analog-to-digital television conversion taking place this weekend consists of how to hook up an analog-to-digital converter, if you need one, and the fact that you will have to rescan your channels after the changeover.


Just one problem: As anybody who is using an antenna-based TV by now knows, you have an additional problem once you've converted: The actual use of your TV is now very different.

This is completely ignored. Not surprising, because everything is apparently written by engineers, who are very interested in technical details and not at all interested in the user experience.

What I mean is this: The favorite channel of my mother-in-law, who is Chinese, is channel 26, which in San Francisco is the Chinese network (in the evenings). She knows how to enter "26" into the clicker to get there.

Since she uses a rooftop antenna, we got her a converter box and scanned the channels. But now, instead of Channel '26,' she has Channels '26-1', '26-2', and '26-3'. Only '26-3' is her regular Chinese channel; the others are other channels, not identified, and not familiar.

So we bought her a new digital TV--and got the same results. Now we have to teach my mother-in-law to enter "26" and then click the 'Channel Up" button twice (or press '26' - 'dash' - '3' -- with the "dash" being represented, intuitively, by the "100" button on the clicker).

Did you know that? Not if your information comes from the voluminous propaganda about this conversion. Because nobody has bothered to mention it. You'll be surprised! Woo hoo!

Similarly, she now has channels 2-1, 2-2, and 2-3, 3-1, 3-2, and 3-3, 4-1 and etc. Some of these are the still-continuing analog channel (which will go away), the new digital channel for that station, and an HD channel if that station has one. But in many cases, the extra channels are random other channels I never heard of, don't recognize, and don't know what they are supposed to be: There are all-news channels I don't recognize, all-weather channels I don't recognize, and just channels that are unexplained and unidentified.

Naturally, none of this is in the newspaper TV listings. Less naturally, all this comes as a complete and puzzling surprise because it is not mentioned in any way in the documentation for the TV or in any newspaper articles about the conversion, or on DTVAnswers.com or any other Web site on the topic that I've been able to find.

Everyone is worried about those 2 million Americans who haven't converted yet, but what about the additional Americans who have converted but will be faced with this odd system with nobody in authority seeming to be aware of it? I guess all the "experts" on this topic get Cable, which doesn't have this mixed-channels problem.

Can anybody tell me where info about this is published? Can anybody explain why the widely distributed discussions about the conversion completely ignore this interface problem? Is it really that the experts all have cable and are talking entirely theoretically but haven't actually *used* the systems they're explaining? Or is it really that the engineer mentality causes everyone to ignore the customer experience?

Or is this published everywhere and I have somehow entered an info-free zone?

I've got a dollar that says that starting Monday, June 15, our info channels will be filled with belated info about what the heck all those extra channels are. And while they're at it, maybe they can explain to my mother-in-law how to arrange it so she can just type in "26" and get her TV channel again!

Irritatedly yours,

Mac McCarthy

Debunking "Mars Big as the Moon in the Sky!" Email Spam!

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The excellent Bad Astronomy blog in Discover magazine posts this week about the notorious email spam that asserts (from time to time) that Mars is coming so close to the Earth in its orbit that later this year it will "appear" to be as big as the Moon appears.

Yes; as big-seeming as the Moon seems in the sky. That would be something!

If it were true. But it's not even close to being true.

As astronomer Phil Plait explains in his blog, "I tire of debunking this every freaking year, so just read this post from last year, or from 2007, or 2006, or 2005, or 2003, when this evil viral thing got started by someone who I hope is now covered with a copious slathering of honey and ensconced in the ground near a fire ant mound, preferably surrounded by quicksand, a tar pit, and a bunch of TV sets all tuned to the Oprah show."

Geez, he's been countering this thing for five years. And it won't die.

Pity the rationalist.

He also mentions the amusing series going on in the comic strip NonSequitur on the same subject....

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