-This word/mind trick has gone viral over the last week or so. For the few people that missed it, here’s one of the versions I’ve seen floating around:
7H15 M3554G3 53RV35 7O PR0V3 H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5! 1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5! 1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG 17 WA5 H4RD BU7 N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3 Y0UR M1ND 1S R34D1NG 17 4U70M471C4LLY W17H0U7 3V3N 7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17, B3 PROUD! N07 3V3RYB0DY C4N R34D TH15.
-Quick programming note: The weekly magic updates/loose ends have been phased out due to miniscule traffic numbers. People don’t really care about obscure magic trivia. That said, brilliant magic finds and info WILL continue to be posted here regularly.
Follow me on Twitter for the cool day-to-day magic: @vladkraven
Was out of town for most of the week, enjoying fresh air and nature in the woods in Pennsylvania. It’s my retreat away from technology, which is the reason for the lack of blog posts this week.
One of may favorite activities out there is to do my most dramatic martial arts training impression by standing on a tree stump and practicing card flourishes for hours. I call it… magical martial arts. Sure it’s not technically a martial art, but if you see me doing it, in all likelihood you will die of laughter.
So what goodies does uncle Vlad have for us on this holiday week?
-Inspired by my stay in the woodlands, video of the week is a very mystical, earthy performance by the Ukrainian performer Galena. Click here to watch.
-Mind trick: which of these two is larger?
You may be tempted to choose the bottom figure, but in fact they are both the same exact size. This is because the “depth cues” in the image make it appear as if the top image is larger, but that simply isn’t the case! We often see a similar phenomenon with the moon: sometimes you look up and it is huge, while usually it’s a small, familiar orb in the sky. This has nothing to do with size or even distance from the earth. The moon appears larger when it is lower over the horizon, because we have a visual context to look at it, when it never actually changes size.
-Crazy card fact: I recently learned that during WWII, the British government provided some soldiers with special playing cards that, when wet, could be peeled to show hidden maps on the inner card layers. Brilliant!
And so ends another week in magic. Some bits and bobs to wrap things up:
-Made a bunch of additions to my photo galleries, so check out that page. Click here. Going to work on the art page next week hopefully.
-Video of the week is one of the most innovative magic routines I’ve ever seen from one of my personal favorite magicians, Jason Latimer. Click to watch his Laser Routine.
-Strange card facts: In standard pack of playing cards, there are 52 pasteboards, just as there are 52 weeks in a year; there are 4 suits in a deck, just as there are 4 seasons in a year; there are 13 cards per suit and 13 lunar cycles in a year. If you add up the value of each card, the total will be 365. No one knows the exact origin of this strange coincidence.
-More card stuff: We know that the Ace of Spades is the ‘Death Card’ and that the King of Hearts is also called the ‘suicide king’ (look at one and you’ll see why…deep…), but were you aware that the 9 of Diamonds is called the ‘Curse of Scotland’? Or that the 4 of Clubs is called the ‘Devil’s Bedpost’? No one really knows the exact origins of the latter two.
-And finally, another word trick I found on a cheesy website (seriously, try this one!):
Count every ” F ” in the following text:
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS…
(SEE BELOW)
HOW MANY ? 3?
WRONG, THERE ARE 6 — no joke.
READ IT AGAIN !
Really, go Back and Try to find the 6 F’s before you scroll down.
The reasoning behind is further down.
The brain cannot process “OF”.
