{"id":62,"date":"2008-10-12T00:30:17","date_gmt":"2008-10-12T05:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/capn\/?p=62"},"modified":"2008-10-12T00:30:17","modified_gmt":"2008-10-12T05:30:17","slug":"magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/capn\/2008\/10\/12\/magic\/","title":{"rendered":"Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the past year and a half, I&#8217;ve been a card magician. I started learning some basic sleight of hand techniques with cards and I&#8217;m now producing cards out of people&#8217;s pockets and making a chosen card appear in a sealed envelope halfway across the room.<\/p>\n<p>Magic isn&#8217;t just a way to make other people feel stupid. It&#8217;s a lot of things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s mental exercise. Devising card tricks requires ingenuity and a lot of cleverness. And a very devious mind.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s improv. I&#8217;ve learned more about giving speeches and public presentations through magic than I have out of speech classes and years of giving presentations at school. Why? Because 95% of magic is getting people to pay attention to what you&#8217;re saying rather than what you&#8217;re doing. Without my constant chatter, people would notice every move I make.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s incredibly fun. After a while, once the initial &#8220;oh my god they might figure it out&#8221; nervousness is past, magic is just fun. You know exactly what to do and you can start improvising new lines to say depending on the situation. (Protip: ask the audience to come up with their own magic words. Don&#8217;t let them pick &#8220;abracadabra.&#8221; You&#8217;ll probably hear some very interesting new magic phrases to try.)<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s entertainment for everyone. I&#8217;ve never gone up to anyone and said &#8220;let me do a card trick.&#8221; All I have to do is start playing with a deck of cards and everyone goes &#8220;do a card trick! That one where you make it change colors!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s a way to get out of boring card games with relatives. All you have to do is produce their card out of your pocket and they&#8217;ll be too suspicious of you to let you play&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re in a team competition, it&#8217;s a way to intimidate the other teams. Trust me. I&#8217;ve tried this one. (&#8220;We&#8217;re screwed! The other team has a guy who can make cards switch while you&#8217;re holding them in your hands!&#8221;)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Try it. If you want a good trick to learn, try <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2KrdBUFeFtY\">this one<\/a> (there&#8217;s a link to an explanation in the Related Videos box). It&#8217;s great fun, especially if you put the different-color card in a box and let someone hold it&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the past year and a half, I&#8217;ve been a card magician. I started learning some basic sleight of hand techniques with cards and I&#8217;m now producing cards out of people&#8217;s pockets and making a chosen card appear in a sealed envelope halfway across the room. Magic isn&#8217;t just a way to make other people&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-magic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/capn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/capn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/capn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/capn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/capn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/capn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/capn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/capn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/capn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}