Archive for June, 2007

I love situations that challenge our “Common” Sense”.

Imagine you are dressed as a giant chicken and a crowd of strangers, each dressed more strangely than you, are all shouting their opinions, but the decision is up to you. Monty Hall himself has said that a car is behind one of the three curtains before you. Goats are behind the other two. After much crowd urging, you select curtain number 2. Instead of showing you what is behind your curtain, Monty shows you the goat behind curtain number 3 and then says, “Do you want to stay with curtain number 2 or do you want to switch to what is behind curtain number 1?”

Given that Monty knows Full Story »

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After a sold-out run, THE QUANTUM EYE – Magic Deceptions, has moved to The SoHo Playhouse at 15 Vandam Street between 6th avenue and Varick.
Full Story »

Galileo Galilei was born on February 15th, 1564, in Tuscany. He almost committed to entering the priesthood, but under the urging of his father, the famous music theorist Vincenzo Galilei, pursued mathematics. It would be difficult to overstate the contributions he then made to our ability to measure and correctly interpret the universe. Albert Einstein honored him by calling him the “father of modern science”. Galileo pioneered the use of quantitative experiments whose results could be analyzed and replicated as opposed to the qualitative or subjective observations that were in common use. Considering the attitudes of his time, he was extraordinarily able to change his view of the universe based on his measured observations.

On this date in 1633, Galileo Galilei was required by the Holy Office Full Story »

One of the most frustrating exercises in human interaction can be arguing with someone who simply ignores or discounts any evidence that might contradict their opinion. It can be sobering to realize that we are all guilty of this faulty logic. We have a strong predisposition to what is called the Ubiquitous Confirmation Bias.The variation on the Watson Card Selection Task that follows is a wonderful illustration of this bias. Try it on yourself and share it with the loved ones you argue with the most: Each of the cards below has a letter on one side and a number on the other. Which two should be turned over to give you the most information on evaluating the following statement?

“If there is an S on one side, there is a 3 on the other”

Integrating the Contrary:

75% choose the S and 3. They believe that if the S has a 3 and Full Story »

We’ve all heard it: “You only use 10% of your brain.”

Given the kinds of demonstrations I perform, some audience Full Story »

June 1st is the 152nd day of the year and the beginning of the U.S. National Accordion Awareness month, which celebrates an instrument that Mahatma Gandhi played as a child and who delivered a speech at Jamshedpur province in India, where actor R. Madhavan was born on June 1st, an actor who eventually came to star in the UTV show, Deal Ya No Deal, the Indian version of Deal or No Deal, which in the US is hosted by Howie Mandel, who, in his first film role in the Canadian movie, Gas, co-starred with Donald Sutherland, who voiced a character in Simpsons episode 152, a series which included Treehouse of Horror XVI, which had a character voiced by Dennis Rodman, who was considered a personal hero by basketball player Tyrone Nelson, who was born in Washington County, Texas, which had a population of 23,103 (the square-root of which is 152) in 1870, the year in which the YWCA was founded in New York, the sister organization to the YMCA, which was celebrated in song by The Village People, who included a member who dressed as a Police officer and sang in the movie, The Wiz, which was based on the novels of L. Frank Baum, which were turned into the movie, The Wizard of Oz, in which The Wizard was played by the actor Frank Morgan, who was born on June 1st…