THE AMAZING RANDI

As most Theory Corner readers know, The Amazing Randi is a professional magician who's made a second career out of debunking charlatans. Randi's the reason you don't hear about the psychic key bender Uri Geller anymore. Now if you already know this, why am I bothering to talk about it?

The reason is that this video is the best debunking video I've ever seen. Uri actually bends the key -- I mean physically bends it, not mentally -- right in front of your eyes, and if you're like me you won't notice it until Randi runs the film back and shows it to you! When it's pointed out it'll seem obvious, but up until then you'll be puddy in Geller's hands, just like I was. It's proof that you can't always trust what you see.





The post is really about key bending, but I can't resist throwing in a couple of other 3 0r 4 minute videos. Here (above) Randi takes on Philippine psychic surgery. This was a very big deal a while back and it had a big following in this country. I'll bet some of the people reading this were taken in by it.





Here's (above) Randi exposing Peter Popoff (spelled right?), a popular faith healer on TV a while back. Randi exposed him and he vanished from TV for years, but he's back again, this time selling healing water. You'll hear Popoff's wife transmitting information to him at the very same moment that you'll see Popoff receiving the same information from heaven on the stage.

FRANCES LANGFORD'S "LOVELY HULA HANDS"

Here's a couple of songs by Frances Langford, a popular singer and actress in the Big Band era. I wouldn't say that Langford is a great singer, but she's a really good one and that's no small thing. She has a great feel for pace. Some songs pay better when they're sung Langford-style: straight and sincere, with no mugging...songs like "Lovely Hula Hands (above).





I thought I'd add another Langford song just for the heck of it. Here she is (above) with Jimmy Cagney, singing "Over There." Once again she sings the song straight and that turns out to be just the right way to sell it.

MY HERO: WILLIAM BLACKSTONE

Here's a 3 1/2 minute video about one of my heroes, William Blackstone. Blackstone was the English lawyer who in the 1760s wrote the influential four volume "Commentaries on the Laws of England," an attempt to explain the principles and origins of English law. This is the law as it stood in the 18th century, where the king could do no wrong and, together with parliament, was considered the guarantor of English freedom.

You don't have to agree with what Blackstone said in order to see that the argument was masterful and infinitely romantic and enriching. Blackstone chronicles the attempt of fragile, fallible humanity to understand the principles of governance implicit in nature and the mind of what he considered the Supreme Being. Watch out, if you read this you might drop everything and become a lawyer!





That's Blackstone on the very top of the post, replete with powdered wig and robes, and below that is Jeremy Bentham, his nemesis. Blackstone not only believed in monarchy but in individual liberty and what we call today "checks and balances." This seemed stupid to Bentham who couldn't see the point of deliberately having a government that was forever at war with itself. Bentham was wrong in my opinion but the debate is an interesting one. All of us should have studied this stuff in high school.


BTW, if you decide to buy a volume I recommend looking for one that's set in a modern typeface. One of the old-style facsimile editions that's on Amazon is hard to read. Google's book archive has a free edition but that might be hard to read as well (I haven't seen it). Look on the net. I'll bet somebody put up a copy that easier on the eye. The problem there is that backlit computer books are hard to read for very long, even if the type is OK.






Blogger decided to put my video on the very bottom, so here it is. It's only 3 1/2 minutes, which will either go by quickly or feel like an eternity, depending on whether you like stuff like this.

FOR THE GRADUATES: "GAUDEAMUS IGITOR"

This is for the students out there who will be graduating this year: three versions of the medieval song of student life and academia, "Gaudeamus Igitor." I love this song. Find out if it's on the agenda for your graduation ceremony and if it's not then get it there, even if you and a few friends have to sing it yourselves.






Here's (above) Mario Lanza's version. It's very beautiful but a little strange since the song is meant to be sung by a group. You could argue that it's best sung by earnest amateurs. Very often academics would sing this in informal ceremonies to honor one of their own. It would be a high honor indeed since it indicates that your peers believe that you somehow exemplify a tradition, that you've kept alive the spirit of something that's vital to everyone in the room. It reminds me of the ceremony of the pens in the Russell Crowe film about the mathematician.





Of course no graduation ceremony should be completely solemn and it's fitting to end with a second version of Gaudeamus, something like the one above. you can see why this has to be the closing number... no serious business will be conducted after a song done like this.

Here (below) are the lyrics to Gaudeamus, which is always sung in Latin. I love the part that wishes long life to mature women and the state.




Latin English
Gaudeamus igitur

Juvenes dum sumus.
Post jucundam juventutem
Post molestam senectutem
Nos habebit humus.
Let us rejoice therefore

While we are young.
After a pleasant youth
After the troubles of old age
The earth will have us.
Ubi sunt qui ante nos

In mundo fuere?
Vadite ad superos
Transite in inferos
Hos si vis videre.
Where are they

Who were in the world before us?
Go up to heaven
Or cross over into hell
If you wish to see them.
Vita nostra brevis est

Brevi finietur.
Venit mors velociter
Rapit nos atrociter
Nemini parcetur.
Our life is brief

It will be finished all too soon.
Death comes quickly
We are cruelly snatched away.
No one is spared.
Vivat academia!

Vivant professores!
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivant membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore.
Long live the academy!

Long live the teachers!
Long live each student!
Long live all the students!
May they always flourish!
Vivant omnes virgines

Faciles, formosae.
Vivant et mulieres
Tenerae amabiles
Bonae laboriosae.
Long live the virgins

Easy and beautiful!
Long live mature women also,
Tender and lovable
And full of good labor.
Vivant et res publica

et qui illam regit.
Vivat nostra civitas,
Maecenatum caritas
Quae nos hic protegit.
Long live the state as well

And he who rules it!
Long live our city
[And] the charity of benefactors
Which protects us here!
Pereat tristitia,

Pereant osores.
Pereat diabolus,
Quivis antiburschius
Atque irrisores.
Let sadness perish!

Let haters perish!
Let the devil perish!
Let whoever is anti-student
Who laughs at us, perish!

HOT PROSPECTS AT "MATCH.COM"

I got a great comment from Cynthia where she talked about both of us doing a parody of the match.com ads that are all over myspace right now. I looked up the ads and they were great! Match.com is now one of my favorite companies!

I can't believe how smart these ads are! They're funny, so they're viral, and they sell the product like crazy! It was a genius idea to get the customers to make short, silent films of themselves. How many times have you seen somebody who looked great with the volume down and who came off like a gorilla with the volume up? Let's face it, it's no accident that romantic film stars are always silent types!

When you speak, even if it's just a few words, you reveal your culture, income level, personality, education, sexual experience, philosophy...everything! There's bound to be something in there that's a turn-off to the person you're trying to impress. Better to sell yourself silently, and that's what the geniuses at match.com do!





Anyway, here's (above) my fake highlight reel of match.comers pitching themselves. Many thanks for the great idea, Cynthia!

LETS TALK ABOUT FRANK GEHRY

Here's "Merzbau,"(above) a terrific corner of a room by German Dada artist, Kurt Schwitters.


I'm a big fan of Schwitters. Starting in the 1920s he'd build these constructions (above) in every house or apartment building he lived in. Almost all of them survive only in photos he took, casualties of war or indifferent landlords. He had faith that someday these sculptures would influence things, and he was right, they did.



The old Dadaists work survives today mostly in the architecture of Frank Gehry. Gehry likes to make buildings out of dynamic, chaotic, confusing shapes, just like Schwitters. Some of them, like the one above, are very exciting, at least when viewed from the outside.



Of course he sometimes goes too far. This model (above) is for the administration building of a playground. There are so many non-structural decorative elements that there can't be much room left over for the offices.



Here's (above) the Disney concert hall in downtown L.A. It strikes me as a conservative, sterile, fairly standard post-modern structure embellished by extraneous twisted shapes, but maybe I'm wrong. I haven't been inside yet.




You've got to give it to Gehry, he seems to have gotten better with age. His earlier buildings were just too sterile. Here (above) are two views of Gehry's famous Winton Guest House. I wish I could have found a wider aerial shot of the house because when you see it in context, with all the trees around, you realize that this design has no fit with its location at all. It's bad enough to see arid stuff like this in the city but in the country it comes off as a jarring incongruity.



Here's (above) one corner of the California Science Center. You can't see the airplane attached to the side of the building from this angle which is OK because the design of the airplane, which is a genuine work of art, had nothing to do with Frank Gehry. I can't stand this building. It contains so much wasted space that there's not much room left over for actual exhibits.



Here's (above) Gehry's design for Loyola's law school, here in LA. What have we got? I see a plain, blank wall with the standard post-modern windows and the standard industrial stairs. Gehry's firm built a lot of things I bet he wishes he could take back now.

SCIENCE CORNER: HOW WE SMILE

"Hey, all you artists out there! Since I have a face model I thought I'd take a crack at describing how some simple expression plays out on the face. How about a smile...that's pretty basic!"



"I mugged in the mirror for a while before writing this, and I'm already forgetting what I saw, so I better hurry up."


"OK, in the mirror I leaned back and registered surprise before smiling but I need to simplify things so I'll skip the lean. Here I just tried to look mildly surprised. You can see that all the features are flattened out. "


"My type of smile begins with the eyelids. They close softly and gently. It happens fast but if you could see it slowed down you'd be impressed by how innocent and tranquil the expression looks."


"Now the cheeks begin to dominate. They go up, out and in under the eye, describing (in the picture above) the letter "C" It's not symmetrical...one cheek usually gets a head start on the other. While all this is going on, the eyebrow begins to push the eyelash area farther down."


"This is the part I like the most. There comes a point when the scrinching eyes and cheek look like they've gone as far as they can go. It looks like the smile is over, but wait...."



"....it's not over at all! The eyebrow unexpectedly becomes dominant and violently forces a farther, deeper, more intense squinch. Even the cheeks are drawn into it. It fattens and wrinkles up the whole area around the eyes. But that's not all!

Toward the end of all this, before the face is completely wrinkled, the mouth suddenly springs to life. It had been busy traveling outward in order to help push the cheek upward, but now it asserts itself and makes a bid to dominate. It redoubles its effort, forcefully stretching the chin waaaay back and really far up before it settles to a red hot, smoking stop. When that ends, that's the end of the smiling mechanics. Fascinating, huh?

To summarize all this, what we have here is a quick fight for dominance. First the eye lids dominate, then the cheeks, then the eyebrows, then the mouth. It all happens very fast and a lot of it overlaps. I had to do this over and over before I could isolate the steps.

Of course, this is how I smile. Maybe you're different."


"Well, that's it! See ya next time on....'Science Corner!' "