Here in the United States, we have enjoyed brilliant magicians like Houdini, but also embarrassing flim-flammers like David Blaine and Criss Angel, both of whom have been caught doing “magic” using video post-production while hired actors pretend (not very convincingly) to watch the trick in awe. Angel even convinced the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas to sink $100 million dollars into a stage show called “Believe” – audiences came expecting to see live performances of the magic feats Angel “performs” on his show, such as levitation. Surprise! Without video post-production, Angel is every bit as magical as a damp sponge. Audiences report overwhelming disappointment, and the Luxor must be losing money hand-over-fist, but they’re trapped in a 10-year contract.

Derren Brown is unknown in the U.S.A., so ‘The Heist’ was my first exposure, and it blew my mind; I was at the edge of my seat. I was astounded. I could talk of nothing else for days. Later, reading up on how Brown really achieves his effects, I felt that my trust had been taken advantage of, and very surprised and disappointed with the BBC for collusion in claims they apparently knew to be a big fib.

Brown was caught red-handed committing fraud in his 2003 show “Russian Roulette” — the tension of the show was based entirely on Brown’s claim to be using only live ammunition, but the policeman overseeing the event, Jersey Island’s Deputy Chief of Police Lenny Harper, told Reuters that Brown lied and actually used blanks (”Magician defends gun stunt fake,” CNN). When confronted, Brown responded: “…as a magic-related performer to have that event being asked: Was it real? Was it not real? That lifts it to a level that — I’m very comfortable with. What’s left is that fact that it was a terrific piece of television.”

Okay, so Brown himself has admitted to defrauding his viewers, which he justifies as “a terrific piece of television.” He credits David Blaine as his source for the “really simple and really great idea” of making a mundane trick seem more convincing by focusing on [fake] spectator reactions, on people “freaking out.” Was the Blaine-inspired Roulette fraud a rare one-off, or Brown’s standard method? The evidence points at option B.

* Consider the “Magic Doll” segment of Mind Games, in which Derren Brown claims to be controlling a woman’s actions through the power of suggestion. Keep in mind that Brown repeatedly claims to use no “actors or stooges.” The woman “controlled” by the vudu doll has been outed as professional television actress Magda Rodriguez, who lists the gig on her IMDB resume as “Vudu Mind Player.”

* SPOILER: Brown opens his show ‘The System’ by seemingly flipping a coin and getting the same side ten times in a row. Later he reveals the “trick” was achieved by spending an entire day videotaping himself flipping coins until he got that result. Keep this technique in mind while watching many of Brown’s “miraculous” stunts, like his schtick of dressing up like a clown and pretending to mind-read strangers. His ‘hit’ rate of correct guesses seems too high even when it’s clear he’s using standard cold-reading techniques. Comparing this video to ‘The System,’ it becomes obvious that Brown is attaining the “wow” factor with the same cherry-picking technique: he’ll film himself making guesses for hours but only show us the lucky guesses. In my eyes, anyone can do “magic” using selective video editing, but to do so is a violation of the unspoken contract between audience and performer.

* The common underlying method for almost all Brown’s tricks is: (1) claim upfront that he is NOT doing traditional stage-magic or using actors, (2) pepper his banter with claims of psychological manipulation and mind-control, then (3) do stage-magic or use actors. Brown’s signature technique and innovation is to misdirect our attention away from his real method with a constant froth of psychobabble. The celebrity is too busy pondering how he was “subconsciously mind-controlled against my will to pick the cards Derren had already chosen” to realize he’s actually been had by a simple card trick. There is some genuine verbal suggestion happening in most of these tricks, but it’s usually only about 5-10% of the claimed effect. This is why Brown frequently makes vague but tantalizing allusions to the mostly-pseudoscience of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), as part of an overall campaign of misdirection.

Simon Singh, writing for The Daily Telegraph, explains very succinctly: “Derren selected his ten cards very carefully – three aces, three kings, three sevens and a queen. This combination ensures that whoever has the queen will always lose the game… At the start of the game Derren merely has to deal the queen to his opponent, and then he will win no matter what cards his opponent chooses. In short, this is nothing to do with psychology. It is a magic trick. In fact, exactly the type of trick that Derren denied using at the very start of the show.” Singh gives a second example, in which Brown stares into a boxer’s eyes and claims to “use [his] mind” to “take [the boxer's strength] away,” thus making it impossible for the boxer to lift Brown’s assistant in the air a second time. In real life the assistant has furtively stepped a few inches away, moving the fulcrum-point and thus multiplying the strength the boxer would need to lift her. So a clear pattern is established of Brown using false claims of mental influence to misdirect attention from the traditional stage-magic he’s really using after claiming not to.

Brown is famously an atheist, denouncing Christianity as “nonsense” and a “circular belief system” in his 2007 book ‘Tricks of the Mind.’ But if ‘The Heist’ is a fraud, as the evidence would suggest (notice that the most prominent credit at the end of the program is “Written By,” notice that Brown’s usual “no actors or stooges were used in this production” disclaimer is suspiciously absent), isn’t Brown repeating that same abuse-via-fraud dynamic against millions of viewers? Am I over-estimating the civic responsibility of the BBC in expecting at least a brief disclaimer, clarifying that the results were faked, the key participants were actors, and no one was really manipulated into believing they have electrocuted a stranger to death on national television?

Brown has a brilliant mind and is undeniably scintillating as a performer. His book ‘Tricks of the Mind’ is well worth reading. Brown is certainly a step up from the sad posturings of David Blaine or Criss Angel. But ultimately, Derren Brown seems guilty of exactly the same flim-flammery he condemns in others — humbug on the BBC for betraying the essential contract of trust with their audience by pretending otherwise.

Cross-posted to Amazon.uk.

here’s an op-ed i sent to the local paper:

Greg Norman (Letters, 7/9) is correct to object to Arthur Mokin’s (Guest Viewpoint, 7/5) assertion that criticism of Israel is almost exclusively an expression of “Jew-hatred”, but he fails to properly rebut the substance of Mr. Mokin’s reasoning.

Mokin proposes underlying Jew-hatred to explain a disparity in the coverage of two somewhat similar recent events involving the murder of Turkish nationals: in one case, a number of civilians killed by Kurdish separatists within Turkey; in the other, a similar number killed by Israeli defense forces off the coast of Gaza. Accepting Mr. Mokin’s research into the volume of relevant coverage, the first incident “died on the day it was born”, while the second “had legs.” The question he proposes is, why? In deciding on secret, perhaps even unconscious, Jew-hatred as an answer, Mr. Mokin overlooks more obvious grounds.

It is clear that Mr. Mokin begins from a supposition of hidden racism, calling Jew-hatred “the oldest prejudice in the world.” A nonsensical assertion given the long history of humanity predating the origin of Judaism, but revealing as to the partisan mindset of the author. I propose an alternative explanation based upon a proper distinction arising from a specific difference between the two cases.

Though the victims were in both instances killed and in both instances Turks, the killers were in one instance soldiers and in the other insurgents. Because of this, while the tragedy of the deaths in both cases is equal, the meaning of their murders is not. Simply put, the legitimacy of statehood brings with it a higher standard of conduct. Not only is this a fact of how people do think, it is a statement of how they ought to think. Thus the disparity of outrage in response to the two cases can be understood as an expression not of Jew-hatred, but of an appropriate prejudice that holds lawful states to a different standard than terrorists.

This appropriate double standard might be observed in the extensive coverage accorded a recent gunsight video showing American soldiers killing unarmed Iraqi civilians – including two journalists – from an Apache gunship. Compare that flurry of coverage and outrage to the daily accounts of car bombings that kill similar, if not greater, numbers of Iraqis, yet similarly die on the day they are born. This difference has nothing to do with hatred of Americans and everything to do with the fact that America, as a lawful nation, is rightly held to a higher standard as regards the use of lethal force than shadowy militants who grant themselves a license to kill.

Consider also two fictional examples, one in which a man is murdered by a criminal and another in which a man is murdered by a police officer. While both victims are equally dead, the latter is certain to generate more press and outrage than the former, as the issue is ultimately not murder but the violation of trust inherent to the abuse of power.

In making the argument he does, Mr Mokin implicitly proposes Israel be regarded as a legitimate state yet held only to the low standard applied to insurgents.  He attempts to blur this distinction by claiming that both Israel – nuclear-armed and by far the most powerful military in the region – and Kurds in Turkey – a people so oppressed that even their name has been declared illegal – are “struggling for survival” in a hostile mid-east. We are by now well-familiar with this attempt to reframe standards of civilized behavior by invocation of constant, if fraudulent, existential threat, having lived through the first eight years of what we are told will be a generational war on terror.

Such thinking destroys the very principle of statehood, reducing legitimate authority to mere force. Herein lies a grave and hidden danger of the reflexive recourse to charges of anti-semitism, and likewise, anti-Americanism: by failing to hold recognized authority to a higher standard we undermine the justification, and hence the meaning and value, of such authority. By defending the actions of sovereign authorities by comparison to the worst actions of self-elected militias we invite and enable the degeneration of sovereignty into a tyranny.

To mark the recent anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the editor of the local Weekly approvingly quoted some other commentator’s judgment of Bush’s decision to invade as the worst decision ever made by a president. Here’s my still evolving letter in response:

Summing up the invasion of Iraq as the worst decision ever made by a president seems the strongest criticism, but overlooks a more serious problem. Even if Bush’s decision is accurately ranked as such, the greater peril to our nation is not a function of this catastrophic triumph. Rather, the deeper danger is so ordinary as to be routinely overlooked: Bush, as president, had no power to initiate the war, and congress had no power to authorize him to do so.

This is more than a technicality of constitutional authority. As James Madison wrote in 1793:

“Every just view that can be taken of this subject, admonishes the public, of the necessity of a rigid adherence to the simple, the received and the fundamental doctrine of the constitution, that the power to declare war including the power of judging of the causes of war is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature: that the executive has no right, in any case to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war. ”

Though Madison encourages the public to accept this as a fundamental, received, doctrine, the reasons for it are readily apparent – particularly in light of the last eight years, during which individual liberties have been in effect suspended as a part of the endless and undeclared War on Terror. By abdicating its authority to decide causes for war, Congress overrode a fundamental safeguard of democracy, with next to no public recognition of that fact. As Hamilton wrote in Federalist #8, war inevitably increases the power of the Executive. As the last eight years have made plain, under an imperial president the nation loses the reins of its own destiny and is left managing realities created by executive action.

There is nothing to be gained by ranking Presidential errors. What we need is a firm public consciousness of the necessary and legal limits of Presidential power.

Recently, Oregon’s governor decided to change the name of a local highway to honor a friend and campaign donor, a local businessman who owned a heavy machinery company and served (with some conflict of interest) on a state department of transportation board. I don’t really know his story. Oh, he’s dead now. Died at age 58 not long ago. Point being, this name change has sparked instant and widespread opposition, both because of its cost and because most people just want the highway to stay named as it is. The governor, who isn’t running for reelection, has chosen to ignore the protests. The transportation board that signed off on the change has done the same, with one of the board’s three members commenting:

“There seems to be a segment of the community who thinks that anybody involved in business must be inherently evil”

And another,

“Fifteen percent of the people are against you all the time, anyway, no matter what you do. But as an old friend once told me, ‘If you feel it’s the right decision, then you should do it.’ I always use that as a benchmark. I think it’s the right thing to do.”

So, anyway, I don’t even drive, and the better part of my income lately has come from designing public art installations for the department of transportation that might very well be labeled as equally useless, still, I find the governor’s decision to ignore public opinion interesting. I wrote him a note:

Governor – More than bad politics, your decision to rename the Beltline highway is bad governance. Exceptions to the rule of popular will are essential to the proper functioning of a representative democracy. Because of this, elected leaders must only act contrary to majority wishes in exceptional moments of principle. To run contrary to the expressed preference of a large majority (and is there any doubt that a large majority of those concerned oppose the renaming?) disturbs the cornerstone of our representative system and by so doing distorts the good form of government. It is only necessity that keeps contrary acts by elected representatives from being arbitrary choices of power; and when those in power make arbitrary choices the foundation of government, which is nothing other than justified public confidence, is necessarily undermined.

In your choice to ignore the public will you are expending something far more valuable than the money it will cost to paint and install new signs.

written in reponse to this opinion piece in defense of torture, from last week’s local paper. an excerpt:

This current denunciation of supposed torture and torturers proceeds from believing that political capital and moral authority can be earned at a safe distance by berating people who put themselves in harm’s way on our behalf. To regard such actions as criminal requires asymmetrical morality, undefiled by any perception of danger to ourselves or others. Placating those who covet such a luxurious, dilemma-free morality forces us to ignore military and intelligence professionals who face shrewd, ruthless enemies in a conflict fraught with frightening uncertainties.

Terrorists never display the civility required by the Geneva Conventions. Terrorists are not insurgents or freedom fighters, and when they are captured, they certainly are not prisoners of war. These killers are not members of an organized resistance movement carrying arms openly, and they have no distinctive identifier. The Geneva Conventions describe terrorists as beyond the pale.

The framers of the Geneva Conventions were parents and grandparents of the Greatest Generation, and held powerful positions throughout the darkest times of our world. Their words synthesize brutal, durable morality, properly understood, from actions within the ultimate bloody deluges of the 20th century. The people writing the conventions intended to isolate terrorist forces, provide them minimal protections, and allow their destruction with any overwhelming furies needed to crush their abominations.

aside from the striking choices of language, note how the author first justifies torture as if it were a tactical choice made by “military and intelligence professionals,” whose actual opinion the author subsequently disregards in favor of his own sense of moral disconnect:

Rep. Peter DeFazio quoted to me 20 former Army interrogators saying that abuse and torture of prisoners and detainees should be avoided at all costs. I find that disturbing, because on Sept. 11, 2001, we were prepared to shoot down any civilian airliner that did not land immediately, regardless of its crew’s assertions.

There’s an incredible moral disconnect here: We were prepared to kill our own citizens on Sept. 11, but we were forbidden to subject terrorists to severe discomfort that might prevent extravagant murder and destruction. At what point in the application of chemical, biological and atomic weapons to our society must we protect the American people “at all costs”?

so, anyway, my reply:

Nolan Nelson’s justification of torture makes a powerful if unintentional case against the mentality that regards torture as a necessary response to terrifying unknowns. His relentlessly extreme language, bald assertions and poor logic all suggest a mind imbalanced by fear. However genuine this terror might be, decisions made from such a debilitated state are notoriously unjust and ineffective [i might have added, all episodes of 24 aside]. The challenges of the new century that Mr. Nelson fearfully evokes will not be solved by the primitive mindset his letter exhibits.