The Ipswich and Suffolk (UK) Press Ball has announced its entertainment for this year’s annual event, Paul Daniels.
Mr. Daniels’ theme will be “An Enchanted Evening” and is promised to bring “magic, mystery and illusion” to the fete considered the highlight of Suffolk’s social season.The event is scheduled for June 24th.
Mr Daniels, 66, is a member of the Grand Order of Water Rats, an organisation known for its charity fund raising.
He said: “I was asked to come, it was as simple as that. I am a water rat and we work for charities wherever we can.”
Wife Debbie McGee, a choreographer, performer and presenter in her own right, will accompany Mr Daniels if she isn’t already booked.
Star editor Nigel Pickover said he was delighted that Paul Daniels would be at the Press Ball.
He added: “Paul Daniels is the very face of magic in this country. His presence will add that extra bit of glitter and sparkle to Suffolk’s biggest night of the year.”
It is the policy of Inside Magic to correct mistakes brought to our attention in a timely manner. We will necessarily bring those mistakes that could lead to a death or dismemberment or, worse, a lawsuit before others that just make us look stupid.
In January 26th edition of Inside Magic’s List of the Stupidest Routines, we unfairly made fun of VanDeen the Extraordinary. We wrote, ”. . . and of his alleged big trick, the drawing card for the whole show, who cares? It sounds neither dangerous nor exciting. What is the worst that can happen to him? He gets a paper cut on his lip? So what?!”
It turns out Mr. VanDeen was performing a Bullet Catch and not, as we incorrectly read, a Billet Catching trick. We still believe, however, that this is an inappropriate trick for children’s birthday parties but we petulantly admit our mistake.
In the April 2nd edition of Inside Magic’s Baltic Region Magic News, we gave the impression that we really cared about anyone else but us. We regret the error but don’t really care what anyone thinks anyway.
In our special Inside Magic’s Top 75 Mathematical Card Tricks Lasting More than 20 Minutes, we transposed some numbers in trick number 23, “What Pile is Your Card In Now?” The formula in line 82 should have read “add the value of the top cards from each pile with face cards counting as 12.” As the trick was written in the original version, the effect could become unintentionally interesting or entertaining and thus defy the rules of the mathematical card trick genre. We regret even writing about the topic.
Award-winning Chinese magician Juliana Chen will appear at the Peppermill in Reno for two shows, Friday, March 4 and Saturday, March 5, in the Peppermill?s ballrooms.
Ms. Chen is connected not only to great magic but also to the voice talent of one of the best cartoons of the late 1960′s.
The Peppermill Hotel and Casino is outside of the downtown Reno environs but provides a nice theater for magic.
Here’ some trivia, it was also the location of the lovely Gwyneth Paltrow’s dark film Hard Eight in which she plays a cocktail waitress by day and a working girl by night.
Ms. Paltrow wrote of her time in Reno:
It’s depressing. You’re shooting in a casino at 4 a.m. and you would see these blue-haired people sticking there social security right in the slot. But there was something really fun and dark and seductive about being there.
Ms. Paltrow as Clementine in Hard Eight
We mention Ms. Paltrow’s connection to the Peppermill because as in Six-Degrees of Separation, she connects Ms. Chen with virtually anyone.
Presentation Pack of Magic Circle Stamps (Devant on Right)
Stanley Gibbons is a magic fan but more importantly, for the purposes of this article, he is a philatelist.That is a good thing, not a dirty thing.He is a stamp collector’s collector.His Gibbons Stamp Monthly is one of the neat magazines on the web and usually filled with things that have little to do with the world of magic.
In his March issue, though, Mr. Gibbons quotes Magic Circle member Brian McCullagh’s displeasure at the Royal Mail’s dissing ? our word ? of The Magic Circle.As we all know, the venerable London-based organization celebrates its centennial this summer and it is easy to think just because all magicians think this is a big deal, all will feel the same enthusiasm.
So while Mr. McCullagh does credit the Royal Mail for remembering the special occasion, he is keen to point out that they “missed the boat” in their method of celebration.
Mr. McCullagh writes:
“The stamps have ?The Magic Circle? on them, but nothing else. I do know that I don?t like the stamps. I saw their images (nothing else) and I was tremendously disappointed. I felt Royal Mail had ?missed the boat?. A golden opportunity was presented not only to produce stamps that would reflect well on them, but they could also do much to educate the public as to the full meaning of Magic (Conjuring). One person to whom I showed the stamps said, ?They present Magic as a children?s plaything!?”
Indeed.
While the presentation pack for the five commemorative stamps shows images of past and present master magicians, the stamps themselves lack any images familiar to magicians or significant to the public.A great opportunity has been missed, suggests Mr. McCullagh.
He observes that the general public is unfamiliar with the first president and the country’s greatest magician, David Devant.The publicity provided by the stamp issue would have educated the public and paid homage to a great man.
Dr. Erik Demaine is a former magician and from a family of curious magic-lovers.He currently works as a professor of computer science at MIT and teaches theoretical origami mathematics.As the title suggests, he teaches the “formal study of what can be done with a folded sheet of paper.”
So what?
We’ll tell you what.Dr. Demaine currently proves the existence of shapes long doubted to be possible such as a hyperbolic parabaloid.This is a shape so unique that even the Microsoft Word spell check function doesn’t know it. (It suggested the term “hyperbolic pureblood” instead).
Dr. Demaine’s work has been published in peer-review journals for his landmark studies featuring solutions to many “single-cut” problems and “carpenter’s rule” mysteries.
He uses his work in origami to help develop solutions to questions in architecture, robotics and molecular biology.
As a young magician, Dr. Demaine and his father discussed one of Houdini’s legendary effects.Legend has it (hence making it a “legendary” effect) that before Houdini became an escape artist he had a career as a magician and supposedly performed a trick in which he folded a piece of paper, then cut across the creases to “magically” create a five-pointed star.
Modern magicians have used the same type of ingenuity to create a star from a single cut.
In 1998, Dr. Demaine and his dad proved to the world that one could effectively make any shape just with folding and a single cut?a star, a swan or a unicorn. You can even create multiple shapes with a single snip of the scissors?2 stars, 10 stars or 50 stars if you like. One set of shapes that can be produced this way is the letters of the alphabet.
One theoretical physicist opined that in theory (hence the reason we are quoting a “theoretical” physicist) you “could produce the complete works of Shakespeare with a single cut.”
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