Card Trick
YouTube video of a well performed card trick. I think it's a version of the "ambitious card" trick, in which one card keeps coming to the top again and again. I don't know how it's done, but I'm guessing it involves double-lifting cards and using a false shuffle to keep certain cards at the top (or bottom).
Tom Dundee Condoms Banned in Thailand
Thai authorities have banned a line of condoms named Tom Dundee, since Dundee in Thai means "Good Penetration," a phrase that they regard as "ambiguous, boastful and provocative." Big Gary notes:
The only interesting thing about this story is that country singer Tom Dundee's real name is Puntiva Poomiprates, but "Dundee" is the name the authorities thought was "too suggestive."
Dalai Lama Moon
People throughout India and Tibet have been reporting seeing "the reflection of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the halo of the moon." The Dalai Lama's office would not confirm whether he was really the man in the moon.
Fake Fish
The St. Petersburg Times visited 11 restaurants featuring grouper on their menu, and found that 6 of them were surreptitiously serving cheaper fish instead.
"One Palm Harbor restaurant charged $23 for "champagne braised black grouper" that actually was tilapia." This doesn't surprise me at all. As I noted in
Hippo Eats Dwarf, snapper is another often-faked fish.
PoynterOnline writes that the National Seafood Inspection Laboratory found, after testing samples from random vendors, that "80 percent of the red snappers tested have been mislabeled.
Comments
Only 6 out of 11?
Things must be a lot tamer in Russia these days than they were a few years ago.
Whoops, wait a minute ... I just realized they're talking about St. Petersburg, Florida ...
Floridians must be a lot more honest these days than they were ...
I suspect double lifts too, as well as an Elmsley or other fake count.
Not to take anything away. This guy is good.
This is just a suggestion: a lot of us love watching these magic videos, but maybe MoH needs a "Status: Illusion" tag.
After all, we know magic tricks aren't real hoaxes. I don't think the savvy folks here think that these illusions are "real."
Magic is a "hoax" that the spectator(s) are in on. That is, they know it's not real. It's just a matter of "How'd he/she do that?"
I also suspect gaffed cards. By that, I mean double-faced and/or double-backed cards.
Card and coin magicians are devious sorts that way.