talkmagic.co.uk

Ah, the memory section is great! I used the linking system yesterday for my history exam to remember all 17 of the Liberal reform acts, 19056-1913. Great stuff.

Anaryn wrote:I think Derren is witty and insightful and asks the reader to reason why we do the things we do.

Absolutely superb. Unfortunately now though, I have quite a few books to choose from to read next.

In view of the first bit up there, may I add "Descartes' Baby"* to your list?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0434007994/guardianunlim-21
It's delicious.

*Even though it quite obviously should be "Descartes's Baby".

Ah but I'm afraid you're wrong there Monseur Blake, Descartes' Baby is actually correct.

If the word ends in an S then it's followed by a single ' and not 's. For example 'Becky Harris's Baby' is wrong where by 'Becky Harris' Baby' is right.

Do I get a special sticker from the teacher for being a smart *rse?

If you look in William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White's "The Elements of Style" you will find that they say you form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's - irrespective of the final consonant (the example they give is of 'Charles's friend').

So according to this (classic) textbook, it should be 'Descartes's Baby' .

You are absolutely right Cardza. The apostrophe S business is derived from a contraction of "[name] his" and so it would be:

Descartes his Baby => Descartes's Baby

This is why "its" doesn't have an apostrophe in it.

Another way of remembering this is to think that English should be able to spoken without its punctuation, just the letters, which seems sensible.

If you think about Chris, instead of Descartes, then when you SAY the words, you'd say Chrises Baby not Chris baby.

So where does the extra S sound come from? The apostrophe S, of course.

Yeah - what Cardza and Marvy said there. It's just:
singular = 's
plural ending in 's' = '
The only significant exception, as far as I can recall, is where specific wrongnesses have - through long, frequent and general usage - become accepted as officially correct. For example, "Achilles' heel". You get this quite a lot with things associated with saints.

Here's something else: I sneak off to TM because I'm avoiding doing my proper work... and find myself sploshing about in grammatical issues. This, if Alanis Morissette is lurking around here, really does = irony.

But anyway, dragging this thread back onto the rails, as I was leaving DB's show in Birmingham this fell randomly into my ears:
Woman: 'How does he do all that?'
Man: (with the flick-wristed, distracted, blase casualness of a French aristocrat on a divan) 'Oh, well, his 'Tricks of the Mind' book explains most of it.'

You know that thing where you sometimes just want to stop some person you've overheard and say, 'Excuse me - sorry - but what the hell are you talking about?'?

So Im not the best at english Grammar, so I'm gonna go back to the book...

Im about half way through and loving the memory section like the most of you. Has everyone tried memorising the deck? I dont know if my computer screen is severley damaging my memory, but At the mo i can only do about 15-20 cards. Does it just take some practice? how is everyone else getting on?

Subminor wrote:So Im not the best at english Grammar, so I'm gonna go back to the book...

Try:

So, I'm not the best at English grammar; so I'm going to go back to the book.

Subminor wrote:Im about half way through and loving the memory section like the most of you. Has everyone tried memorising the deck? I dont know if my computer screen is severley damaging my memory, but At the mo i can only do about 15-20 cards. Does it just take some practice? how is everyone else getting on?

I use magic, not memory

Marvell wrote:Try:

So, I'm not the best at English grammar; so I'm going to go back to the book.

I think you are the kind of person who comes across a word out of their vocabulary, looks it up and then use it as much as often.... Am I right?

lol.... Thanks!!

Subminor wrote: Im about half way through and loving the memory section like the most of you. Has everyone tried memorising the deck? I dont know if my computer screen is severley damaging my memory, but At the mo i can only do about 15-20 cards. Does it just take some practice? how is everyone else getting on?

Yeah, I have managed it and highly recommend the practice. The number of card effects this allows you to achieve - especially when combined with a marked deck - is WELL worth the effort.

As to technique, I drew up two lists of my preferred peg words both for the fifty-two cards and the fifty-two numbers and then chose some initial pairs that seemed to fit nicely (for instance, CAT (7 of Clubs) and MAT (37)). Then I made each picture as bright and detailed and memorable as possible. Once you have a bright and memorable picture the two words become linked in your mind, and it's just a case of practice in order to build up speed decoding the card and number from the words.

I changed at least ten of Derren's suggested peg words for words I thought more natural. For example, I think he suggests MAG for 39, whereas I use MUG - a mug with a giant heart on it, for the ACE OF HEARTS!

Best of luck with it, anyway.

Cheers,
John

Subminor wrote: [Marvell]
I think you are the kind of person who comes across a word out of their vocabulary, looks it up and then use it as much as often.... Am I right?

No, not at all I'm rubbish at long words. My girlfriend helps in that department.

I bought this book a while ago, when it first came out I think.

What I really enjoy reading about, is DB's childhood and past experiance!

I thought the book was brilliant, I thought it would have more magic tricks, but it also went into memory, cold reading etc. To be honest one of my favourite parts of the book was the "Suggested reading and further papers" section, He covered alot of topics, but didn't go into great detail about them all, but here he shows the boosk that would help broaden your knowledge. i though it was great, it inspired me to start magic, though mostly to start learning about cold reading, lie detection and memory. Thumbs up!

Just caught Derren's t.v show on the SCIFI channel its called Mind Control. It actually reinforced the ideas for a card effect that came to mind last week.I actually pulled off my card effect exactly as I wanted in a single experiment with a neighbor. He was actually freaked out because the experiment worked so well, when you deeper involve good psychology into Magic you can create some truly amazing effects. To say the least I enjoyed his show, and my experiment took place before I even knew who this gentleman was. So to say the least I am very interested in aquiring this book.

I can't believe it took me this long to get this but I finally did and am not disappointed. Breezed through the first 150 pages and like everyone else loved the memory bits. As "luck" would have it, I'm going to be stuck sitting in a car for about 10 hours over the weekend so I'll have plenty of time to practice.