A short update before the storm

Here in Sweden Midsummer is an important holiday and I spent it in Dalarna, the region of Sweden that I am from and also a region famous for its Midsummer celebrations that are very much according to all traditions. (I am not going to go into details about all the different types of celebrations but let us say that some of them involve large amounts of alcohol.)
What I enjoy with Midsummer is the sense of coming home, seeing people that you haven't seen in a very long time. And although I worked two of the days that I spent in Dalarna it felt very much as a holiday.
I even had plenty of time to reminiscence about when I lived in Dalarna. I found one train of thought particular interesting. I was walking by “Dalarnas regemente” that is the old army barracks in Falun. When I was living in the city we still had general conscription in Swede and the area was maybe not heavily guarded, but had barbed wire surrounding it and armed military guards at the entrances.
The thing is that I was heading for a place on the other side of the barracks and started to walk around it. But the entire barrack area have changed since Sweden changed to a having a professional army. It is now a business park with a lot of different companies. There are no armed guards, no barbed wire, not even a fence. Still I had begun to walk around the area.
I stopped and turned around, I had no reason to take the long way around, it was just out of habit that I started out on the usual way. But I actually had to stop and think about if I wanted to walk through the barracks area, it didn't feel right.
It is not that I had not been inside before. During my High School days I actually got inside once a week. My name was written down in a folder at the guard station among other people that practised fencing at the old gymnasium. Once I started my military service we were told that you could not get time of for participating in athletic events like football matches or things like that, but there were of course exceptions for certain sports with a more military flavour. So being a fencer had its privileges.
Maybe it was my experience of the area as an off limit and secure area that made it somewhat difficult to imagine that it could be possible to http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifjust cross it to get to the other side. In this case my reasoning faculties won fairly easily over my emotional response and I crossed the old barracks-yard, walked passed the old gymnasium where we practised fencing so many years ago. It was a long time ago I was there the last time, it is perhaps our memories of times gone by that makes us feel old, but I found no discomfort in remembering. I just found my reaction to the change of reality compared to my memories very revealing.

But what about the storm? Later today (after I have slept a bit) I will be performing for the conference “Strings 2011” at Uppsala castle, and the next month is extremely busy with a lot of things to do, in fact there are only three days I don't have plans for up to and including the first week of August. If I find the time that might imply some interesting posts on this blog.

The trick that can be explained

In card magic there is one trick that requires a lot of experience and sometimes technical skill. It is called “the trick that cannot be explained” because well... you can't explain it. Though I understand that non-magicians might find it hard to believe that there might be a trick that has no explanation and want to learn more about it, I would like to talk a bout a trick that can be explained.

A few weeks ago I was recognized as being a mentalist, (it is amazing what a few minutes on national television can do for one's fame) and I had the opportunity to do this effect that I will now explain to you.

As we discuss mentalists and psychic abilities the person I am having the conversation with remarks on how he saw a mentalist on television and the mentalist had asked the audience to look at a person and try to feel what kind of drawing that person might do. Since he was able to “sense” what kind of picture the person on television had drawn he wondered if it really was possible to just look at a person and get such a feeling. He had done so himself but was still not convinced.
I concentrate and I tell the person, right there and then, what he managed to pick up from the person he saw on television. I tell him exactly what kind of object he was thinking of and I don't have him write anything down or choose something from a deck of cards.
After this feat I fight the urge to tell the person how I did it, the sense of wonder he feels does not deserve to be degraded by my mundane explanation.

I can explain the trick to you because I will never be able to perform this effect again and although I might perform many similar effects, that might involve you, this information will not help you the least.

The explanation is quite trivial as many explanations are. To be able to do this trick you need to know what show the person had seen and remember the picture the person on television drew. You also need to do this effect for a person that will rather believe that you managed to read them so well that you can tell what object they were able to pick up on a week ago, instead of just remembering what the picture was. And in my case you also need a person that has forgotten that you were the mentalist on television performing the effect in the first place.

Not so lucky

Every now and again the evening press manages to surprise me. Generally it is not in a positive way. Like this Saturday one of the major evening newspapers had this message:



For those of you that are not familiar with the Swedish language it says, loosely translated, “The 'lucky shops' that hand out big prizes in Uppsala”.

I know that the point of printing newspapers is to get people to read them, but either the journalists responsible think that their readers are idiots that deserve to be misinformed about how games of chance works or they are themselves misinformed and thus present us with the question how they managed to become journalists to begin with.

The fact is of course that a random event has no recollection of what has happened before. Even if you flip heads 10 times in a row the odds that you will get another head the next time is still 50%. There cannot be any such thing as a lucky shop when it comes to the games of chance.
I am willing to make an exception for betting games there some skill is involved. It is possible that people betting at one particular shop have more knowledge of horses or football teams, and that can give the shop an advantage.

Now I know I should not critique something I have not read, and I did not read the article in Expressen. It is perhaps unfair of me to assume that they don't explain the gambler's fallacy in the article, but I will assume that they also forgot to normalise their figures.
If one shop sells 10.000 lottery tickets and another shop sell 1.000 it is not surprising if the shop selling the larger number of tickets also have a larger number of big wins. I am almost ready to bet that the reporter forgot to do this simple thing.

I would hope that newspapers like Expressen, that are read by a lot of people, do not rely on luck when they write their news, but if they do they were not so lucky this time.

Fenomen and Uri Geller

I understand that a lot of people may be curious about the show, what is it all about and who is this Uri Geller guy?
On the web you will find a lot of information from Kanal 5 about both these things. But if in the interest of keeping an open mind you want to hear what others have to say I can direct you to this blog entry (in Swedish) by my good friend John Houdi.
As a sceptic I think it is important to keep an open mind and carefully weigh the evidence. And if you want to know even more try to listen to James Randi. He has a lot to say about Geller among other things.

Just as a reminder here are two sites 1, 2, where you can see the show and get more information about it. A friend of mine in London confirms that it is possible to at least see the short interviews though he could not understand a word I was saying.

The day before

Tomorrow is the first day of the show Fenomen and it will also be my first experience with live television. At least from the point of view of a performer I have of course seen live television before.
Yesterday I was in Stockholm rehearsing on the set, going through the routine. My good friend Ian Rowland was there, flown in to be a consultant to Uri Geller, he gave me a few pointers how to improve the presentation.
It is unfortunately a fact in mentalism that you never rehearse with the same people as you will perform with (or perform on?). It would sort of take a way the mystery if you rehearsed what people were to think beforehand. The draw back is that you don’t know what will happen, if people will understand the instructions, stand where they are supposed to stand and things like that. But as a mentalist I should of course be able to communicate clearly what I want people to do.
If someone who doesn’t have Kanal 5 wants to see the show it is possible to do that online, either here or here. I am not 100% sure if it is possible to see the show from outside of Sweden but it is possible to see the short clips with presentations of the performers.
Just a warning before you watch the clips, remember that all are expert liars so everything they say may not be the truth. I was actually surprised myself by some of the stories that were told. As can be expected all the interviews are in Swedish and there are no subtitles so either learn Swedish or grab hold of someone that already knows this strange language. I don’t think google have a translation service for audio yet.

Good press before Fenomen

I think it can be worth mentioning on this blog that I am getting some television time soon. Uri Geller is known to a lot of people and in recent years he has been doing this television show with different mentalist competing against each other. It is of course a bit strange that a person who started his career claiming to not be a magician now hosts a competition with mentalists. (Mentalist is the term used among magicians to describe those of us that simulate psychic abilities.) In Sweden it is on kanal 5 that one can see the Swedish version of the show that is called Fenomen (Phenomenon). The first program will air on the 27th March 20:00 CET and it is live television so I can’t say anything here about how it is going to go, at least not without having the power to predict the future. But I can say this, so far I have got good press, only good press, and this is before the show have started.
We had a meeting with the press on Tuesday with reporters from some of the major newspapers, so far I have been mentioned by two. At least that is what I know about.
First we had the reporter from Expressen, she was not very impressed by my friend Peter Gröning who didn’t get the card she was thinking of right away but had to get it on the second attempt, I think that should have been impressive enough. Later she asked Dan Kirsch a very gifted mentalist (not in any supernatural way) to read her mind and he apparently did a mathematical effect that didn’t impress her very much. After all that she was convinced about the non-existence of any supernatural powers. But after that she had the misfortune to meet me. Apparently I managed to impress her with some metal bending, an old Uri Geller speciality. But of course I didn’t have the benefit of supernatural powers so I had to resort to the art of illusion. The article is not online but those of you who know Swedish can read it since I scanned it and posted it here. What I consider the interesting part is this:

När träffen är över är jag övertygad, det finns inga magiska krafter. Men mentalismen (sic) Per Johan Råsmark rubbar min övertygelse när han böjer en gaffel – med minimal muskelstyrka och mig som hjälp. Hur det gick till vet nog bara han.

(When the meeting is over I am convinced, there are no magical powers. But the mentalism (sic) Per Johan Råsmark alters my conviction when he bends a fork – with minimal muscle force and my help. How it was done he is probably the only one who knows.)

At the meeting with the press I also met an old friend Clas Svahn a journalist from Dagens Nyheter (DN) the most prestigious newspaper in Sweden. The article that he wrote can be found online. It is of course mostly about Geller but the only mentalist that is more than just named in the article is me. Svahn who is very sceptical minded and loves investigating different phenomenon and strange stories, writes not only about what I do but also about my involvement in the sceptic movement. The entire article is in my opinion as sceptical as it should be, people will se amazing things in this television show but it will be a question of us mentalists fooling the audience. The only difference between magicians and mentalists is that to us “magic” is just one of the techniques used to fool our audience.
Here are some of the interesting parts in the DN article:

En bit längre bort står en av de svenska mentalisterna och böjer skedar för brinnande livet. Per Johan Råsmark, som jag har haft nöjet att träffa förut, är både välutbildad och kritisk till bland annat det Uri Geller har ägnat sig åt. Som medlem i Vetenskap och Folkbildning är inte tron på påstådda paranormala fenomen något han vill underblåsa.
– Jag har inga okända förmågor men jag vet hur jag ska få folk att tro att jag har dem, säger han.

(A little further away stands one of the Swedish mentalists and bends spoons as if his life depended on it. Per Johan Råsmark whom I have had the pleasure to meet previously, is both well educated and critical of among other things what Uri Geller have been doing. As a member of Vetenskap och folkbildning (the Swedish sceptics) the belief in paranormal phenomenon is not something he wants to support.
– I have no unknown abilities but I do know how to make people believe that I do, he says.)

As a comment I like to point out that as far as I remember I only bent one spoon and one fork during this meeting with the press. Concerning the spoon it was a spoon brought by a photographer for “Aftonbladet” (if I am not mistaken). The spoon was handed to Geller but since he really doesn’t do things like that any more unless he is really sure to get away with it he handed the spoon to Peter Gröning who was standing right next to him. Since Gröning don’t do much metal bending but knows that I do he handed the spoon to me. I used a Richard Osterlind technique and did a good bend before handing it back to Geller, who without hesitation signed the spoon and gave it to the photographer.

Huvudpersonerna är tio svenskar: Claudia de la Creme, Peter Varg, Stefan Odelberg, Claes Danell, Alexander Vasiliou, Dan Kirsch, Riku Koponen, Henrik Silver och Per Johan Råsmark.
Alla duktiga mentalister som kan få våra ögon att inte tro vad som utspelar sig framför dem. Exakt vad de ska visa vet vi inte. Men efter att ha sett Per Johan Råsmark lura skjortan av ett rum fyllt med kritiska kursdeltagare när UFO-Sverige höll fältundersökarutbildning för ett par år sedan är jag beredd på det mesta.

(The main characters are ten Swedes: Claudia de la Creme, Peter Varg, Stefan Odelberg, Claes Danell, Alexander Vasiliou, Dan Kirsch, Riku Koponen, Henrik Silver och Per Johan Råsmark.
All accomplished mentalists that can make our eyes not believe what takes place right in front of them. Exactly what they will do we do not know. But after having seen Per Johan Råsmark completely fool a room filled with critical minded attendees of a field investigator course held by UFO-Sweden a couple of years ago I am prepared for almost anything.)

Just a short comment about the other competitors: I didn’t know many of them before the show but I have got the impression that they are all very nice people and it is a pleasure working with them. Because at the moment that is what we all feel, we are working with each other to make as good a show as possible. It is unfortunate that some of us are going to be voted off the show. Still I miss some of my friends that I would have hoped would have been on the show.

Not another day at the office

Some time ago I had the privilege to perform before a truly captive audience at one of Sweden’s correction facilities. That was quite an interesting experience and the audience was not that different from the kind of crowds I normally meet, maybe just a bit more sceptical.
New Years Eve I also met a different kind of crowd. I performed at one of Uppsala’s student nations. (The organisation of the students into different nations is a long tradition in Sweden, at least in the older university cities.)
It is always different to do a show for students in Uppsala compared to any other gig, not only because there is always some inquisitive and intelligent people in the audience, that you can find anywhere. Not only because students in general are a cheerful crowd that love everything a bit different, you can find good audiences at many other venues. No the big difference is all the familiar faces in the audience.
I have studied for a long time at the university and many different topics so it seems like I always have people that know me from one course or another in the audience. This time I met people I have studied critical thinking, theory of science, rhetoric, psychology, and cinematic storytelling with. Besides old classmates I also met one person originally from the same village as me, and an old acquaintance I actually know socially.
One effect of having that many people that already know you in the audience is that they will be much more likely to remember you afterwards so from a networking point of view it is beneficial. But what I really like with already knowing your audience is that there are so many other things to talk about afterwards so I do not need to be the “mentalist” all the time.
Of course it is still so that the majority of people don’t know me from before and it is fun to get to know new people, hopefully some of them will remember me.