A new book, a new friend

I know some people consider books to be their friends but this is not about that. I promised to give a review of Elaine Bergqvists book ”Snacka snyggt” and here it is. In case someone wants prof that I actually met her just look at the photo below.
I read Elaine's book on the way over to the US and in my opinion it is very much what it claims to be, a book about modern rhetoric and aimed at people that want good advice fast. Now Elaine is very charming and I suppose that is why I remembered her from the time we first met, God knows why she remembered me. What makes her charming is probably her energy and openness and it shows in the book. Any one who reads “Snacka snyggt” will feel that they have met Elaine on a personal level, not just because she is the model for the illustrations in the book. This is of course very smart since she is selling her services as a consultant besides writing books. In a way the book is a marketing tool, and more so than for most authors.
What the reader takes away from the book depend of course on their situation but it is all good advice my only complaint is that there is no apparent order in how things are presented in the book. The order in which different aspects are discussed appear almost random and although a lot of the advice pertain to several rhetorical situations in many cases she jumps between talking about what to do if meeting some one person to person, having a conversation or a presentation for a small group or talking to a larger group of people.
The book is full of exempla, that is examples of what she is talking about, or one might prefer to call it anecdotes about what Elaine or someone she knows did in certain situations. It is a part of the presentation of the author and it is as all sceptics should know, not really evidence that the rhetorical advice is good. But this book is not an academic work, there are no footnotes and my guess is that it is not aimed at an audience that is concerned with that. Elaine uses a number of secondary sources and as already said there are no footnotes for the concerned reader. One of her sources is Henrik Féxeus who is a liar and a cheat as all mentalist, but I was pleased that she also used “Skeptiker skolan” by my friends Andreas Anundi and C.J. Åkerberg as a source and recommended it. As can be seen in the photo Elaine likes scepticism and no one need to be overly sceptical to the advice in her book, it is just not an academic work.

It is on the other hand a book that takes up aspects of rhetoric that is hard to find in many other books. There is a big chapter on colours, and there is discussions about music and how it can be used in a presentation. There are some good advice about how to use power point something that older books in rhetoric may not have.
I think it is a good book for anyone who just wants some help with their presentation of them selves and what they have to say but who do not have the time to become an expert. It does require a lot of hard work and perhaps some talent, to become a good talker that can catch peoples attention and form their world view. Because that is what a good presenter does, he or she, gives the audience a perspective of the world that makes the proposition that the presenter gives seem logical and correct.
One thing I had hoped Elaine had done more with is the myth about body language, she does point out a few things to prevent people to over interpret body language. But as is shown from an anecdote told by Derren Brown body language does not always work as people believe it does. Derren once asked an audience how he had been able to tell when a spectator was lying and when the spectator was telling the truth. People in the audience was sure that the spectator had looked away when she was lying although the opposite was true. Sometimes a person who lies is very careful to look you in the eyes because they believe that someone who lies would not do that.
The main myth about body language is that it makes up a certain percentage of our communication. That is absurd in many ways. Body language is important when it comes to how people perceive us. If you tell people that you are really sad but you look happy an audience will believe your body language more than your words, and this is probably where the myth comes from. But if you tell people that the speed that an object falls with is independent of the weight of the object if air resistance can be excluded there is no way that your body language does most of the communication. It would have been nice if someone made a distinction between information content and the rhetorical task of getting people to like you so that they will accept what you say.

To summarise, buy Elaine's book if you want some good advice that can help you be a better speaker and is not that much concerned with theoretical issues, and buy the book if you are already an accomplished speaker because you will find new ideas and perspectives in this book.

If this review appear to be a bit short please remember that I am in Las Vegas, there are other things to do here.

What I did on Gotland besides what I was there for...

A serious blogger updates their blog at least three times a day, that is one of the things that I have learned from my trip to Gotland. I will write about the important thing I did on Gotland but another thing I learned as a result of my trip to Sweden's largest island was that people that read a blog want to get to know the person behind the blog.
So I can tell you that right now I am in a hotel room in Las Vegas, very far from Gotland, I am here for The Amazing Meeting 9 and I will soon have to write a lot more about this convention. I just ran into Banachek, a great mentalist and one reason I became an honest liar. But enough about now, let us look into the past.
After performing at Strings 2011 at Uppsala Castle, I packed my stuff and left for Gotland 1 July. The reason I went to Gotland and Almedals veckan was to do some volunteer work for the Swedish sceptics, Vetenskap och folkbildning (VoF). It was my first visit to Gotland and I did not know what to expect, I sure did not expect to run into so many people I knew on the ferry, but it is logical that you will run into people you know there. I first met some old colleagues from the department och Physical Chemistry and then some even older friends from back home in Dalarna, finally I ran into the president of the Swedish humanist society (Humanisterna) Christer Sturmark.
The first days were quite relaxed with only preparing things for our important demonstration that was to take place on Thursday. I had the opportunity to meet a few interesting people at a barbeque at the place we were living I also got to visit the largest ice-cream bar in Sweden with 120 flavours of ice-cream.
At the first day of handing out leaflets about our suicide attempt I ran into a person at the library in Visby. We (the activist) were about to occupy a table and I wanted to make sure that we did not disturb the girl at the table next to ours. I was startled, I had seen her before but could not place her right away. Elaine Bergqvist is a rhetoric consultant and we met very briefly at Missionskyrkan in Uppsala still we both recognised each other for some reason and my excuse and her reply was not exactly rhetorically correct since we were both surprised and thinking about were we had seen the other person before. It's from her book the advise about how you write a blog comes. I picked it up the day after I saw her and made sure to get it signed. Since I believe that I know a thing or two about rhetoric myself I have written a review, to be published here shortly.
Besides being activists and handing out leaflets we also tried to find others with the same interests in science and scepticism. We managed to meet a few at some interesting seminars but we were also interested in free food and got invitations to a session sponsored by an advertising firm. We were probably in no way the right kind of guests from the advertisings firms point of view but through connections we managed to get in. I really didn't think I would meet anyone there to talk to. It turned out that I was wrong apparently I'm quite well connected. I met not one, not two, but three different people from different organisations at that party that I already knew from before. It was a surprise to both myself and to my two friends who didn't recognised anyone.
That is about everything I did on Gotland apart from the important suicide attempt and a small miracle at a lecture about alternative medicine. And on the way home I once again met my old colleagues from my time at the department of Physical Chemistry, proving that it is indeed a small world.

Assumptions

Right now I'm on my way to Gotland, though I am not sure when this will be posted. For some reason I assume that I will have some sort of Internet connection during my stay on the island but I have no idea about how and when; we do tend to assume a lot in life.
I am sure I will have plenty of time to post about my activities, planned and accomplished on Gotland later, that is if that Internet access materialize. So now a few lines about my recent performances at Uppsala castle for some of the brightest minds in the world.
I might have exaggerated some but theoretical physicists tend to be sharp and this was an international conference with some of the really well known names. Strings 2011 was actually to be visited by Stephen Hawking but unfortunately he had to cancel for health reasons. If people think that theoretical physicists much be serious and solemn people but that is not at all the case. In deed they were a very good crowed to perform for, but also extremely inquisitive.
As always I never confirm or deny any of the suggested explanations that I get to hear but in a room with scientist you know that some will be try to analyse everything and you can learn a lot from listening to what really intelligent people have to say about your show.
One group in the audience worked through the routines in a very scientific manner. They made some interesting assumptions. They assumed that I was working alone, and since I have no visible assistant that is understandable. In big productions invisible assistants can be very useful. They also assumed that I had not had any time to prepare something with any of the people attending the dinner a head of time. For conferences held in Uppsala this might prove a useful assumption, I will say no more on the matter. The third thing they assumed was that all the effect had to be bullet proof. That what I did would always produce the desired result.
I can not confirm or deny that these assumptions are correct, but I am happy that I got them so that I can take advantage of that in the future; we do tend to assume a lot in life.

P.S.
The blog post above did not start out as a text about assumptions, it was first when I was writing the last sentence that I realised the very obvious theme in the text. Sleep deprivation can apparently lead to interesting effects.

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.