Secrets of magic — exposed!
Today’s link — Magic spoilers
I’ve always hated magicians. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind comedians who use magic, people who are really good at cheating with cards, and other magic-related entertainers. But the David Copperfields of the world, whose only skill is creating optical illusions using a fog machine, rhinestones, and a staring-contest facial expression — they’ve always bugged me. They’re like a grown-up version of the adults who would taunt me as a child by doing the “got your nose” trick. That bugged me then, and magicians bug me now.
So, hating magicians as I do, I love to read how their magic tricks actually work. Wikipedia’s list of magic tricks article describes the workings of many tricks, though some of the ones listed there don’t have an explanation. So, for a list of just the tricks which have an explanation, try the special page linked to at the top of this article. That’s the page that shows all the articles that contain the “magic spoiler” tag, used to warn people that the explanation for the trick follows, and they shouldn’t read it if they don’t want to ruin the magic.
Who wouldn’t want to know why the trick works? All of us, according to magicians! They argue this is just one of the many problems with the exposure of magic tricks. They also make a number of spurious legal claims about copyright and patent, and then finally appeals on behalf of their starving kids. To see some magicians in action attempting to suppress the free spread of knowledge, check out the discussion page for the “Out of this World” card trick.