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OK, let me put this simply. I don't think it's irresponsible and hurtful. Are you saying that your opinion is, by default, more valid than mine?

Ridiculous. Lots of people suffer from death. More, in fact, than suffer from cancer. I think it demonstrates how skewed your thinking is that you think a joke about death is less offensive than one about cancer. Zach did not irresponsibly use a disease, he used a word for the purposes of comic...

As far as I can see, your only valid complaint here is that the product may infringe someone's copyright. You're kind of confusing the issue with this cancer-joke thing. While you're quite welcome to your own opinion, no-one is in a position to dictate a "correct" boundary for taste in humour...

While there's definitely no shame in walking away, I have to say I relish these kind of spectators. I like a challenge and as these people are determined not to be impressed, there's nothing to lose by attempting to turn the situation around. The worst that can happen is they still aren't...

Obama: 300 Romney: 238 Obama: 251 Romney: 287

I would probably say something like this: "I don't know what's up with all these superheroes taking names of animals. You know, Spiderman, Batman, Wolverine...all those ones. It seems like every animal has a superhero named after them. In fact, name an animal." [THEY'LL PROBABLY NAME AN ANIMAL...

Small hands have advantages and disadvantages in most moves. When you first start learning the bottom deal, you'll probably find that the deck tends to slip out of position, but that's perfectly normal. Even though it'll start to seem like a problem that'll never go away, given enough time and...

Sixes: Diamond, spade, heart, club.

Strange. I always thought the "Idiot" of those titles referred to the reader rather than the author.

The quotes from Richard Wiseman and Bill Kalush were on Twitter. Ricky Jay's was from his review of Fooling Houdini in the Wall Street Journal. Should just make a small correction, though. Having re-read my Tweets, Bill Kalush's quote should read, "extremely dishonest".

Always take everything Alex Stone writes about magic with a massive pinch of salt. His aim in life seems to be to turn himself into the go-to thinking-person's magician without inconveniencing himself with the hassle of learning stuff. Here are some comments on his work: "sh*t psychology" -...

In Dai Vernon's Tribute to Nate Leipzig (where the move was originally published) it's specifically described as an Ambitious Card move so, yes, it is suitable.

Other people might tell you different, but my opinion is that the two DVD versions on the market don't give a completely accurate rendering of all the techniques. If you do decide to go down the DVD route, though, then I'd go for Allen Ackerman's set rather than Wesley James's. Having said that...

Good point! If Criss Angel thinks he's got any chance of becoming a big star in the UK, though, I think he's setting himself up for some serious disappointment. In my opinion British popular culture is far too steeped in irony to see a preposterously dressed, middle-aged, semi-talented magician...

To be fair, this is likely to make Dynamo more famous in the US than he is already. I would suggest that Criss Angel's a bigger name over there at the moment, so that clip of Dynamo "copying" him (does anyone know what the trick was, by the way?) is probably the first Dynamo performance that a...

If you can get hold of a copy of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance then do so. It's pretty much the definitive work on this kind of thing.

1. 12080703 2. 30708021 3. 87321000

I think people tend to miss the fact that it's possible to be rational without being a "rationalist". The terms "skeptic", "rationalist" and (bizarrely) "free-thinker" are used for subscribers to a certain philosophical perspective which holds empirical data to be the only source of truth. Just...

And while we're on the subject of massive archives of esoteric texts: http://www.sacred-texts.com

Tea is a complicated British concept. To some it's just a hot drink, to some it's a kind of half-way house between lunch and dinner, to others, it's the blanket term for any evening meal. It depends on your social class and whereabouts in Britain you're from.