If believing a "magician" isn't lying to you helps you enjoy the show better then I'm not here to stop you. Enjoy!

Unfortunately, when you look at modern "magicians" these days like Criss Angel, Derren Brown, Dynamo etc .. yes, they all actually do have stooges planted, and all of what is presented in their filmed shows is heavily edited from what you see in person.

And I didn't say everyone was in on it. A few choice stooges in the audience who conveniently had guys with mics standing right behind them. These kinds of performances (albeit without the mics) have been performed this exact same way for as long as magic has existed.

Well, yeah, that's the simple solution to every magic show in which you aren't yourself one of the people selected for participation (which has got to be roughly 40-50% of them at least).

Just say: "Everyone is in on it." The audience, the people selected... Everyone.

Boom. Every magic act you've ever seen? Solved.

I, however, choose to work under the belief that he's not outright lying when he says he doesn't use any stooges and believe he has some other means by which to make the impossible seem possible, just like magicians have their special props and slight of hand, he has other means by which to manipulate the incredible into seeming credible.

Love Derren Brown. This was by far the tamest of anything I've ever seen of his. (By that I mean lacking any real excitement. I kept waiting for something big.)

I didn't care about the fake surgery stuff. Lame, but just making a point about how fake it is and trying to have something to excite the overly sensitive. Whatevs.

I imagine the fake contacting dead relatives thing was maybe using things like a lot of YouTubers have done and just searched for people on social media who share their profile publicly. Easy enough to find people who are tweeting/facebooking/instagramming about going to a Derren Brown show then searching through their past posts to dig up good dirt about people who passed. If that's not along the lines of what he did, then I'd really like to hear some possible alternate methods.

Really no idea about how he did the invisible "aeroplane" trick.

Loved the finale and really have no clue how that was done either.

And if he didn't somehow force the dice, either he really did memorize those books with his dickbrain (I bet the boys in school gave him that name for a different reason - teehee) or the guy was a stooge and lying about what he was reading. Why wasn't there a camera there to show what he was seeing in the books?

Pre-set Rubik's cubes? Whe didn't we get a look at them before he "solved" it and while solving it, why was his back away from the audience and cameras?

Awful imo. No stooges or setups but amazingly there's a person with a microphone right behind whoever he wants to talk to. I didn't watch till the end in all fairness. Had to stop when the mystical surgery started.

Hello again,

Just commented to a video and later noticed it was one of yours. Would've just commented to you instead had I noticed first. I have to say I still don't entirely understand where you come from in all this. Plainly and rightly you mistrust any American claims of humanitarian concern. However, in my view you seem to be misreading Obama's cues. If anything he's appeared very reluctant to go into Syria, as it'd be domestically very unpopular. As far as the Kissinger type pushers in America go, seeing Al Qaida sponsored rebels bleeding themselves out against Russian and Iranian backed Syrian military forces and even Hezbollah forces seems like a dream come true. I can hardly see cold hearted long game analysts in America wanting anything but to just grab popcorn and enjoy the show as their enemies mop each other up. I also see Obama's reluctant attitude as exactly what is being read by Assad and Putin in their responses and almost willful scorn for Obama's red line and apparent giddy eagerness to abandon the threats he'd tied to it. I just don't see the eagerness and enthusiasm for a march to war from America that you do. With an agreement to remove chemical weapons from the area, America is freed of the only possible concern it had about anything happening in the area. That seems evidenced by America's seemingly eager acceptance of it, and tacit recognition of Assad's control of the country out into 2014 in order to implement the agreement.

As for the angle I care about, what is your assessment of the UN inspection and their report? Unless you count them to be on the take of Western powers, or duped and stooged within the war zone where somehow America managed to influence them more than Assad I don't see any ambiguity to the findings. Samples from rockets, soil, and victims alike all tested positive for Sarin gas. The rockets found with Sarin on them had Russian engravings and the craters they could project trajectories from pointed towards a Syrian military base. I'm not sure how you reject all of that by pointing at 'counter evidence' gathered and presented solely by Syrian and Iranian sources.

Reagan was just the first stooge hired by the remnants of the Nixon administration. (By Bush Snr {his head of the CIA}, Donald Rumsfeld {2nd in command of the CIA} & Dick Cheney {3rd in command of the CIA}).

Literally an actor. And a 3rd rate cowboy actor at that (only for domestic & retarded audiences).

BTW Dubya was next & a gift to these fellas, none of them dumb enough to be the man out front making excuses.

They decided that a few million dead kids was fine if it swelled the family pile by 20%. Vietnam, East Timor, Iran Chile etc etc etc etc
.....Does anyone really know how much bank Cheney made from the slaughter/'rebuilding' in Iraq? A billion? 10 billion? 100 Billion? Will any American ever ask? Guess not.

In the future analysis of this time, these men will be held up worse that than Hitler, Stalin & Genghis Khan for sure. Their crimes are comparable in every way (especially the massive piles of dead kids) but without the personal trauma to explain psychosis. The US government of the last 50 years consists of the richest, fattest, most privileged men ever to live in millions of years of humanity, and yet they've committed the worst crimes of all time. Millions dead, crippled, traumatized, orphaned.
Is it their fault or the fault of those around them who do nothing or worse; cheer?

@enoch

Well, note that the "governs best, governs least" quote IS Thoreau speaking, and although I think it's nonsense (I don't personally want to live completely outside any social structure, I don't think it's practical to separate myself from all of the advancements of society), I DO still think that Thoreau was a brave and noble person for believing in something and seeing that belief come to fruition. That's freedom.

But, when you're constantly putting down a system that you seem to wholeheartedly disagree with, but still support, that's hypocrisy, again, acc to me.

I brought up the issue of taxes because that's what Thoreau did. It's not terribly complicated. He felt that the system of government he was a part of was corrupt and restrictive, so he chose to not participate in it by not paying his taxes. He was jailed because of it, and when his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson bailed him out of jail he was upset. He WANTED to remain in jail because he didn't want to contribute to the social system he disagreed with so.

So when blankfist compared himself to Thoreau: http://videosift.com/talk/Gov-t-stopped-funding-charity-private-donations-surge-500#comment-1185054

I felt, and am reminded every time I see this type of propaganda, that there are a few ways of looking at this american libertarianism and those who follow it:

1) They don't believe in the government, but still support it through taxes.
2) They don't actually believe in the principles outlined in their own philosophy, and that's why they support what they affirm is a corrupt, freedom crushing, system, and that explains their support of it.
3) They believe in their ideas, but want to change things through the current system of government, which seems like a bit of a weird Catch 22.
or
4) They just want to have a theoretical discussion.

I've asked and asked, but he maintains that he's a freedom fighter who supports the government that he hates (through the payment of taxes, etc.)

There are other options I've probably considered along the way that aren't mentioned here, but I really put more thought into this than trying to tear blankfist down. It's genuinely confusing to me for someone to seemingly believe something so strongly and not act on those feelings.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. My first teaching job was in a very rural part of the US. Word got out quickly to the principal that I didn't say the pledge of allegiance in the morning (I have a variety of reasons for this, but the main one is that I am an atheist and don't agree with the phrase "under god"). I was brought into the principal's office after his stooge assistant "stopped by" my room several days in a row before and after the announcements. He wanted to know why I wasn't saying it and the conversation was respectful but went something like:

"Well, I choose not to, and I make sure everyone, including myself, is respectful during that time of the day, but I make it clear to the students that they don't have to as well."
"But don't you think you're setting a bad example for the students?"
"Well, no...? (at this point I knew they basically wanted me to just fall in)"

Long story short, at the end of the year, my job no longer existed. They moved the journalism teacher to another building and my position went from Eng teacher to Eng/Journalism teacher (I don't have a journalism license). Since I didn't have a license for that, I couldn't stay. :-/

It was hard to deal with, impossible to prove, but I'm better off 7 years into my career not being surrounded by those people anyway. They REALLY wanted me to just say the pledge, but it wasn't in my job description that I had to say the pledge every morning, and today, I'm happy to be in an inner city school with a more diverse and understanding population where I don't have to.

That's one BIG example from my life, and I'm no Thoreau, but neither is Blankfist. Now if he would just admit it.

Harper's out after the next election. I agree with the sentiment that his broken promises should be exposed, but I feel that this narrow personal focus loses sight of the big picture. I figure there going to have to forward their old domain to one of:

shitmulcaredid.ca
shittrudeaudid.ca
shitmaydid.ca

Same shit, different colour. (Notice the Canadian spelling of colour, eh.)

Even with limits of corporate campaign donations in Canada, there are loopholes in the system. This is not to say we've reduced it to a free speech argument like Citizens United, but it's still damned shady. I don't see real change coming from any party, sorry.

The wealth gap is growing around the world and corporate cronyism is ruining the world economy. This isn't solely Harper's fault. Sure he's a stooge, but even Obama is little more than a puppet in the stalled house.

I must be getting cynical in my old age!

OMG this is sooo fucking Three Stooges, total thumbs up from me

I reject the premise of these videos! I would never bet against somebody who claims he can do things like this, and I dont know anybody who would. (ok maybe very small children, but I wouldnt take their money.) I do like seeing these tricks, Ive watched every one of these videos and tried a few experiments after. I'll check in here if I ever win a dollar from some stooge.

Derren is NOT a fake and does not use actors or stooges he is just incredible at what he does - simple as that Do some research on him properly please!

Interaction with the audience is a big part of Carr's stand-up, and the basis of the interaction is that Carr is quicker and wittier than the audience members. People who go to his show deliberately heckle him just to see him tear them to shreds. That part of Carr's on-stage persona is very much the sort of wise-cracking "my-knob-is-bigger-than-yours" thing that Fry attributes to American comedy.

I also don't think the self-deprecating "hapless loser" style of comedy is a new thing in America. Self-deprecation has always been a big part of Jewish comedy (Woody Allen is a good example), which has been central to the American comic tradition. Besides that, I already mentioned Lucille Ball, who certainly isn't a recent phenomenon. You can add the Three Stooges to that list. Also Phyllis Diller and (more recently) Chris Farley.

It might be true that self-deprecating humor is more common in British comedy, but it has been a big enough part of American comedy that I find it a little misleading to characterize it as a specifically British trait.

I'm realizing right now that the Three Stooges were really just three guys with Tourettes!

(Edit: No disrespect for these guys intended)

wait, are you sure this isn't the three stooges?

>> ^dannym3141:

He should definitely ask for a second take - far too eager to bury his head and bum into her crotch.
Actually, i just clicked martina hill's name, there's 3 total videos of her on the sift and two involve her pressing her crotch into someone's face.


The show is pretty one note. But it's seriously funny to me. It's like bringing back the three stooges in the guise of a hot girl that speaks a language you can't understand, I love it.