44 years later, "I've Seen The Promised Land" is still one of the most powerful pieces of oratory ever uttered, and this line by a "white girl" in the ninth grade chokes me up every time.

Audio here and here. Video of the title quote here.

OK, final Teller links for the night. He’s been interested in the psychology behind magic for a long time. He co-authored “Attention and awareness in stage magic: turning tricks into research” for Nature Reviews Neuroscience in 2008, and Wired Magazine profiled him in 2009:

Teller designed his own house in the Las Vegas foothills, and he delights in showing first-time visitors around. He starts the tour by pointing down a hallway at a window, through which I see a beautiful view of the sprawling neon city below.

“Go take a look,” Teller says. I amble down the hall and—just before reaching the end—smack into something hard, leaving a wet mouth-print on polished glass. The “window” is merely a reflection; the hallway ends in a precisely angled, mirrored door. “You didn’t see the illusion because you weren’t expecting one,” Teller says. “You assumed I wasn’t fucking with your head and that this hallway is actually a normal hallway. Those assumptions work great until you walk into a wall.”

I love this guy.

Teller, from a February interview with The Smithsonian Magazine:

Theater is “willing suspension of disbelief.” Magic is unwilling suspension of disbelief.

On his and his mentor, David G. Rosenbaum’s, thoughts about magic and theatre:

We probed the riddle of magic in the theater. The closest we came to a definition was this: ‘Magic is a form of theater that depicts impossible events as though they were really happening.” In other words, you experience magic as real and unreal at the same time. It’s a very, very odd form, compelling, uneasy and rich in irony.

A romantic novel can make you cry. A horror movie can make you shiver. A symphony can carry you away on an emotional storm; it can go straight to the heart or the feet. But magic goes straight to the brain; its essence is intellectual.

The piece is chock-full of with these amazing nuggets.

Teller, writing for The Smithsonian Magazine, on scientists’ interest in magic:

I’m all for helping science. But after I share what I know, my neuroscientist friends thank me by showing me eye-tracking and MRI equipment, and promising that someday such machinery will help make me a better magician.

I have my doubts. Neuroscientists are novices at deception. Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years.

Teller talks more about science and magic in his recent interview on Talk of the Nation. In it he mentions three books¹ for learning magic:

• Royal Road to Card Magic, Jean Hugard. (“Almost a programmed course,” Teller calls it.)
• Modern Coin Magic, J.B. Bobo.
• Amateur Magician’s Handbook, Henry Hay.

The last one is what I learned from as a teenager.

Documentary filmmaker Debbie Lum, on the subject of her SXSW entry.

Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy:

If you’re not Asian, what Lum is referring to is the targeted attraction that some non-Asian men have toward Asian women — an obsession, in some cases, that takes the creepy plunge into sexual fetish: “Living in the Bay Area, if I had a dollar for every time a guy with yellow fever tried to hit on me in Chinese, I could have funded ‘Seeking Asian Female’ on my own,” she says.

(Via The Dish)

Spoiler: Yes.

Trippy.

A program for third through eighth graders, by National Society of Black Engineeres (NSBE), and facilitated by “fifty African American mentors”.

Not a whole lot of insight here by Forbes, but this bit rings true:

If Apple likes to disrupt huge, inefficient markets, why not get into the mobile payments space?

[J]ust shaving off the credit card companies’ fees on Apple retail stores could save Apple $3 billion in revenues.

One year ago Apple announced 200 million iTunes accounts. Just about everyone I know has one. You can already “gift” someone with iTunes credit. All you need is a cleaner interface to send it and a linked account to get money out.

Geraldo Rivera on Trayvon Martin’s Death:

I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.

Because guns don’t kill people, hoodies do. Especially brown-skinned people.

Will Geraldo suggest next that a rape victim “was asking for it” because of her outfit?

Update: Rivera also said in this piece:

I think unless it’s raining out, or if you’re at a track meet, leave the hoodie home, don’t let your children go out there.

Turns out that it was a rainy night when Martin was killed.