The sound effects at the beginning of the video scared the shit out of me. Thought my laptop was getting ready to blow up.

Bloody brilliant.

They look cool, but what I wanna know is how many of those blocks it takes to build things. At $60 for 20, you could be talking hundreds of bucks for a set of cardboard shelves.

Definitely not Comic Sans, but nor do I see any resemblance to the "Village" font, as someone else suggested. The Prisoner used Albertus, or something extremely like it.

I daren't reveal what I heard in the "Phantom Words" illusion. :D

Pierce's makeup for Karloff in those two movies have never been equalled, in my opinion.

Did Obama vote for or against the war?

Forgive my ignorance. I'm a Brit, so I've not been following this thing all that closely.

Reminds me of Derren Brown's brilliant mall trick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOEKdaXIEHc

Anti-masturbation?

To me it looks ideal for the opposite purpose.

Since the story is actually a bit old now (in the UK, anyway), your headline threw me a bit. I thought the announcement was that McDonald's was going to "can" the idea now that it had attracted so much criticism.

You really should add Christianp's YouTube link to the main entry!

Just a warning: I followed the metacafe link and after a few minutes got sent to some ridiculous site that just about had me downloading an executable file. Not big and not clever.

Fee -

"That he is completely opposed to any hocus pocus, seems to lead him in the book to argue that hypnotism is not a real thing... unless I misread it. For someone who seems to have made his name by the use and misuse of what anyone else would call hypnotism, to deny that it exists, seems a tad strange."

I think what he's trying to show is that "hypnosis" is really about the subject's own willingness to follow suggestions, rather than about the hypnotist's supposed power to control a person or send them soaring off into a different state. Penn and Teller did a whole show about how hypnotism "doesn't exist", but they did it very confusingly, I thought.

Did you get one of his enemies to choose the thumbnail for this post?

Holy shit, that's gotta be a wind-up.

That is just... cool.

I'm sure Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter will welcome the extra work. (Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts, anyone?)

The BBC iPlayer fails for tons of reasons, which I wrote about here.

For those who may not be familiar with Two Girls One Cup, do NOT attempt to watch it. You have been warned.

And while you're all at it, don't think of an elephant.

Oh, I see the writer does actually allude to Speakers Corner as "the Sunday orators".

Hmm, I have a similar volume from the same era. I shall have to dig it out.

Btw, the best place in London to go on a Sunday is Speakers Corner, at Hyde Park. Great fun to hear people both weird and wonderful, representing every conceivable religion and philosophy, in animated argument. One place I never miss if I'm down that way.

I like the umbrella stunt, from an artistic point of view.

But the levitation is a bit embarrassing. I think it's the reactions that get me - do the onlookers feel obliged to look so awe-struck, or do they really not get how it's done? I really cringe when the guy comes along and waves his hand underneath. It's like everyone deliberately avoids looking at the pole. Kind of an Emperor's New Clothes scenario.

Who played Dracula in 1958?

May 9 - Actor-singer Paul Robeson, whose passport has been reinstated, sings in a sold-out one-man recital at Carnegie Hall. The recital is such a success that Robeson gives another one at Carnegie Hall a few days later. But after these two concerts, Robeson is seldom seen in public in the United States again. His Carnegie Hall concerts are later released on records and on CD.

Was he only in the first 15 minutes? Gosh. I haven't seen the movie in years, so I assumed he played the main character. I always remembered the movie as "that one with Adam West".

Priceless - both the law firm in question and this nugget of succinct analysis: "That's kind of like a puppet show invoking copyright to prohibit the audience from looking at the strings."