Some entertaining mind control

(This blog certainly has been neglected over the past week, and has been crying for some attention. So, even while weekdays leave little time for active blogging, here’s a little post saying I’m alive).

Most of the time, the SciFi channel on TV kills the mind with some awful movies or Star Trek reruns. But every once in a while there’s something really enjoyable. On top of that group must be Mind control with Derren Brown. In case you haven’t heard of Derren Brown, he’s a “psychological illusionist”, doing stage hypnosis and that kind of stuff. And he’s also a terrific entertainer, who sometimes reveals some secrets, just to keep all of us really intrigued, and wondering how he does it.

I particularly enjoyed a show where he had different groups of people in rooms, and asked them all to draw out an outline of their hands, and put a personal item in an envelope. He then went on to give them all detailed typed up accounts of their lives, and their inner desires. They all swore that the statements were 90% accurate, and most of them thought he had psychic abilities. He then showed them their typed documents. ALL of them were the same!

Anyway, for your entertainment, here are two videos of him, one of them where he plays chess with 9 opponents simultaneously (a bunch of British Grandmasters, International masters and FIDE masters), coming out on top, and a second one with the inimitable Stephen Fry.

Terrific entertainment, and while I don’t know how he does it all, he certainly keeps us lapping it up.