Derren Brown's Blog, page 27
June 9, 2011
Police hunt 'psychic' after false tip-off about mass grave of children
Police in Texas are investigating a woman who claimed to be a psychic after she sparked an ultimately fruitless hunt for a mass grave of dismembered bodies.
Local officers and FBI agents raided a rural farmhouse in Hardin, north-east of Houston, after receiving the report that it held up to 30 bodies, including children.
After finding nothing, police gave up the search – but not before "a source" had told CBS news that "a lot" of dismembered children's bodies had indeed been found at the scene, sparking a global news story.
Liberty county judge Craig McNair, the county's top elected official, said the sheriff's office had received two calls from the person. The first came on Monday, directing officers to an address in Hardin, but after officers found nothing the same caller told police on Tuesday that they had the wrong house.
Officers approached the scene of the second tip-off on Tuesday morning and said there was blood on a back door and a foul odour coming from the house, leading to the search warrant.
"We have to take tips like this very seriously," McNair said.
However the Houston Chronicle has since reported that the calls had come from a woman who claimed to have psychic powers, prompting questions over why police responded so vigorously.
The FBI were summoned and officers scrambled to the home on Tuesday, but not before a source apparently told CBS the bodies had already been found. Local television station KPRC was given the same information and the story was promptly followed up by news agenciesAFP and Reuters.
Before long the news that 30 bodies had been uncovered in a mass grave was leading BBC and Sky News channels in the UK and across the world. The Guardian contributed its own version.
Liberty county sheriff's captain Rex Evans said authorities took the tip seriously in part because the caller had details about the inside of the house that only someone who had seen it could have known.
He said authorities were working to track her down. They had a name and number.
Asked if he thought the tip was a hoax, Evans said only that police found no bodies or anything to indicate a murder. "We are going to continue our investigation and find out how this individual had this information in the first place," Evans said, adding that the caller may face criminal proceedings.
Full story at The Guardian
June 8, 2011
Jack Horner the man who's making a "Chickenosaurus"
Renowned paleontologist Jack Horner has spent his career trying to reconstruct a dinosaur. He's found fossils with extraordinarily well-preserved blood vessels and soft tissues, but never intact DNA. So, in a new approach, he's taking living descendants of the dinosaur (chickens) and genetically engineering them to reactivate ancestral traits — including teeth, tails, and even hands — to make a "Chickenosaurus".
Remembering Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.
During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre. He devised a number of techniques for breaking Germanciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.
Turing's homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, several weeks before his 42nd birthday, fromcyanide poisoning.
An inquest determined it was suicide; his mother and some others believed his death was accidental. On 10 September 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war.
June 7, 2011
Svengali London begins, Newcastle Royal tickets now on sale
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Derren's 30 day run at the Shaftesbury Theatre, one of the biggest in London, now begins. JUNE 8th until JULY 16th will be your last chance to see Svengali in 2011. After 73 days of travelling the country the show is at its best and will reside in London for 30 days.
Tickets available here – but please hurry as they are going fast: many dates are already sold out and some others only have a few seats left!
Also announced is the NEWCASTLE THEATRE ROYAL on May 7th 2012. Tickets go on sale today (7th July).
June 6, 2011
Kumaré: A True Film About a False Prophet
American filmmaker Vikram Gandhi made up a guru character and a phony religion, then filmed a documentary as he developed a following. The result raises questions about belief and self.
Russian man buries himself alive to bring good luck, instead, he dies
A superstitious Russian man died after burying himself alive in the hopes it would bring him "good luck."
The 35-year-old computer programmer told friends that spending a night underground would bring him good fortune for the rest of his life.
"According to his friend, the man wanted to test his endurance and insistently asked his friend to help him spend the night buried," police official Alexei Lubinsky told the BBC.
The victim dug a hole in his garden in the eastern city of Blagoveshchensk and created an improvised coffin with pipes for air. With a cell phone and a bottle of water in hand, he hopped in and had his friend cover the coffin with about eight inches of dirt.
Heavy rain fell overnight and when the friend returned the next morning, his pal was dead. Police suspect the rain somehow blocked the air supply.
via NYDaily
June 5, 2011
Hypnotist David Days knocked out during Dorset show
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BBC: Three people were left hypnotised on stage when a hypnotist knocked himself out during a show in Dorset. David Days (show in the above picture on the right) was performing at Portland's Royal Manor Theatre on Friday when he tripped over a participant's leg.
His team could not rouse him and the audience was asked to leave while the people were still "asleep" on stage. They were "woken up" soon after when Mr Days recovered. His manager said the performer has a voice recording which can be used to bring people round.
However, Alan Coman, treasurer of the Royal Manor Theatre, has disputed Mr Days' claims that he passed out and said the episode was "only a joke". "It was part of a project for students who were filming the whole thing… but they (the people on stage being hypnotised) weren't pretending because they didn't get up to help.
Audience member Fiona Faye said: "He was pulled from stage and there was loads of commotion from a number of people backstage including one man who ran to the other side of the stage to get a first aid kit.
"At first the audience, including us, found it very funny and thought it was part of the act, but as time went on we began to realise that it was not part of the show and he had actually hurt himself. "At this point we become very worried not only for David Days but also the guests that were onstage oblivious to anything as they were still hypnotised.
"They simply just sat there 'asleep'."
June 4, 2011
Bank regrets attempted home repossession of couple with no mortgage
The Bank of America filed foreclosure papers on the home of a couple, who didn't owe a dime on their home. They paid cash and never even had a mortgage. Not good enough for the bank, the case went to court and the bank lost.
A Collier County Judge agreed and after the hearing, Bank of America was ordered, by the court to pay the legal fees of the homeowners', Maurenn Nyergers and her husband.
The Judge said the bank wrongfully tried to foreclose on the Nyergers' house. After more than 5 months of the judge's ruling, the bank still hadn't paid the legal fees, and the homeowner's attorney did exactly what the bank tried to do to the homeowners. He seized the bank's assets.
June 3, 2011
Coming to the end of the tour
It is an unfeasibly hot day in Bournemouth. I've brought iPad, ordinary pad-pad, and a couple of books down to a stretch of water where wealthy, sockless middle-aged men in chinos and striped T-shirts are drinking afternoon champagne and boating with their similarly-striped, dramatically over-sunglassed female equivalents. I have never been the boaty type, but as one is grabbed under the armpit and dragged screaming and spitting through the supermarket aisles of life towards middle-age, it is comforting to find such self-contained communities of the griseous enjoying themselves with such opulent, rickety abandon.
My only worthwhile boating memory is from my twenties: that of hiring a rowing boat with my friend Joe in the Lake District. 'Hiring' is an optimistic term: the arrangement was that we would pay for the jaunt upon our return when, I imagine, the boat-man would know how long to charge us for. We rowed in the rain and sun, swigged Talisker from the bottle like the hardened seafarers we imagined we were, and played loud upon our harmonicas; then, when we realised too late that time was too short and the jetty too far to return to, we sailed on towards the train station we needed to reach, tied up the boat now several miles from the hire point, took a self-timed photograph of us stood triumphantly by the vessel we were abandoning, and fucked off home.
It was one of the best days of my life. Promises were made to myself to row more often, to canoe regularly, and to live the life aquatic. None of this came to pass. Instead, I have framed in my office, and holding pride of place, a glorious souvenir of us in our rain hats, flanking our boat and beaming.
Bournemouth, for readers of 'Confessions', was also home to my occasional Christmas family holiday at the Water's Edge Hotel. My grandfather would treat us all to a few days by the sea. I had tried to find a picture of the hotel but found that it had since been pulled down. I am indebted to one Dean Watson, who found and emailed an old picture of said hotel and in doing so awakened some happy memories.
(On the subject of thank-yous: I received a copy of 'Twitterature' and a letter from a chap who worked at a book factory near or in Oxford: if you are reading this or might know him, I apologise profusely for losing your/his address. Do email me through this site.)
With just two more days of touring remaining, I shall miss the delights of new towns and lazy afternoons in eagerly acquired local haunts. The upcoming Shaftesbury Theatre London run brings with it its own peculiar pleasure, but somehow with TV concerns and other intrusions, the days don't quite remain as carefree as I intend them to. There is, though, the private love of feeling part of a largely nocturnal stratum of London life known only to a bunch of actors and performers; a feeling of inclusion in something subterranean and steeped in joy. For a month and a half, one becomes part of London Theatreland, and for a lover of said theatre, that's rather giddying. There are the concomitant delights of having ones social calendar cleared, save for lunchtime meets with those who might find themselves free in the days for the same reason, and of having a new home in the faded glamour of a west-end dressing room, available to make hospitable and homely according to ones whim. Of finding out who from the ranks of fame or friends might be in attendance that night, of stocking up on wine and treats to offer should they 'come round'; meeting actor friends from other shows and discussing the idiosyncrasies of our audiences from that night; and of being on first-name terms with the doormen and waiting staff of local late-night clubs and eateries that cater for the post-show social artisan.
For my little crew it will be a blessed relief not to have to install and de-rig the set for six whole weeks, and for us all it will be a pleasure to tidy, make shiny, then primp and pimp the set with any extras which have been waiting for the convenience of the break to be installed. The show is always at its best in town. After a couple of day's grace in which I will once again feel my bedroom carpet under my feet, perhaps watch a late-night movie with my beloved, and, excitingly, start painting a portrait of our very own Mr. Coops, the show will once again go on. A few nights to get up to speed, a press night, the reviews later that week which I won't read (but will ask my director and PR personage for a general overview and to report any concerns worth attending to), and then the pleasure and challenge of re-creating the show six nights a week for a further six weeks without letting it ever feel like I'm merely repeating it.
Svengali, despite an error in the London Metro to the contrary, runs from June 8th to July 16th. Booking details and links are on this site. If you do come I hope very much that you enjoy it at least as much as I do. Before then, I shall soak up this impossible Bournemouth sun while I can.
CASSINI MISSION – a movie made from stills
Chris Abbas made this fantastic little movie from shots of Satrun by the Cassini probe.
Chris says: I truly enjoy outer space. It's absolutely amazing that we now have the ability to send instruments out into the void of the universe to observe all sorts of interesting things. Asteroids! Moons! Planets! Dark matter! This is the perfect opportunity for a Carl Sagan quote:
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
The footage in this little film was captured by the hardworking men and women at NASA with the Cassini Imaging Science System. If you're interested in learning more about Cassini and the on-going Cassini Solstice Mission, check it out at NASA's website:
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