Justin Vencel.com

Just when you thought that you’d become the foremost expert on the latest and greatest Swine Flu pandemic news, you flip on your TV, turn on your radio, log onto Twitter or Facebook — yes there really is no escape.  There they are, the nameless faces riding trains and buses with blue and green colored surgical masks, when did another SARS outbreak occur?  It really is all quite dramatic, but how close to a true pandemic are we really?

I was listening to a piece this evening on the local NPR radion station 89.3 KPCC here in Los Angeles that featured artist Laura Milkins.   Earlier this year she had moved to Mexico city to explore Insurgentes, the longest avenue in the world, and gather stories from local residents.

From the picture that the media has painted you would think that the streets would be deserted or its people wearing full bio-hazard suits — but this is far from what I heard.  Laura explained that life is actually quite normal in Mexico City, life goes on as it always has and probably always will.  While people are certainly quite aware of the situation surounding them they also seem more intent on focusing on life and the fact that utimatly it is more rewarding to live that life than to huddle in fear from something that may or may not be the next great pandemic.

Let’s put a true pandemic event into perspective.  The great influenza epidemic of the early 20th century was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 full years.

We’re all going to have to wait and see if I’m once again spouting nonsense and just plain missing that point, but do remember, I live in L.A.  As I write this one-quarter of the national antiviral stockpile being delivered to California — direct to the front lines.  For now, I’m going to wait it out.   Luckily, I’m a progammer and I don’t see the light of day often — who says the life of a nerd isn’t healthy?

I just watched a great speech by Mike Rowe of the Discovery Channels Dirty Jobs television series.  This man’s man may tackle nasty jobs and questionable situations but I see a serious future for him, if not in politics, then as an ambassador in some capacity.  The stage just calls his name.

I read the excellent article in the latest edition of Wired magazine (the actual dead-tree version), but you can find it on the interweb here: Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion.

This was a wonderful article that touches on the fact that magic works because our brains contain “blind spots’ that keep us from seeing what’s really going on in front of us.  Check out the excellent article Attention and Awareness in Stage Magic published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience and coauthored by Teller, Stephen Macknik, and Susana Martinez-Conde, researchers at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix.

This article aside, I find it utterly refreshing to observe the way that Penn and Teller bring a new angle to something so old.  I love it when someone comes up with a new angle, a new twist, something that no one else in the magic community is doing..they provide us answers.  Answers to how illusionists for centuries have be tricking the mind into seeing the impossible.

The Penn and Teller experience feels like that great website that finally takes a great service that was once only available through a paid subscription and sets it loose upon the world…for free.  You know someone had to do it.

But you know the best part about all this, the part that I like the most?  It doesn’t matter!  Not to me, and certainly not my brain.  Because even though I know what’s happening behind the scenes, I still can’t believe what I’m seeing.

Even when we know we’re going to be tricked, we still can’t see it.