What Would You Do with Your Dream Time GrantInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

Prepare for trip outside of box

We’re up late watching infomercials and so the idea of getting something for nothing seems possible. Imagine you hear the following: What would you say if I told you a way where you could get thousands of dollars to follow your dream? What if I could tell you how take a vacation from your work, travel where ever you’d like, do what you want, and get paid for it?

The Sunday Times of London reports on the latest winners in the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (“NESTA”) — a program too good to be true.

Here’s the skinny: In an effort to encourage the development of new ideas, the NESTA funds innovative projects it believes have some chance of producing new concepts to be marketed to fund more dream scholarships.

The fund began with an ?200,000,000 endowment in 1998 and has thus far produced only a few hundred dollars in royalties. Beneficiaries include hip-hop artists, psychologists, moody people and even magicians. (You knew there had to be some relationship to Magic).

So far the fund has paid more than ?1,000,000 to “thinkers” and inventors.

NESTA funded one woman’s plan to stay home from work so she could “monitor her moods.” Melody Stokes worked with Lotus Cars until she received the grant. Now she monitors her moods and looks for some relationship with lunar or solar cycles.

“It is very easy to make fun of people who try to think in ways that challenge existing ideas ? the history of science, art and technology is littered with examples. The most frequent criticism I get is, ‘What a waste of money’.”

Shocking. We think we will follow on Ms. Stokes’ ground-breaking research to study why people would view a grant used to stay home and see how you feel as “shocking.” Ms. Stokes makes a good point, though. It is very easy to make fun of people who think in different ways. We note, however, just because it is easy to make fun of someone doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. If you can’t make fun of people you don’t know for doing things you understand only on a surface-level basis, who can you make fun of?

Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at Hertfordshire University and a former professional magician, used part of his ?36,890 grant to travel to Las Vegas to see Jeff McBride, a magician, perform at the Sahara hotel and casino. He intends to bring Mr. McBride to London to lecture on psychology of magic.

Mr. Wiseman’s academic study produced something called a “wow box.” This device will actually allow science teachers “perform tricks in classrooms such as sticking skewers through balloons without bursting them.”

As if!

How can there be such a wondrous device as a “wow box”? How is it possible for any mortal push pins through a balloon — perhaps even an inflated balloon — without popping? We may be gullible and sure, there’s a reason why it’s 4:10 am and we’re still watching infomercials but that reason isn’t our gullibility; our willingness to accept every crazy…

Prepare for trip outside of box

The Sunday Times of London reports on the latest winners in the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (“NESTA”) — a program too good to be true.

So far the fund has paid more than ?1,000,000 to “thinkers” and inventors.

As if!

Pins through a balloon, indeed. What next, a foam ball that can vanish from a spectator’s sweaty grip and reappear in the magician’s well-manicured hand? Or, wait, how about a miniature guillotine that can apparently send its blade through a spectator’s trembling finger without harming it?

We were born at night, but not last night. If we had a dollar for every time we wanted someone to pay us for having a crazy thought, we’d have some amount of money greater than thirty-seven dollars. We stopped counting each time we had an applicable “crazy thought” after the other passengers teamed-up against us and lied to the bus driver to get us thrown off.

Ms. Stokes is exactly right, it is easy and fun to make fun of those who are easy. While we’re not technically ‘easy,’ we are at least ‘pliant’ or ‘curious with a diminished ability to resist the whims of others.’

Magician Wiseman correctly sums it up, “It is a kind of sabbatical in a way. There isn?t any other funding organisation that would support this kind of blue-skies year.”

As we once told our benevolent captor/parent, “to think outside of the box, you need to be outside of the box. Because even if it is a big box – like a refrigerator box — it will still lose structural integrity as its corrugated walls become damp.”

We were recently awarded a small fortune for our pioneering work in the world of micky-finn drugs. We developed a technique where by losers could slip themselves a micky (pour a knock-out powder into their own drinks) and thus greatly increase their chances of being touched by another human being. Imagine the exciting potential. You could know that any time, you could walk into any bar (or International House of Pancakes), order a drink, tell those around of your plans to rapidly become semi-alert but physically incapable of resisting their advances.

Genius. Pure Genius.

Now imagine you take this innovation to Vegas where one can drink for free and where patrons are more likely to molest their fellow drinker, and you have revolutionary thinking.

The dream time awards were introduced in 2002. Since then 31 have been created at a total cost of ?1,128,865, an average of ?36,400 per award.

Look for us to cash in next year with our innovative combination of personal massager, oven mitt, and snide puppet. We have a name for the invention but cannot print it here.