Do you mean “much” as in “a little bit”, as in, “If I have to wait much longer, I’ll go crazy,” or as in “a lot”, as in, “The Sears Tower is much taller than many of the surrounding structures?”
What a horrible word. I say we ban it. It already has four letters…
Re: Blaine’s stunt:
Whatever. Wouldn’t it be the same if we confined him to a 2-foot by 2-foot space on the ground for 35 hours, after which we dropped a load of cardboard boxes on him from 80 feet up? The fact that he’s on top of a tall pillar is just for effect.
Note also that the ABC quotation says that he “only” has cardboard boxes to break his fall. That’s like saying that he will survive for a week, sustained only by sandwiches and an array of beverages. Who wants to bet that the word “only” came from Blaine’s original press release announcing his stunt?
Do you mean “much” as in “a little bit”, as in, “If I have to wait much longer, I’ll go crazy,” or as in “a lot”, as in, “The Sears Tower is much taller than many of the surrounding structures?”
What a horrible word. I say we ban it. It already has four letters…
Re: Blaine’s stunt:
Whatever. Wouldn’t it be the same if we confined him to a 2-foot by 2-foot space on the ground for 35 hours, after which we dropped a load of cardboard boxes on him from 80 feet up? The fact that he’s on top of a tall pillar is just for effect.
Note also that the ABC quotation says that he “only” has cardboard boxes to break his fall. That’s like saying that he will survive for a week, sustained only by sandwiches and an array of beverages. Who wants to bet that the word “only” came from Blaine’s original press release announcing his stunt?
Houdini was a magician \ illusionist, by which I mean he often did things which looked impossible by using some form of deception or trickery. He also did some stunts which relied on skill, training, physical strength and dexterity, rather than any ‘trick’ as such. Sometimes, there’s a fine line between the two. Sometimes a particular ‘effect’ combines elements of deception and elements of non-deceptive skill. Naturally, we magicians are reluctant to clarify things much beyond that on a public forum.
Blaine fits the above description as well. Some of what he does is trickery (either in his hands and mind, or in the video edit suite, or both). Some is non-trick skill. Which is which? Ah… that’s a trade secret.
Blaine reducing his heartbeat to very low or zero… sorry, that’s a trick. Lots of magicians do it. Two or three different methods (depending on how experienced a magician you are).
As for the quote from the British press… on this subject, as on so many others, they wouldn’t know a fact if it bit them. Disregard their idle and ill-informed speculation and enjoy the stunt.
Several nights ago on Fox was the show “Greatest Magic Tricks Revealed” (or something like that). They were supposed to do a bit on his pillar standing stunt, toward the end of the show.
Alas, the rest of the show was not very engaging and we had tuned out long before the end.
Did anybody see this show? How did they say he was going to do it?
Now, don’t go making me do research. I imagine Blaine is pushing the envelope on the boxes, actually. The only cite I could find says the stuntmen currently use airbags rather than boxes for falls of over 25 feet. That doesn’t surprise me, as (a) airbags have gotten relatively (for movie-making equipment) cheap as the technology has been developed, and (b) it definitely is less painful to land in an airbag than in a stack of boxes. (OTOH, airbags have the disadvantages of being higher tech-at least one stuntman has died when his airbag split on impact …) I know I saw a 50-60 foot high fall done with cardboard boxes as the landing cushions about 15-20 years ago, so Blaine’s claim isn’t absurd. Of course, he could be hiding small airbags in the boxes to get the best of both worlds.
I’m afraid you munged that a bit. Their final ‘reveal’ had to do with the block stunt that Blaine did back… well, whenever. They never said a thing about the pillar thing though.
But what they had to say on the block trick, on the other hand, was damn interesting. Nothing more than an illusion… bastards. I was one of the few who actually thought he could actually last that long standing around in a block of ice.
Since that one was bogus, I’ll assume this one is rigid as well.
Yeah, but you really don’t want them softer-you need them rigid and elastic to break the fall. (I know, it sounds odd to describe cardboard as ‘elastic’, but it really is under these kinds of forces, very briefly at least.)
Well, I sat there and watched him and he definitely jumped off into a 12 foot high pile of cardboard boxes, with several blankets spread out over the top (in a single layer) to give him a “marker” to aim at.
They said he was going 60 mph when he hit, and that it was the equivalent of “hitting a brick wall at 20 mph”. No info on how they came by those stats. He landed in approved stunt man position, mostly spread out, on his back and butt. It looked like he went all the way down through the boxes, and as the helpers tore through the pile of boxes to get to him, I looked closely but I didn’t see any kind of pad under them. So I guess it was just boxes after all.
From the camera angle looking down on him, you could see that he was a trifle stunned, but it looked like he recovered, and then sort of closed his eyes and sank back down into the boxes, while the camera switched back to the helpers “frantically” :rolleyes: pulling away the boxes to get to him. It wouldn’t have looked right to have him pop to his feet and stride out. It has to look hard or else it’s no fun.
And then of course once they had him out from amongst the boxes, they had to cover him up with their bodies and heads and such, so you couldn’t really see him, until the clock hit 9:57, then he staggered out from the circle of people. “Miraculously alive!” :rolleyes:
As stunts go, it was okay, but bad cess to ABC for making us sit through 57 minutes of mercilessly banal filler beforehand.
No clue on whether he was actually up there for the whole 35 hours. They showed edited clips from during the day, but, eh, who knows…
I meant what I said, hammerbach. ‘Elastic’ is meant to imply that the substance obeys, roughly speaking, Hooke’s law. That is to say, the restoring force is proportional to the amount of deformation. A cardboard box hit by a falling body at 60 mph really is elastic, for maybe a couple hundredths of a second. But during that brief time, the box deforms by about a foot, with a rapidly increasing restoring force that slows the fall by a surprising amount. Then the box breaks, and the faller continues on his way, more slowly. Then he hits the next box …
We tend to think of ‘elastic’ as referring to objects that have Hooke’s constants that let us see the deformation with our eyes and apply the deforming force with our muscles. But it’s a much broader concept than it first appears. (Steel is also elastic-within the right range of force and time …)
Time to quit hijacking the thread, methinks. So, Blaine survived, did he? Gee, what a surprise. Do people watch this stuff hoping to see him die in an unpleasant, grisly manner? I guess they must-it’s really not that interesting otherwise, it seems to me.
Theri explanation was bogus, and most magicians seems to agree that the “explanations” they come up with are often dead wrong.
The block of ice bit required no trick. Just some endurance to stand and avoid dehydration. It was actually quite warm in there. Think igloo and you’ll get the idea. Blaine then uplayed the drama when he was released to give it that special feel.
I imagine Blaine is pushing the envelope on the boxes, actually. The only cite I could find says the stuntmen currently use airbags rather than boxes for falls of over 25 feet. That doesn’t surprise me, as (a) airbags have gotten relatively (for movie-making equipment) cheap as the technology has been developed, and (b) it definitely is less painful to land in an airbag than in a stack of boxes. (OTOH, airbags have the disadvantages of being higher tech-at least one stuntman has died when his airbag split on impact …) I know I saw a 50-60 foot high fall done with cardboard boxes as the landing cushions about 15-20 years ago, so Blaine’s claim isn’t absurd. Of course, he could be hiding small airbags in the boxes to get the best of both worlds. 
‘Elastic’ is meant to imply that the substance obeys, roughly speaking, Hooke’s law. That is to say, the restoring force is proportional to the amount of deformation. A cardboard box hit by a falling body at 60 mph really is elastic, for maybe a couple hundredths of a second. But during that brief time, the box deforms by about a foot, with a rapidly increasing restoring force that slows the fall by a surprising amount. Then the box breaks, and the faller continues on his way, more slowly. Then he hits the next box …
Do people watch this stuff hoping to see him die in an unpleasant, grisly manner? I guess they must-it’s really not that interesting otherwise, it seems to me.