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13 Nov, 5 tweets, 2 min read
"Magicians are the most honest people in the world; they tell you they're gonna fool you, and then they do it."
- James "The Amazing" Randi
James Randi has always appeared to me that he was born old, but here he is in his prime as an escape artist and illusionist.
Born in 1928, he literally ran away to the circus as a teenager, and began performing escape acts like this one, suspended above a city street (date and location unknown to me).
The Aquatic Coffin Escape.
Bonus: Another favorite quote
"Uri Geller may have psychic powers by means of which he can bend spoons; if so, he appears to be doing it the hard way."

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More from @c0nc0rdance

c0nc0rdance Profile picture
14 Nov
An interesting aspect of science denialism is "crank magnetism": people often belong to multiple denialist groups.

- Young Earth Creationists are often Flat Earthers & Holocaust Denialists.
- Many Intelligent Design Creationists are AIDS Denialists.

Here's why that might be: Image
Denialism utilizes a process that is the opposite of the scientific method.

Denialists start with conclusions & find evidence/observations to back it up.

A religious person might start with obligation to Biblical Creationism: they must find evidence that supports a young Earth. Image
This apologetics process is exactly how natural philosophy worked prior to the scientific method, but it's prone to exceptional errors.

The conclusion or premise can be faulty & also unfalsifiable. "We never went to the Moon", for example, in spite of falsifying evidence. Image
Read 12 tweets
c0nc0rdance Profile picture
6 Oct
If you've ever had a flight connect at DFW airport, you may have seen this mural, depicting my beloved Caddo Lake, created by Dallas artist Arthello Beck Jr.

Beck was the first African-American to own & operate an art gallery in Texas & launched careers for many Texas artists.
He grew up in Oak Cliff in Dallas, received no formal training beyond art class at Lincoln High School. He worked as a postal worker, a driver for Dallas MHRC, but always he was at the Dallas Public Library, looking at art.

He had a speech impediment, so art was his language.
His art depicts life growing up in Jim Crow Texas (he was born in 1941), through segregation, and he believed in grassroots and Black liberation.

He opened his gallery in 1973, mostly with his own paintings, but featuring other Black artists from the area.
Read 8 tweets
c0nc0rdance Profile picture
5 Oct
Look, nobody likes hearing it, but #DaveGrohl was a full-blown AIDS denialist & has never apologized for or acknowledged his support for a movement that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide.
medium.com/the-monthly/th…
Yes he was young and idealistic, but it's the absolute silence on the subject in the years since.

He watched the last member of the Alive and Well With AIDS denialist organization die, and a few months later, quietly removed all references to them from the Foo Fighters webpage.
They did concerts, benefits for anti-vax and AIDS denialist groups. They gave contributions. They appeared in propaganda films, telling people not to take life-saving medicine prescribed by their doctor.
Read 6 tweets
c0nc0rdance Profile picture
28 Sep
Let's talk about viruses that SWITCH SIDES.

You may know:
~8% of human genome is made up of HERVs (human endogenous retroviruses).

They've thrown their lot in with us: we preserve them in our genome & they protect us from other viruses.

Viruses on 'Team Human'.
Pet Viruses.
HERV sequences & products shape & are shaped by our immune systems.

Our cells sometimes recognize them as internal viral invaders & express gene products related to viral immunity, the interferon pathways. This can lead to autoimmunity OR control of excessive immune activity.
A particular one, HERV-K(HML10) landed in the Major Histocompatibility Region (MHR) and is responsible for some human variation in tissue donation compatibility.
Read 11 tweets
c0nc0rdance Profile picture
28 Sep
The most central of the seven hills of Rome is the Palatine, in legend, where Romulus and Remus were found in a cave.

Many wealthy Romans of the late Republic era had their large homes (Nom. "palātium") here, including Augustus Caesar.
Augustus built his 'Domus Augustana Palātium' near a rise in the hill, a very large personal residence for the Emperor in a sacred place.

Hence, "Palace" became the term for giant residential buildings, especially for rulers or those with official power.
Later, Charlemagne established the Palace of Aachen in the Palatine region of Germany, starting in 792 AD.

The 12 "officers of the palace", his personal guard and trusted comrades were called "Comes Palatines", or paladins.
Read 4 tweets
c0nc0rdance Profile picture
27 Sep
If you say someone has a laconic wit, you're saying they sound like someone from the city-state of Sparta ('Laconia' referred to the whole region).

The Spartans were famously efficient with their words as opposed to their 'Attic' cousins in Athens.

Why the reputation? (thread)
Sparta was famous for Stoicism & military efficiency, especially in contrast to Athens.

So when Phillip II of Macedon invaded Southern Greece, he sent a message to Sparta asking if he should come to their region as friend or foe.

"Neither" was the Laconic reply.
In response to that one word reply:
"If I invade Laconia, I shall turn you out."

Sparta's ephors (leaders) replied with the single word:
"If."

The story doesn't end well for Sparta, but it's a great illustration of how they got their reputation for minimalist wit.
Read 7 tweets

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