Most recently, Gerbic’s members have focused on what they call “grief vampires,” that is, the kind of middlebrow psychics who profit by claiming to summon the dead in shows in venues ranging from casinos or any old Motel 6 conference suite to wine vineyards or the Queen Mary permanently anchored in Long Beach. For instance, they straightened out a lot of grim hooey about the teen-suicide myth “blue whale game,” and they have provided facts about the Burzynski Clinic, a theoretical treatment for cancer operating out of Houston. Sure, they take on the classics, like debunking “spontaneous human combustion,” but many of their other pages have real-world impact. “I ran a JCPenney portrait studio for 34 years.”Ĭollectively, the group, which has swelled to 144 members, has researched, written or revised almost 900 Wikipedia pages. “I was a baby photographer,” she explained. This usually consists of editing and monitoring Wikipedia pages - a cat-herding task she says she’s uniquely qualified for. She spends most of her days wrangling her far-flung group of Guerrilla Skeptics into common cause, defending empirical truth online. Gerbic lives in Salinas, Calif., and while she is retired from the routine world of work, she has taken on a new job, as self-appointed guardian of Enlightenment Reason. “American spellings everyone!” she commanded her half-dozen international colleagues through the Skype crackle. It all started with maintaining their Facebook sock puppets - those fake online profiles. On a group computer call last winter, Susan Gerbic was going through her checklist of tips for her team’s latest sting operation - this one focused on infiltrating the audience of a psychic. The rose growth offered here is one of two Schlosser built for Houdini, and is as elaborate and finely made as it is inventive in its working.When you’re setting up fake Facebook pages, it’s the little details that can mess things up. Germain’s model of the effect was considered especially artistic. Magical horticulture has been a constant theme in the shows of stage magicians, and many methods from the all-metal P&L model, to Kellar’s growth of real roses, to the now-standard Botania have been devised by dozens of makers to apparently instantly grow flowers – both real and imitation – on stage before a live audience. Schlosser was both creative and talented, inventing unusual mechanical devices which centered primarily around tricks with feather flowers, including hats and musical instruments that transformed into giant colorful bouquets, as well as the infamous “backpack” that visibly transformed a magician’s assistant into an enormous flower-covered tree without any special covering or apparent apparatus. In the first act, Houdini presented two rose growths – two identical tables were constructed for the show – by Rudolph Schlosser, an enigmatic New York-based craftsman. This was one of several flashy effects used to open the production Houdini created for his final American tour, billed as “three shows in one,” being made up of magic, spiritualism exposes, and sensational escapes. With the original compartmentalized traveling trunk. As elaborate and intricate a mechanism as we have encountered. Elaborate cast metal base with concealed crank-wound worm gear and mechanical tabletop, the claw feet on concealed rolling casters. To conclude, the performer then removed the plant in its pot from the tabletop to present it to the audience. On command, the flower began to grow and transform, expanding into a full size rose bush, revealed when the cloth was whisked away from the tabletop. A short red flower surrounded by green foliage is then placed in the flowerpot, and the plant is covered with a gauzy cloth. The performer places a small earthenware pot atop an elaborate metal table terminating in four large claw feet.
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