gul·li·ble: adj. 'Easily deceived or duped'

Re-tweet, by FiendishThingie: Did everyone tune in at nine for "Derren Brown Explains Shit All About The Lottery Trick, And Is a Bastard"?


This is the general reaction to his explanation on Twitter, but with much hatred towards 'technobabble'. This makes me sad, because the math to me seems pretty simple - simple to the point of suspicious nonsense - and I'm AN ENGLISH MAJOR, so if the math is obvious to me then it must be pretty damn obvious.

What is not obvious to me is how the math he used could possibly give the results he claims it did. Guessing the weight of a cow is not the same as guessing an utterly random lottery number; you can clearly look at a cow and estimate based on appearance. Also, people at a country fair were the cow-guessing comp took place would presumably, for the most part, have some experience with cows and weight, thus making the average of their guesses into something approaching reliable. The connection seems random. Or rather, made up.

Instead of explaining the entire show to y'all (because those of you who're interested probably mostly watched it), I'll briefly explain what I understood as the explanation and then repost my tweets from the whole hour. Apologies to everyone I'm friends with on Twitter; I suspect I was very annoying. I'll move over here to LJ now. :)

By the way, as I type this 'Derren Brown' is the top trending topic on Twitter. #Derren Brown is the third trending topic. Bullshit or not, he certainly succeeded with this trick. Well done, you evil gay wizard.


( So, what I got from Mr Brown was... )

I'm not entirely sure that served any purpose, but I have the sofa (indeed the entire house) to myself tonight and I'm content to sit here and meander a bit. :) Especially when it comes to Derren Brown, who is still excellent even when getting pretty boys to almost stamp on mice as part of a bizarre explanation that seemed to have not-that-much to do with what he actually did in the end. But the boy was pretty and the mouse was cute. Plus Derren. I'm all for that!

Uh. Possibly that could be taken the wrong way. The mouse is cute as in sweet, whiskery tiny animal adorablity! Derren and the pretty boy on the other hand-

Ahem. So. I'm going to watch Jonathan Ross do the silly ab-exercise machine I saw advertised on Aussie morning television now. Keep being a fabulous liar Derren! Looking forward to you ruling the world next week!