Maybe it’s because we spent the weekend watching “The Prestige” while practicing some new-to-us Jerry Sadowitz hotness. Or maybe it’s all the episodes of Penn & Teller’s “Bulls***!” we watched last week. Whatever it is, magic’s connection to science is on the brain. Maybe that’s why all these links jumped from the screen while searching for blogworthy bits:

• The (Scotland) Herald has a great feature on Professor John Brown, the royal astronomer who has a penchant for magic and no fear of mixing the two. Magic plays a large role in the astronomy classes he teaches.
• Intel showed off some new “mind-reading” technology, which predicted with 90 percent accuracy a choice between two words. Magician Eric DeCamps, in this iTricks interview, said (and we’re paraphrasing here), “Meh.”
• We think we’re offended. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in response to a high rate of deaths, is working to install red-light cameras at intersections. The cameras, like their U.S. Constutionally-questionable counterparts, take pictures of red light runners and send tickets through the mail. Here’s the offensive part: The name of this system is “Saher,” Arabic for “magician.”
• We started with astronomy, and we’ll end with a video of the first card trick in space. Physicist Ed Lu and legend James Randi filmed the trick in 2003. This video has inspired us: Ellusionist is now raising money to send Bone Ho into space to flourish cards in zero gravity.

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