Magic Numbers

(YouTube link)

Check out this amazing method for learning how to multiply! Well, it’s an amazing story for learning, specifically, what 4 x 9 is. Or maybe it’s not so much amazing as it is baffling.

Darren Michalczuk’s YouTube channel The Brick School has several videos along this line. They are a few years old, but Michalczuk continues to push his learning method at his website Brain Magic. You can even buy apps to teach your child this method! Michalczuk has written quite a few education articles about the magic of learning that are as incomprehensible as the Magic Numbers series.

Of course it’s satire, but it’s played so straight across the web for so many years that it’s a masterful feat. You have to wonder if anyone ever took it seriously. My guess is that it would be easy to take it seriously if you just read the ads for the apps. The articles, well, someone with less-than-stellar critical thinking skills might swallow them whole, but the videos area real WTF moment. -via Digg


Comments (0)

On my eeePC it's an extremely tiny wine press (one grape at a time, we'll get there eventually) the black thing o the side to to scrape the smushed grape off...

On my Mac laptop, its probably some sort of ball marker, but too small to be a golf ball marker.. (use your imagination, fidelity for the win)
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Going with the popular theory and saying it's used to monogram golf balls.

My other guess is that it's either used to put a wax seal on wine bottles, or put a cap on a bottle of beer / alcohol
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Used to applying a wax seal on a rolled up piece of paper.
Like one seals used on letters in the old days to identify the sender, and verify that the letter has not been opened.
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Obviously a Stevenson Staple Sucker, a staple remover designed and crafted before the invention of the staple. The inventor had to be very imaginative since nobody knew what a staple was going to be shaped like, or be used for. Since it was ~42 more years before staples were invented, it explains why this device was such a commercial failure and therefore somewhat rare. A few have found their way, after being heavily modified, into the collections of gullible golf gear gatherers. Golf ball marker, really.

BTW I don't think identifying the Stevenson Staple Sucker is "easy" for the average "staple ignorant" population. Also, Stevenson later went on to change the name of his company to ACME and was very successful, especially due to an excellent product delivery system.
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