He said "Hey look, its Hank Greenberg! I hate that guy!" and then while you were looking for Hank Greenberg, and worrying that there would be a fight in the nice restaurant, he switched the 20 for a random green piece of paper, and lit that one on fire.
IT'S ALL DONE WITH MIRRORS
LIKE THE SOURCE OF MY SELF-LOATHING
I remember once when you could even still see part of the serial number in the charred bits.
Can't say for certain, not being a magician, but usually that sort of thing is done by palming and switching the "destroyed" item.
I remember this trick being done with a one dollar bill, but I don't quite remember how.
max
['It's an exchange for a sequential bill, I think.']
4: That would not make an entertaining puzzler, though. This is entertaining.
Grampa-geebie was a counterfeiter.
HE OBVIOUSLY HAD A BLEEDIN' TIME MACHINE.
I am assuming that he is not a big spender who would actually burn a 20 just to entertain the kids. Otherwise, Max's idea sounds plausible.
9: That is not an accurate assumption. My grandfather did not actually have any magic skills.
Not a magician, but yeah, the obvious answer is:
1. Find two $ bills with serial numbers as close to each other as they can stare.
2. Pass one of those bills around your audience.
3. Palm that bill, burn the other.
4. Do the sleight-of-hand thing so that the palmed bill is "found" in someone's dessert or where-ever.
It's an expensive trick. It would be cheaper of course if you could find $1 or $5 bills with serial numbers close enough to the $20 bill to pass inspection after it was burned. I would assume that it was always a $1 bill that burned.
I don't know *how* the various palming bits were done, but I don't have to...
But isn't that entertaining? That there is no trick, just a willingness to exploit our belief that he wouldn't actually burn a $20?
He would go to the bank to get serial numbers in order. My brother said that he somehow erased the last digit or bleached it or something. Absolutely no sleight-oh-hand whatsoever. In a way, 7 got it right.
In a way, 7 got it right.
It would have been great if he'd had a basement full of identical $20 bills.
15: If I had a basement full of identical $20 bills, I would not want to call attention to that fact.
Two basements! One to set on fire.
He would go to the bank to get serial numbers in order.
Yeah, if you ask for change for a larger bill from a bank (or just a set of twenties as a cashout), banks will usually unroll fresh bills, which will come in sequential order, because banks are the injection point for replacement currency.
My brother said that he somehow erased the last digit or bleached it or something.
Ah. Not really necessary if you're careful enough to burn the bill in the right places.
max
['Just gotta distract the audience at the right time.']
Can I just say that 11 is totally pooping in the punchbowl?
You can do the same trick with identical twins.
Ah. Not really necessary if you're careful enough to burn the bill in the right places.
If you let people copy down the serial number before you burn it, and don't do any slight of hand at all, it is.
20: They're kinda hard to light, though.
21: If you let people copy down the serial number before you burn it
Yeah, but the bleaching/rewriting trick really won't pass muster unless you are very good. Also, it's kind of illegal.
max
['So is burning currency, actually.']
Assuming the serial numbers come from a different series for each denomination, you could pick a $1 and an $20 that happened to share the last x digits.
As the last four will recur every 10,000 notes - for context, that's every $200,000 in 20s or $10,000 in 1s - and there are a shit load of notes about, the chances aren't that bad, especially if he handled a lot of cash. Come to think of it, that's probably at least one hash collision per security van.
It's unlikely that anyone who isn't weird or a sysadmin (i.e. who memorises long random alphanumeric passwords regularly) will be able to memorise the whole string.
It's unlikely that anyone who isn't weird or a sysadmin (i.e. who memorises long random alphanumeric passwords regularly) will be able to memorise the whole string.
We wrote it down.
Never write down your sysadmin passwords, Heebie.
Marinade in kerosene first.
Marinate! The kerosene would be the marinade.
Indeed. We have to keep you on your toes, neb.
Come to think of it, that's probably at least one hash collision per security van.
It collided with a corned beef truck. Yum!
re: 26
I was browsing through one of those 'improve your memory' books and it had a test of that sort. 20-digit number, iirc. I could do it - just brute remember it. But you probably wouldn't need to, no? Just memorize the last 5 digits or so.
You could just make sure this guy is at the table.
Maybe grandpa discovered Tesla's designs for a machine that could clone banknotes?
12: Hang on, that's what I said. I didn't spell out the sequential serial numbers bit, but it's pretty obvious (and easy to do - the palming is the hard bit).
Obviously, not that hard if you're a magician.
35: There was no palming nor switching.
Ah. So you didn't check the whole serial number, then? Why bother writing it down? Kids those days...
Uh, we didn't, like, get bored halfway through. He erased a digit. I believe.
Oh, so he erased the final digit from both the bills he used? I hadn't gotten that.
OT: Modern Love Management. Because there can be no better experience from which to generalize about men and women and management than a career in fashion journalism.
Reading comprehension not at an all time high in this thread, I observe.
heebie, if he often did this trick, I'm a little surprised nobody called him on it by offering their own twenty. Or did they?
In my experience women neither have the know-how nor the attitude necessary to manage a team of oil rig roustabouts.
Plus, no one is entertained that the trick is that there is no trick whatsoever, and he literally just burned a $20? You are all buzzkills.
44: I assume that it was mostly us kids who were delighted, and the adults didn't want to necessarily expose him.
46: Heebie learns that the world is not just the Family Geebie writ large....
And! WTF is wrong with this country? Or at least with the NYT, Swippledom, and such.
Plus, no one is entertained that the trick is that there is no trick whatsoever, and he literally just burned a $20?
I was amused, though mostly because it reminded me of something similar I'd forgotten.
49: WTF is wrong with this country?
Plastic.
||
"They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr,'" he said. "People hear them and say, 'These people, they're southerners. The party's [R's] being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'"Man. Bit late ain'tcha, Senator whatsyourname?
max
['You seem to have never heard of Newt Gingrich.']
the adults didn't want to necessarily expose him
It sort of reminds me of the retired folks who cruise the countryside in an RV, bumper stickered "We're spending our kids' inheritance!"
Anyhow, of course it's a good story, heebie. I think it might be in a similar vein as m-fun in its ability to bring out the killjoys.
They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr,'
Our poor state health director, not having enough on her plate with swine flu and budget cuts and the Governor in full "fuck you" mode toward pretty much everyone she's supposed to be working with on collective bargaining and the budget, also gets to reason with the birthers.
What does 'errr, errrr' mean? Is he saying they're stupid? Couldn't his critique have been a bit more... substantive?
46: I was entertained, heebie!
Also I was going to make a joke, but then I remembered that there are Gentiles out there reading Unfogged, and I thought better of it.
53: also gets to reason with the birthers.
Ah, that's her (or anyone's) mistake - trying to reason with them. They aren't wrong, after all; the President is black, and the birthers aren't wrong that they themselves just don't like black people.
max
['This would be entertaining if that lot wasn't going to support a crazy R in 2012.']
53: Awwww, NPH, I know. All sympathy to Hawaii and its beleaguered public servants! I saw the headline this morning and didn't know whether to laugh or groan.
Regarding state budgets, you know it's bad when you're using California as the Big Scary Warning Sign of what you don't want your state to become. I'm up to my ears in letters and op-eds at the moment. Let's hope some of them get published.
when you're using California as the Big Scary Warning Sign of what you don't want your state to become.
we've been saying this for decades. you're just kind of slow on the uptake.
This probably belongs in the conspiracy thread, but since birthers came up: are they as crazy-, less crazy-, or more crazy-sounding than the Vince Foster people in the '90s? I was all of eleven when he died, so I have only the vaguest of memories about that whole mess.
60: The consensus seems to be that they aren't as crazy yet, but there are years to go in the Obama administration so they'll probably get there eventually.
60: I'd vote for less crazy than the Vince Foster people for two reasons. First, they haven't (to my knowledge) accused anyone of murder. Second, the widespread use of the internet has sort of caused a devaluation of 'crazy' since Foster. (One 2009 unit of crazy is to one 1993 unit of crazy as one 2009 dollar is to one 1963 dollar.)
I saw a video clip of Bill O'Reilly mocking Lou Dobbs for throwing in with the birthers. What is this world coming to?
54: Following the links, people seem to think he was imitating a Southern accent. Disappointing if true, since the accent isn't as big a problem as the stupidity, but still closer to the truth than all the Republicans saying that what they really need is more purity of essence, so he could be worse.
I'd concur with 62. Remember that Bill Clinton was dealing drugs and murdering people. Birtherdom seems to be borne of the belief that any document can be proven a forgery if one wishes hard enough. Wingers got a taste for it from the National Guard memos.
I would say that the birthers are more marginalized that the Fosterites, and that their theory is less plausible (that is, they're both really, really implausible, but if you leave the specifics out of it, "Powerful people had someone killed because he knew too much" is a much better story than "People placed a fraudulent birth announcement for a biracial kid back in the sixties to preserve his eligibility for the Presidency."), but that they're still probably less crazy people.
60: Less crazy, but that's only because the Vince Foster conspiracy was only part of the larger Clinton conspiracy web, involving multiple murders (google 'Arkancide'), drug trafficking, and other nefarious dealings of Bill and Hitlery KKKlinton.
The birthers will mature, in time, into one element of a larger conspiracy theory involving Imam Hussein X, his lust for nubile young Brazilian flesh which he dreams of ravaging the way the hardworking American taxpayer is ravaged by the IRS, and probably also something involving UFOs and Sasquatch. You read it here first.
65: That gives birtherdom way too much credit. Even on its own terms, the idea that the son of an American woman might not be a natural-born citizen is incoherent. Birthers believe that a Negro could only become President through some grand fraud and they're determined to expose it. They're racist loons, nothing more.
his lust for nubile young Brazilian flesh
That's Republican governors. Keep your stereotypes straight.
(Yeah, yeah, Brazilian, Argentinian, whatever. One Mexican is pretty much the same as another.)
62: 60: I'd vote for less crazy than the Vince Foster people for two reasons. First, they haven't (to my knowledge) accused anyone of murder.
I'd agree, excepting that Vince Foster did actually kill himself, and the Clintons reacted a bit badly to it. That was the meat of the whole thing. Four or five years later, they were completely off in la la land. It wasn't as widespread in as short a timespan, either.
Then again, it's comparable in the sense that the underlying issue was (supposedly) that Bill Clinton was an illegitimate president who was a crook and liar, and Hillary Clinton was a radical bomb-throwing dyke who was actually in charge of the whole show, and plotting to bring about World Dyke Domination.
Now, it turns out, that Hillary is OK, except for being a dyke. At least she's white and from Arkansas!
max
['Coming soon to a theatre near you: Malcolm X2 and his Dykes of Death!']
67: Dunno. The "Clintons as dangerous psychopaths" narrative was pretty well established by the time Bill Clinton took office. I imagine if there's a significant terrorist attack the birther stuff could metastasize into a pretty ugly variant of the 9/11 truthers.
68
Even on its own terms, the idea that the son of an American woman might not be a natural-born citizen is incoherent.
According to Eugene Volokh, the law at the time was that an American citizen has to have lived in America for five years after the age of 14 to pass citizenship on to children born abroad. Since Obama's mother Ann was 18 when he was born, if he has been born outside the country, he wouldn't have been a natural-born citizen.
68: Wait a second. If Obama was born in Kenya to Ann Dunham, citizen of the U.S., would he still be natural-born? Do these people think he's adopted? Do they think his mother is secretly African?
72 isn't saying that birthers aren't nuts and probably racist too, of course. Just being nitpicky - if Obama were born outside the country, then apaprently he wouldn't be a natural born citizen, even though most children of American citizens born outside the country would be.
And apparently my pedantry isn't even correct. Volokh retracted. I should have known.
Looking at the Volokh post, I think you've got it backward -- he's saying that while he initially said that Obama would have been a natural-born citizen even if born to his US citizen mother in Kenya, he now thinks that's wrong, and by the rules applicable at the time of Obama's birth, the child of an eighteen-year-old US citizen born overseas wouldn't automatically be a citizen. I don't know the law myself, but if Volokh's accurately quoting what he says he's quoting, he's right.
Not that it matters, given that Obama was born in Hawaii.
"Natural born" has always smacked a little bit MacBeth to me.
into one element of a larger conspiracy theory involving Imam Hussein X
Mine's better, dammit!
his lust for nubile young Brazilian flesh
Now see, this is the only likable thing about Gov. whatshisname.
68: the law at the time was that an American citizen has to have lived in America for five years after the age of 14 to pass citizenship on to children born abroad.
The law at the time was that natural-born extended to people who were born overseas and had two American citizens as parents, and additionally (as described) to people who had one parent who was a citizen. Then they changed it to one citizen parent, for fairly obvious reasons. Only if O's mom is too young AND O was born overseas do they have anything to rely upon and then only if the constitutional requirement for 'natural born' is interpreted in exactly that fashion.
At that point, I think the 'harmless error' rocket launcher would popup.
max
['Man, if they can send a guy to prison for five years on wrongly obtained evidence, they can walk this one off.']
isn't saying that birthers aren't nuts and probably racist too
probably? at this point I don't think there is much doubt.
I think the requirement that the president be a 'natural born' citizen should eliminate anyone whose mom had an epidural during childbirth. Don't even get me started on C-sections.
76: And of pagan requirements that kings be born "whole" (e.g., as depicted in Frederick Buechner's Brendan).
72, 74, 75: I was aware of that argument but consider it just as absurd as the rest. If a law creates unintended results when it's applied to some group that the drafters weren't thinking about (here, very young mothers), the normal interpretive response is to make the absurdity go away.
75: Yeah, I noticed that a few minutes after posting, but didn't reply because (a) one self-referential comment at a time seemed to be enough and (b) his post is so confusing that I still wasn't totally sure. I initially got the understanding that he retracted the claim that Obama born overseas wouldn't have been a citizen just because I saw the claim and saw the word "retract."
And Volokh is the past master of the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger giving of aid and comfort to Republican wackjobs.
83: You mean gays don't recruit? I sure would if I was gay!
Re: birthers v. fosterites: Obama interrupted his campaign a week or so before the election to fly to Hawaii and murder his own grandmother, who knew where her daughter was giving birth, according to some guy I met on the internet. He linked to a bunch of stories of Madelyn Dunhan's death a few days before the election, shortly after Obama's visit.
***
The natural born citizen issue is going to arise again as soon as an IVF baby runs for ofice. My opinion on the issue depends on the party affiliation of the candidate.
84: I have a Lesbian Avengers tshirt that says WE RECRUIT in big letters on the back. (Although I bought the shirt because it has a cartoon-looking bomb on the front that says "Be the bomb you throw" underneath.)
The real issue is that Obama is a lawyer, and as any connoisseur of ancient lawyer jokes knows, they have issues of their own with qualifying as natural born.
"I can't be pregnant, we've only had anal sex!"
83: Was Volokh the one making absurd chicks-dig-rape-in-spite-of-themselves comments a few years ago? Memory dims, but I recall it being the sort of thing that would get a public figure burned at the stake if uttered on television, but the Internet didn't drop a stitch.
First, they haven't (to my knowledge) accused anyone of murder.
Not as such, yet, but it's widely supposed among the hardcore Birthers and Freeperati that NOBAMA killed (or had killed) his grandmother to keep her from ever spilling the beans. Myself, I think the Birthers are much crazier than the Vince Foster people ever were, but much less successful (so far) at getting their shit taken seriously precisely because they are so crazy. I also think that there are more neo-confederates/militiamen/good old-fashioned white supremacists behind the Birthers than there were behind the crowd who believed that the Clintons killed Vince Foster, a crowd which seemed to be mostly run-of-the-mill Republican shit-stirrers and Dittoheads. For example: on Facebook, Orly Taitz is very publicly friends with David Duke.
Also, the name "Orly Taitz" always makes me laugh.
89: Actually, it was that unwanted sexual touching is objectionable because it involuntarily arouses us, but yeah, close enough.
Volokh had his whole torture moment, too.
Hey, Dr. Taitz lives in Orange County!
We're, like, neighbors!
For example: on Facebook, Orly Taitz is very publicly friends with David Duke.
Then again, so is Eric Cantor. (Friends with Taitz, not Duke.)
David Duke is on facebook?
Why, yes. Yes he is. Hilariously, Orly is the only friend he has.
91: For Christ's sake. I feel dirtier for having been reminded.
Then again, so is Eric Cantor.
Yeah, obviously that doesn't prove that Taitz is guilty of anything more than indiscriminate friending (though, really: if HITLER wanted to be your friend would you friend him, too?), but it's a minor example of how hazy the line between the Birthers and other really sketchy types is.
We're, like, neighbors!
Neb, you should totally make a dental appointment with her. And then blog it.
I bet she makes teeth, like, super white.
100 is the best thing I've seen this whole shitty week.
who is the one that dated Hank Greenberg before marrying my grandfather
!!!
I keep thinking that ank Greenberg was the player that was also a spy, but it was Moe Berg. All those Jewish ballplayers' names sound the same to me.
ank Greenberg
No, you're confused; ank's his Cockney cousin.
19: Hey! You asked. And it is, um, fairly obvious how it must have been done if you remove everything that's actually impossible.
Okay. Grandpa Heebie was an alien. The grown-ups didn't tell you because they thought it might worry you. His species actually talks with green oblongs that are apparently identical to $20 bills, so every time you thought he was burning a $20 bill, he was actually saying "I love you".
so every time you thought he was burning a $20 bill, he was actually saying "I love you".
Much better!
And it is, um, fairly obvious how it must have been done if you remove everything that's actually impossible.
You did read the explanation, right? That it was not the obvious? You're right that he burned the $20, but not about the lengths he went to, to avoid having to do anything magiciany.
Grandpa Heebie was an alien.
Anti-Semite.
Heebie: Much better!
Absolutely.
but not about the lengths he went to, to avoid having to do anything magiciany.
He was an alien, after all. It would have tarnished his love.