{"id":18538,"date":"2014-01-05T08:14:02","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T08:14:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/undiluted-hocus-pocus-by-martin-gardner\/"},"modified":"2014-01-05T08:14:02","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T08:14:02","slug":"undiluted-hocus-pocus-by-martin-gardner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/undiluted-hocus-pocus-by-martin-gardner\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Undiluted Hocus-Pocus,\u2019 by Martin Gardner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/01\/05\/books\/review\/undiluted-hocus-pocus-by-martin-gardner.html?nl=books&amp;emc=edit_bk_20140103&amp;pagewanted=all'>\u2018Undiluted Hocus-Pocus,\u2019 by Martin Gardner<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"link_description\">\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/azspot.tumblr.com\/post\/72293675644\">azspot<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Gardner, who died in 2010, wrote \u201cUndiluted Hocus-Pocus\u201d at the age of 95 in a one-room assisted-living apartment in Norman, Okla. He worked on an old electric typewriter and edited with scissors and rubber cement as he stood at the lectern from which he had long addressed the world in print. \u201cI am given five pills every morning after breakfast,\u201d he writes. \u201cMy blood pressure is low, my cholesterol is so-so, and my vision is perfect.\u201d But, he adds, \u201cat 95 I still have enough wits to keep writing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gardner was a child of faith and skepticism. His mother was \u201ca devout Methodist\u201d; his father, a Scripture-doubting science buff, a wildcatter who built a career on oil. When his mother spotted a rainbow, \u201cshe would hurry to the phone and call a dozen friends, urging them to go outside\u201d and see the miracle. His father explained the rainbow\u2019s optics and built Martin a science lab next to the kitchen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe wonderful thing about a rainbow,\u201d Gardner writes, \u201cis that it is not something \u2018out there\u2019 in the sky. It exists only on the retinas of eyes or on photographic film. Your image in a mirror is similar. It\u2019s not a thing behind the looking glass. By the way, what does a mirror look like when there\u2019s no one in the room? And why does a mirror reverse left and right but not up and down?\u201d \u201cUndiluted Hocus-Pocus\u201d is full of such challenges, teasing the reader in a warm, friendly way, like a sly uncle.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Undiluted Hocus-Pocus,\u2019 by Martin Gardner azspot: Gardner, who died in 2010, wrote \u201cUndiluted Hocus-Pocus\u201d at the age of 95 in a one-room assisted-living apartment in Norman, Okla. He worked on an old electric typewriter and edited with scissors and rubber cement as he stood at the lectern from which he had long addressed the world [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-4P0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}