A huge thank you to everyone who downloaded and helped publicize Telepath yesterday.  The feedback has been great, and please feel free to post a video of you performing it on YouTube.

Today’s post is all about the 10 commandments. It seems to me that they are a tad out of date, especially in a technology-based society where so many people don’t believe in god.  So, can we come up with some better ones?  Here are the originals (I know there are different versions, but these are the best known)….
1): ‘Thou shall have no other gods other than me.‘
2): ‘Thou shall not make for yourself a carved image of me.‘
3): ‘Thow shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.‘
4): ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.‘
5): ‘Thou shalt honor your father and your mother.‘
6): ‘Thou shall not murder.‘
7): ‘Thou shall not commit adultery.‘
8): ‘Thou shall not steal.‘
9): ‘Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.‘
10) : ‘Thou shall not covet your neighbor’s house; nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.‘

So, it might be something more relevant to people’s lives today  (‘Thou shalt not believe everything you read on Wikipedia’, ‘Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s iphone’), very specific (‘Contestants on the X-Factor shalt not murder anything by REM’), atheist or skeptical (“Thou shalt not have any gods, including me”), or realistic (‘Thou shalt not commit adultery more than four times a year”).

Anyway, post as many or few as you like, and I will choose the best ones next week and announce the new list of 10 commandments for the 21st Century.

“Finally someone has released a rather fantastic mind reading app that genuinely triggers that “wow – how did you do that?” response.” Derren Brown Blog.

Ever wanted to read a person’s mind? Well, now you can with Telepath, the new mind-reading iphone app that the wonderful Sarah Angliss and I are releasing today. The idea is simple. Someone thinks of a number or image, and mentally sends their thoughts to the iphone. They then turn over the iphone and are astounded to discover their thoughts on the screen. Here is Telepath in action….

I hope you like it. As we say in the video, Telepath can also be used on dates, so can even improve your love life. Feel free to guess how it might work or, if you buy it, let others know what you think (but no giving away the actual method!).

Telepath has been months in development and we are very proud of it. Hope that you like it too.

Download directly onto your iphone or itouch, or visit the Apps Store.

Update: Telepath does not use voice recognition, nor are there any hidden extra devices! Also, it will work on the 2nd generation itouch, but not the 1st generation itouch.

Update 2: The nice people over at Derren Brown Blog have had the great idea of having people film themselves performing Telepath and uploading the video onto You Tube.  If you do film one, let me know!

Congratulations to Clementine for winning the caption contest yesterday – drop me an email and I will make sure that a signed copy of 59 seconds arrives safe and sound.

Onto the Friday puzzle….. and this week it is another lovely one from Mike……Imagine that you live on the moon.  One day you see a number 14 bus.  What is the most likely number of bus routes on the moon?

Update: This puzzle seems to have confused people – but it is a straight probability puzzle.

As ever, please do not post your solution, but feel free to say if you think you have solved it and how long it took.  Answer on Monday and hopefully some very exciting news next week!

To generate your own bus slogans, visit here (and thanks to @FleaCircusDir for sending it to me)

Yesterday’s post generated lots of traffic and captions.  To put everyone out of their misery, here is how the illusion was achieved (again, thanks to @wildbunny)….

But what about the best caption?  Well, I have chosen my favourite ones, and put them into the poll below.  It would be great if everyone could cast a vote for the one they like best, and the winner will get a signed copy of 59 seconds.

Feel free to keep the captions coming.  Also, did you get the correct solution yesterday?

@thewildbunny sent me this pic of an amazing pic….

Any ideas about how the picture was created? Will post the answer later today.Also, a signed copy of 59 Seconds goes to the person who comes up with the best caption!

A couple of things.  First, the dates for the US tour for 59 Seconds have now been confirmed…
Jan 5 & 6–New York
Jan 7–DC
Jan 8–Boston
Jan 9 & 10–Vegas
Jan 11–Seattle
Jan 12– San Francisco
Jan 13–Los Angeles

More details as I get them.  Second, there is something of a 3D revival going on at the moment (including several horror films and a great magic special on C4 last night), so I thought it would be good to introduce The Pulfrich Effect.  For most 3D effects you need to make a special film and have people watch it with odd glasses.  However, it is possible to get the same effect on ‘normal’ footage.  All you need to do is have someone cover one eye with something that darkens the image (e.g., sunglasses or one lens of 3D glasses) and view a scene with lateral movement.  Interestingly, the effect does not work for everyone, but give it a go with the following clip (kindly sent to me by Chris Lawrence)…..

According to Chris, the effect works well with football games – meaning you can turn a 2D game into 3D.

Did it work for you?  Any idea why?

On Friday I posted this puzzle…

Imagine that you had a piece of paper, 0.1mm thick, that could be folded in half as many times as you like.  How many times would you need to fold the paper before it was thick enough to reach the Moon?

If you haven’t tried to solve it, have a go now.  For everyone else I have posted the answer, and a lovely video, after the break.

The distance to the moon is around 400,000 km.  After the first ten folds the paper would be 100mm thick. After another 10 folds, it would be 100,000 mm (or 100 m) thick. After the thirtieth fold it would be 100,000 m or 100 km thick. After the fortieth fold it would be about 100,000km thick. That leaves us short of the moon by a factor of four, which only requires two more folds. So,the answer is a surprisingly small 42 folds. Interestingly, only about 50% of people got the correct answer.

Of course, you could argue that it is impossible to fold a piece of paper that many times.  In fact, there is an old idea that you can only fold any piece of paper 7 times, no matter how big it is.  But is that really the case?  Over to the mythbusters…..

I am rather excited today because I am going to be interviewed by Sir David Frost!

However, the good news is that my excitement has not caused me to forget about the Friday puzzle…

Imagine that you had a piece of paper, 0.1mm thick, that could be folded in half as many times as you like.  How many times would you need to fold the paper before it was thick enough to reach the Moon?

As ever, feel free to leave comments saying if you think you solved it and how long it took, but please don’t post your solution.  I have also given a list of possible answers below – please vote for the one that you believe is closest to the correct figure.