Michael weber magician biography definition

German sociologist, jurist, and political economist (–)

For other people named Max Weber, see Max Weber (disambiguation).

Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; German:[maksˈveːbɐ]; 21 April &#;&#; 14 June ) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sciences more generally. His ideas continue to influence social theory and research.

Born in Erfurt in , Weber studied law and history in Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg. After earning his doctorate in law in and habilitation in , he taught in Berlin, Freiburg, and Heidelberg. He married his cousin Marianne Schnitger two years later. In , he had a breakdown after his father died following an argument. Weber ceased teaching and travelled until the early s. He recovered and wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. During the First World War, he initially supported Germany's war effort but became critical of it and supported democratisation. He also gave the lectures "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation". After the war, Weber co-founded the German Democratic Party, unsuccessfully ran for office, and advised the drafting of the Weimar Constitution. Becoming frustrated with politics, he resumed teaching in Vienna and Munich. He died of pneumonia in at the age of 56, possibly as a result of the post-war Spanish flu pandemic. A book, Economy and Society, was left unfinished.

One of Weber's main intellectual concerns was in understanding the processes of rationalisatio

“Was that fair?” he said. “I don’t think so. Let’s discuss the reason why that wasn’t fair. Even though I shuffled openly and honestly, I didn’t let you cut the cards. So let’s do it again, and this time I’ll let you cut the cards.”

He shuffled again, I cut the cards, he dealt, and this time I had three tens.

“Ready to turn them over?”

My three-of-a-kind compared unfavorably with his diamond flush.

“Is that fair?” he said again. “I don’t think so. Let’s talk about why that might not be fair. Even though I shuffled the cards”—he was now reshuffling the deck—“and you cut the cards, you saw me pick up the cards after you cut them, and maybe you think there was some way for me to nullify the cut by sleight of hand. So this time I’ll shuffle the cards and you shuffle the cards.”

Jay shuffled the deck, I riffle-shuffled the deck and handed it back to him, and he said, “And I’ll deal six hands of poker—one for myself and five for you. I’ll let you choose any one of the five. And I’ll beat you.”

He dealt six hands. Instead of revealing only one of my five hands, I turned them all face up.

“Oh, oh,” he said. “I see you want to turn them all over. I only intended for you to pick one—but, well, no, that’s all right.”

The best of my five hands was two pair.

Jay said, “Now, did that seem fair?”

I said yes.

Jay said, “I don’t think so,” and showed me his cards—four kings.

I rested my elbows on the table and massaged my forehead.

“Now, why might that be unfair?” he continued. “I’ll tell you why. Because, even though you shuffled, I dealt the cards. That time, I also shuffled the cards. Now, this time you shuffle the cards and you deal the cards. And you pick the number of players. And you designate any hand for me and any hand for you.”

After shuffling, I dealt four hands, arranged as the points of a square. I chose a hand for myself and selected one for him. My cards added up to nothing—king-high nothing.

“Is that fair?” Jay said, picking up his cards, waiting a

Over the weekend, after I heard that the magician Ricky Jay had died, I went back to revisit the great profile, &#;Secrets of the Magus,&#; that Mark Singer wrote over a quarter of a century ago for The New Yorker. Along with Daniel Zalewski’s classic piece on Werner Herzog, it’s one of the articles in that magazine that I’ve thought about and reread the most, but what caught my attention this time around was a tribute from David Mamet:

I’ll call Ricky on the phone. I’ll ask him—say, for something I’m writing—“A guy’s wandering through upstate New York in and he comes to a tavern and there’s some sort of mountebank. What would the mountebank be doing?” And Ricky goes to his library and then sends me an entire description of what the mountebank would be doing. Or I’ll tell him I’m having a Fourth of July party and I want to do some sort of disappearance in the middle of the woods. He says, “That’s the most bizarre request I’ve ever heard. You want to do a disappearing effect in the woods? There’s nothing like that in the literature. I mean, there’s this one pamphlet—Jokes, Tricks, Ghosts, and Diversions by Woodland, Stream and Campfire. But, other than that, I can’t think of a thing.” He’s unbelievably generous. Ricky’s one of the world’s great people. He’s my hero. I’ve never seen anybody better at what he does.

Coming from Mamet, this is high praise indeed, and it gets at most of the reasons why Ricky Jay was one of my heroes, too. Elsewhere in the article, Mamet says admiringly: “I regard Ricky as an example of the ‘superior man,’ according to the I Ching definition. He’s the paradigm of what a philosopher should be: someone who’s devoted his life to both the study and the practice of his chosen field.”

And what struck me on reading these lines again was how deeply Jay’s life and work were tied up in books. A bookseller quoted in Singer’s article estimates that Jay spent more of his disposable income on rare books than anyone els