On Friday, January 22, visitors to the Rozsa Center had the opportunity to see, and in some cases experience, firsthand what hypnosis really is… and what it is not.
“Hypnosis is not silver pocketwatches, black and white tuxedoes, or black and white spiral wheels,” hypnotist Dale K. explained to the Rozsa audience. To demonstrate, he produced one such wheel from his fairly large store of props and asked the audience to stare at the center as he spun the wheel, then to look at his head, which would appear to grow or shrink. He explained that while that was a fun optical illusion, it was not in any way actual hypnosis.
For his actual demonstration of hypnosis, K. asked for a number of volunteers from the audience to come up to the stage and be hypnotized, warning potential volunteers that the demonstration would only work if they were willing to go along with it; if they volunteered to “prove” that they couldn’t be affected by hypnosis, they would almost certainly turn out to be right. He also explained that “there may be times when you feel perfectly normal, so normal you may think it’s not working. This is a big mistake, as that’s usually when it’s working the most… you do not need to understand why this will work, just that it will work.”
Once K. had begun hypnotizing the volunteers, he asked them to imagine that they were holding a large helium balloon in one hand, and a heavy weight in the other. Almost all of the volunteers reacted as if this were actually the case. Later on in the show, after some of the volunteers who weren’t successfully hypnotized returned to the audience, K. encouraged the remaining volunteers to act as if they were in increasingly humorous scenarios. One person would loudly moo whenever a bell was rung, and forget that he had done so. Another person would claim that his name was “Princess” whenever he was wearing a frilly princess hat, another one of K’s props. And all of the volunteers were acted as though a stuffed “Barney the Dinosaur” doll had told them to shut up, prompting them to all shout back, “No, you shut up.”
K. also explained what really happens during hypnosis. K. contends that the general public’s perception of hypnosis, which he describes as “sleep walking zombies that are under the complete control of an evil hypnotist,” is entirely inaccurate. Real hypnosis is about “turn[ing] your imagination on,” not mind control, he explained. “Don’t think of it as hypnosis, think of it as the power of suggestion.”
Dale K. has been a hypnotist for almost twenty years. This was his fifth at Michigan Tech.

The Tech Theater Company made an effort to bring the work of well-known science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin to life on the weekend of November 12. That Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, they enacted the play “Vaster than Empires,” a theater adaptation of four of Lu Guin’s short stories by Roger Held. Instead of any action, however, the play was done in a similar format as a radio drama. Nine podiums stood on the McArdle stage, and as the actors spoke, a spotlight shined on the person speaking and whomever they might be speaking to.
The first story that the actors performed, “Vaster than Empires and More Slow,” takes place within Le Guin’s Hainish cycle, in which a vast human empire colonized many planets (including Earth), and later collapsed, with the colony planets forgetting about the others. “Vaster than Empires” tells the story of a group of explorers who seek to learn more about a planet found on the edge of known space, which seems to consist of all plants and fungi with no animals. As the crew explores the new planet, their conflicts with each other provide a central point in the drama of the story.
The second, “The Barrow,” is a freestanding work, and the only one out of the four that is not from the anthology The Wind’s Twelve Quarters. Here, a visiting priest to a small country in 12th-century Eastern Europe is shocked by mysterious events that seem to happen around the castle, events that the townspeople attribute to a mysterious place called the Barrow, whose people worship an entity named “Odin.”
The third, “The Darkness Box,” is a variation of the Pandora’s Box tale, in which a prince unwittingly unleashes darkness into a world that had until then held only light. And the final, “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas,” tells of a city where people live wonderful lives and strife is almost unheard-of, but the existence of which is seemingly dependent on the continued suffering of one child.
While the format initially seemed odd for theater, it was used effectively and the performance was well received by the audience. Most important was the actors’ own success in playing their parts well, without flat reads. Adding to that was dramatic lighting and sound effects to underscore the spoken performances. A screen showing an image to reflect the spoken dialogue finished off the effect.
The Tech Theater Company performs several shows each year. Their next performance will be David Auburn’s “Proof,” which will be shown February 11-13 and 18-19 in the McArdle Theatere.

The Major League Baseball season will officially begin this Sunday in Philadelphia with the defending World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies squaring off with the Atlanta Braves. For everyone who is as baseball crazed as me, Opening Day in the MLB is an event that hails right up there with Christmas. It signals the end of a dreary winter and the beginning of the hopefulness of spring. Here are a few things to look for in 2009.

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As an avid Detroit Pistons fan, I am depressed to announce that the Pistons dominance is over for a while. Sure, that is probably a tad sensationalistic, but the recent struggles of the Eastern Conference powerhouse and the rise of the Celtics, Cavaliers and Magic do not bode well for Mo-Town.

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Funny, clever and often outrageous with just a touch of vulgarity – that is “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.”

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At Michigan Tech we have approximately 200 opportunities to get involved on campus through our many student organizations and Greek life. Our campus offers just about anything from academic, athletic or service groups to athletic groups and service groups to “other interest” groups.

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