I want to thank all of you who stop me and discuss items in my columns and provide suggestions to me for new columns. It means a great deal to me that so many of you spend some of your Saturday mornings reading my work.

One of the questions that I have been asked repeatedly is how I develop my ideas for columns. This week I thought I would share how my muse works as well as answer some odds and ends that have been asked.My interests normally lay in the world of magick, arcane related arts and paranormal phenomena as well as related fields of interest.To truly study magick, one should be well versed in psychology, history, the fine arts, pop culture, science and technology and mathematics. Magic is a craft and art form that is one of the oldest known to humanity.Modern stage magick is derived from ancient magick techniques which themselves are derivatives of the study of magick. Magick in the definition of the modern magician is a set of skills, techniques and methods that create the illusion of the defiance of natural law. Such effects include appearances, disappearances, transpositions, transformations and so much more.Magick as defined by the arcane practitioners is the study and practice of techniques and disciplines that allow the practitioner to warp the natural physical laws to suit their ends.While most people accept the stage magician, not as many accept the magick practitioner as necessarily real. Skeptics believe sincerely that the latter is someone who just deceives themselves and they really cannot warp natural laws to suit their own ends.Believers in the practice of magick will disagree and tend to believe reality is malleable and that there are subtle energies that can be manipulated and used to their benefit. It is really difficult to resolve this discrepancy due to the modern acceptance of scientific method and what can be proven in repeated test conditions.I think what makes this deceptive is that not everything can be subjected to laboratory conditions and necessarily be repeatable on demand, which is why I find the whole area of the arcane arts fascinating to read and study.There is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence to support that there is more to the world than a scientist with a test tube can prove. When I come across ideas in these areas I like to write about them and provide my own thoughts and perspective on such topics.Another source of my columns is a touchy area but deals with con artists and con games. Con artistry and magic are closely related and rely on the same sleights and deceptions with different goals. A magician deceives to entertain while a con artist deceives to advance themselves to the detriment of their victim or mark.Unfortunately some of the best con games going today are not shady backroom deals, but are occurring in the halls of our government. Politicians are by far some of the most devious con artists to exist in modern times, and their maneuverings are legal, so to speak. Ethical and moral may be another question, however.Other columns come from my interest in pop culture and entertainment. I like designing puzzles and games as a hobby. I do not necessarily have a great deal of time presently to really pursue this interest, but it is fun to provide quizzes to you on popular culture and history, which is another interest of mine.I also like to write about lists of items such as the summer blockbusters or my favorite magic books or board games. I hope they inspire you to take some time to develop your own lists. It can be quite insightful.One final area I enjoy writing about is hidden history and paranormal phenomena. These subjects turn up in the news from time to time and I enjoy writing about them as well.Paranormal investigation is something I have been doing for 20 years, and the more I help people and study the techniques and cases, the more insights and questions occur. As time passes, I like to share these events when they occur with you as well.In addition, alternative history, conspiracy theories and cryptozoology are close relatives that surface from time to time and do not necessarily make mainstream news but I think are important for people to know about.We tend to formulate our beliefs on such narrow news sources and disregard others out of hand. I am not saying one should accept crackpot ideas without rational thought, but we need to be more open-minded because it was the crackpots that proved the earth was round, the earth was not the center of the universe, giraffes and gorillas exist, the giant squid exists, and there is such a thing as the theory of relativity.Climate change is such an ambiguous term and not only fits here but slides directly into the con artist genre as well. First in the 1970s the alarm was the earth was cooling, then in the late 1990s we switched positions and the earth is warming.Now scientists have been caught cooking the numbers so these con artists now claim that man-made climate change is occurring. I will not be bullied by so-called enlightened people to violate what I know about mathematics to buy into this hysteria.Climatology is measured in cycles of 10,000-plus years. We have been keeping records for about 100 years. That is 0.01 percent. That is mathematically insignificant from a probability point of view, and I don't care what argument is proposed.Show me a thousand years of constant temperature rise and then mathematically you might have a leg to stand on.Till next time …