(STILL no response from Florsheim Shoes, nor from DKL, about their claptrap-science products...Passing strange, as my grandpa used to say...)

Carl Sagan's COSMOS series is now available on DVD! Carl Sagan, astronomer, humanist, famed figure in the world of science, known for his extensive literary accomplishments, and for his work with SETI, as well as his superb ability to communicate science to the public, had a long-running TV series on PBS titled COSMOS, thirteen hours of delight. It was informative, insightful, entertaining, daring, and simply GREAT. Well, it's now available on 7 NTSC REGION CODE FREE (Region Zero) DVDs. Digitally remastered, restored and enhanced, and with updated information from Carl and his collaborator and wife Ann Druyan, it will have subtitles in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, and English for the hearing-impaired, subtitled science updates, new footage, the soundtrack in AC-3 5.1 Dolby Digital, and 5.1 Dolby Digital Music and Effects track.

The complete series is already available through PBS on VHS, and is found in many public libraries in that format. The soundtrack features Louis Armstrong, Gustav Holst, Hovhannes, Pink Floyd, Mozart, Pachelbel, Igor Stravinsky, Synergy, Vangelis, Yamaguchi, and many others, and that music alone will be available in a 2-disc set, although the 5.1 recordings are available only on DVD.

List price on the site is $169.95, not bad for a 7-disc DVD set, but if you order before November 1st, the price is 20% off, just $136.00. This can be a treasure of information, so snap it up. The set is due to ship out in November. So get on over to: http://www.projectvoyager.com/onecosmos_outpost.html, and check out the offerings. COSMOS is still a big winner, and Sagan was never better.

We continue to receive lots of inquiries about "psychic" John Edward, who holds forth on the SciFi Channel, pretending to speak to dead people. The general technique is known as "cold reading," sometimes helped along by "warm reading" when the opportunity arises to overhear or elicit information from the victims. As an illustration of this possibility, a reader sends us this comment:

I was on the John Edward show. He even had a multiple guess "hit" on me that was featured on the show. However, it was edited so that my answer to another question was edited in after one of his questions. In other words, his question and my answer were deliberately mismatched. Only a fraction of what went on in the studio was actually seen in the final 30 minute show. He was wrong about a lot and was very aggressive when somebody failed to acknowledge something he said.

Also, his "production assistants" were always around while we waited to get into the studio. They told us to keep very quiet, and they overheard a lot. I think that the whole place is bugged somehow. Also, once in the studio we had to wait around for almost two hours before the show began. Throughout that time everybody was talking about what dead relative of theirs might pop up.

Remember that all this occurred under microphones and with cameras already set up. My guess is that he was backstage listening and looking at us all and noting certain readings. When he finally appeared, he looked at the audience as if he were trying to spot people he recognized.

He also had ringers in the audience. I can tell because about fifteen people arrived in a chartered van, and once inside they did not sit together.

(Another, rather strongly worded opinion, follows, but is omitted here.)

Please, if you have inquiries, refer to this web page first and do a search. We have lots of material here on "cold reading" and on Edward.

Reader Johan Bakker comments on my piece about airport security:

I will second the opinion of your correspondent Stu that the US Customs officials, who are charged with preventing the import and export of forbidden technologies, have all the technical savvy of a Bartlett pear. I now know, from bitter experience, that they have tremendous information search capabilities, but not the least idea of how to understand what they find. I was once held for two hours at Detroit's airport because their databases told them that I hold US Patents, and they could not find any way to match the electro-mechanical devices which I was carrying with the patented inventions which appeared on their computer screens. Obviously, I was hiding something from them!

Avital Pilpel, a frequent correspondent here, writes on the same subject:

My all-time favorite question by security guards at an airport: "Did anybody put anything in your luggage without your knowledge?" I usually just say "No." Once I asked the obvious question -- "If it was without my knowledge, how would I know?" and almost got into serious trouble.

Reader "John," to relieve my ignorance of terms used in a letter here last week, tells us that: Dykes = wire cutters, Tweeker = plastic or fiberglass radio frequency coil adjuster, and Greenie = a small (3/32 inch) screwdriver often with a green handle. So now we know. Educational as well as entertaining, we are.

And Charles E. Blue, understandably concerned about a magazine that I used to read as a kid and respected for its content, writes:

I certainly do sympathize with magazine editors who are accountable for ad sales, but there really has to be some quality control or accountability for what appears between the front and back covers of periodicals. Case in point, the current issue of Popular Science (hardly Nature or JAMA -- but a key source of science news for the general public) has a full-page ad touting the wonders of "Psi Tech," the purveyors of remote viewing learning products, (www.psitech.net). For the modest fee of $295, you too can learn to exercise your "6th-sense muscle" -- or at least exercise your arm muscle by pulling out your wallet.

Personally, I care little if someone wants to spend their free time doodling, but by printing the claim that this sort of activity can in any way awaken latent psi power, Popular Science is giving a very public (and semi-respected) forum to swindlers and thieves.

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We've just received the "raw" (unedited) tape from the Uri Geller encounter in England with that Korean TV team, and it's jam-packed with really interesting material, I assure you. I'm carefully transcribing it, and discovering good stuff all along the way. Mr. Geller is rather petulant on this tape, it appears to me, and is very insistent -- several times during the encounter -- that he's "not a magician," and that "what I do is real!" As for those skeptics who may not accept his assertions, he explains, "They don't believe in God, they don't believe in spirituality, they don't believe in telepathy!" I guess that explains it?

In response to the producer's question, "Where is this power originating?" Mr. Geller answers, with much hand-waving, in a hoarse almost-whisper bordering on over-acting:

That's a very good question! Um, I have a -- two or three theories. Either it's a gift from God -- yes -- and it's some kind of a -- a -- gift I got, or, this is something that is in our head, it is dormant, and I know how to awaken it, when I was a child, how to exercise it, and how to harness it. But also, maybe -- this is the third theory -- that this power originates from something outside the universe. Yes, some kind of an intelligent force! That is also a possibility. I wish I knew. I don't really know.

Well, I think that I know, Uri. And none of those three breath-taking "theories" appeal to me one bit. But I'll provide you folks with an entire frame-by-frame account of the Korean adventure, anon, so you can draw your own conclusions. This photo of Mr. Geller shows him barring the cameraman from entering the house to tape the preparation of the "sealed drawing" demo that he does as part of his very limited repertoire. Mr. Geller, apparently a bit flustered at seeing the cameraman, holds up his hand before the lens and says, "Okay. Alright. Not -- no! Stop now!" And he quickly closes the door in the faces of the video crew, who nonetheless allow the tape to continue rolling, and the wireless microphone worn by Mr. Geller transmits from inside the house, the instructions he then gives the person who will be making the "secret drawing." Very informative . . .

In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," we find the expression, "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look." And though I'm anything but a Bible-thumper, I find quotable phrases in there from time to time. Ecclesiastes 12:14 might be good reading at this point.

(Those of you who tuned in late Sunday or early Monday saw a WRONG explanation and solution to Stan's marriage problems. I blame it all on the huge work-load I've had here, but that's not a very good excuse. I simply goofed. What follows is the CORRECT solution....)

Last week's puzzle, which so many of you solved quickly -- but incorrectly -- because you thought it was pretty evident, was harder than I thought. And, I note that more than half of those who responded hadn't read the two questions carefully, giving some basic math but not the actual required answers! The first answer was relatively easy. The second, apparently not. The answer to who Stan will marry, question number one, is Sophie, since Stan enters the subway station at a random point in any hour. That means he hits the platform five times more often during the "next train is going downtown" period than during the "next train is going uptown" period. But "the exact mathematical chance that he will marry" Sophie is 100%, not 88.3% -- because Stan is obviously going to see Sophie (in Brooklyn) much more than Nora (in the Bronx), and I specified that the psychologist was "undoubtedly" correct, so the operating phrase is "the lady Stan sees more often will undoubtedly be the one he ends up marrying." Undoubtedly=100%.

I'll give you one point, though. I should have said that Stan made at least a dozen or so trips before he made his marriage decision.

This week's puzzle involves a principle that is often used by the "psychics" and for which we at the JREF must always be prepared. Consider this situation: Our hero Stan, now happily married to Sophie, has taken up supping with Broadway actors, magicians, jugglers, and other such riff-raff, after their shows have closed down for the night. Stan is known to be very tight with his money, now that he's hitched, and his cronies are quite surprised when he announces, upon their leaving the table and heading for the cashier, that he'll toss a coin to see who pays the bill. "You call it correctly, all of us each pay our share. If you are wrong, I pay the whole tab!" he offers. "I'll toss the coin in the air and let it fall on the floor." He points to one of the group. "You call it while it's in the air!"

Sounds fair, doesn't it? And, Stan spins the coin up toward the ceiling, the designated guy calls it, the coin bounces onto the carpet. They all bend to see the result . . . Whoa! Time out.

No, the designated caller is not a confederate. But with this system, Stan never loses. Stan never has to pick up the whole tab. Stated yet another way, half the time he pays his share, the other half of the time, he still pays his share. The only advantage he gains is that he's admired by all the guys as a "sport," for whatever that's worth. But he doesn't try this twice with the same crowd . . .

Okay, what's his gimmick? It would seem that Stan would -- about half the time -- get stuck with the whole bill . . . Think deviously, think tricky. Be bold. Our Stan can save the situation . . .

Answers, please, to 76702.3507@CompuServe.com. I won't be replying to many, however. Don't necessarily expect a response. I'll be traveling in China and Australia, though I'll be in touch via laptop.