Media Picks

Cosmos, first broadcast in 1980, was a landmark television series. Now you can have all 13 one-hour episodes in a new 7-DVD box set - digitally remastered and with nice extras like subtitled science updates. While you're at it, you can pick up these other works by Carl Sagan: Cosmos the book The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark Billions & Billions : Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

Infinity is a gem - this overlooked movie portrays Feynman's family, his romance with his first wife Arlene Greenbaum and her subsequent death, and Feynman's involvement with the Manhatten Project. The film was inspired by the following books:

• 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!': Adventures of a Curious Character
• 'What Do You Care What Other People Think?': Further Adventures of a Curious Character

Other books on "urban legends":

• The Big Book of Urban Legends - an entertaining look at urban legends illustrated by artists from DC Comics.
• Triumph of the Straight Dope - answers important questions such as "What's the difference between a Looney Tune and a Merrie Melody?".

Here are some other books dealing with memes:

• The Selfish Gene; Richard Dawkins
• Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder ; Richard Dawkins
• Thought Contagion : How Belief Spreads Through Society; Aaron Lynch
• Virus of the Mind : The New Science of the Meme; Richard Brodie

1. Consilience, Edward O. Wilson; Little, Brown
2. Impossibility, John Barrow; Oxford University Press
3. Questioning the Millennium, Stephen J. Gould; Harmony
4. Once Upon a Number, John Allen Paulos; Perseus
5. The Language of Mathematics, Keith Devlin; W. H. Freeman
6. Einstein's Miraculous Year, John Stachel; Princeton University Press
7. The Human Brain, Susan Greenfield; Basic Books
8. Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins; Allen Lane [review]
9. The Symbolic Species, Terrence Deacon; Penguin
10. Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam, John Archibald Wheeler; W. W. Norton

Skeptics who follow my recommendation and read Reincarnation: A Critical Examination [by Paul Edwards] will derive much ammunition for arguing not only with reincarnationists but with "near-death experience" afficianados and afterlife enthusiasts of other stripes as well. They will be treated to a good read in the process -- H. L. Mencken's essays spring immediately to mind in this regard. Reincarnation is a useful adjunct to Edwards' earlier edited volume, Immortality and to another work that both he and I admire, Susan Blackmore's Dying to Live.

The holiday season is here and it's time to buy all those presents and stocking stuffers. If you're a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, you should read Tom Flynn's The Trouble With Christmas instead of waiting for Santa. But if you insist on leaving out cookies for the jolly old elf, maybe he'll leave something nice, like Contact (VHS/ DVD/ Paperback).

This year's award winners, the producers of Scientific American Frontiers, broadcast a wonderful program titled Beyond Science? which featured CSICOP fellow Ray Hyman. You can read his illuminating article "Cold Reading: How to Convince Strangers You Know All About Them" in the booklet The Outer Edge available only from CSICOP.

Finally, since Art Bell won this year's Snuffed Candle award, I must mention his book The Quickening, but rather than running out to buy it, why not read CSICOP fellow Robert A. Baker's book review "Art Bell's Quickening Is Sickening".

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