Emagic brings you news of two new magic sites. Ryan Pilling has undertaken a very exciting project - his Magic Broadcast site (http://www.magicbroadcast.com). He hopes to broadcast magical radio twenty-four hours-a-day, seven days-a-week. To log on and listen to the content you’ll need software, the best being Winamp (http://www.winamp.com) if you have it, or you can use Windows Media Player which should be installed by default on your PC. Ryan is currently building up the site and is testing his concept with a few programmes that repeat. He has an interview with Michael Ammar, an episode of Dunninger’s original radio show, where you can hear him read the minds of the studio audience, and the premier episode of Ryan’s Brain Poke series. You can join in the discussions on the forum and take part in competitions. If you are feeling brave you can even contribute to the programmes by leaving a short message on the Talkback Line; for those of us not in the U.S. this requires e-mailing an audio file to the show. You can even host your own show or apply to appear on one of the shows as an expert.

The second site to bring you in this issue of Oracle is actually a rebirth of an old site. Cheaters Cheater (http://www.thecheaterscheater.com) caused a ‘bit of a stir’ the first time it was launched. It vanished but is now back with a brand new look. Essentially it is a site where you can download video clips of magic that people have recorded and uploaded. You can see clips of moves, short routines and tricks, and they also have a section for comedy clips, which are those funny videos you sometimes get sent via e-mail! You can rate the videos, and join in the discussion forum.Talking about sites coming back from the dead, Sleightgeek (http://www.sleightgeek.com) has just re-opened after being hacked. In a similar vein to the Cheaters Cheater this is a forum where you can post videos of yourself doing tricks and chat to the other members.Have you ever wondered what the big stars demand when they do a show? Well now you can find out. The Smoking Gun site (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/) which publishes copies of interesting documents, has opened a Backstage section (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/index.html) where you can read the rider documents of lots of big name celebrities, including David Copperfield (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/dcopp/dcopp1.html) and Penn and Teller (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/pennteller/pennteller1.html).

If you are planning to buy some magic around this festive season, beware of the pirates. There has been a lot of talk on the internet magic boards recently about rip-off products, mostly coming from certain dealers. The ‘finger of blame’ is pointed at such dealers as Magic Makers (http://www.magicmakersinc.com) who are very closely aligned with Penguin Magic (http://www.penguinmagic.com/). You can read all about the rip-offs at the Bazar de Magia site (http://magia.com.ar/robstiff/) who seem to have fallen foul of Rob Stiff and Magic Makers. Tim Ellis lists products of a dubious nature and the source of the original on his site - Magic Fakers (http://www.magicunlimited.com/magic_fakers.htm). It pays to support the originators of magical routines.

Read some interesting comments on this at John W. LeBlanc’s excellent new weblog, Escamoteurettes (http://www.escamoteurettes.com/blog/) where he expands at length. It’s required reading! Finally something to keep you amused over the holidays, in the form of puzzles. Sam Loyd was a famous American puzzle creator, whom I first became aware of through the work of Martin Gardner. Possibly one of his most famous puzzles was entitled Get Off The Earth and involves the vanish of a Chinese Warrior. You can see it working at a French site, Les Guerriers Chinois de Loyd (http://tinyurl.com/42mwz). You will need the FLASH plug-in to get this to work and you can actually rotate the globe and see how the warrior vanishes. For a fuller explanation head over to Jim Loy’s puzzle site where he explains the theory behind it (http://www.jimloy.com/puzz/getoff.htm). Another of Sam’s famous puzzles was The Trick Donkeys (http://www.defectiveyeti.com/images/trickmules.jpg); you’ll need to print the page, cut the figure into three parts and position the jockey strip onto the other two pieces so that it looks like each jockey is riding a donkey, and folding is not allowed. If you really need to peek at the solution it can be found here - (http://www.defectiveyeti.com/mules/mules-solution.jpg). Have fun!