A few niggling questions I need help with.

[Perp]

Pure luck, probably.

Maybe so, but it's happened so many times in a row now that it's hard to believe there's not something to it. Plus I got independent confirmation about the cold water from someone who's been successfully growing since the 70s. Try it with 10 bag seeds and see if you don't get 7 females.

If I'm not mistaken, male/female is already programmed into the seeds genetic makeup.

I don't believe that to be the case. The fact that you can spray something on a plant to make it change sex points to other factors that may affect m/f selection. I think it entirely possible that those factors include environmental.