3 crop circles near Orillia

Subject: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 07:02 PM

2 or 3 days ago 3 crop circles appeared near Orillia, just a few miles from here. There's been a lot of interest, and many visitors. These ones do not seem to be a hoax, as there was no initial trace of footprints going into the area, or anything like that. There are 3 circles...a 30 foot, 50 foot, and 70 foot diameter one. Those are cardinal numbers aren't they?

There have been crop circles done around here that were hoaxes...but these appear not to be.

People are speculating about UFO's, freak whirlwinds, very clinical tornadoes, magnetic anomalies, and so on. Everyone has certain prejudices for or against these various notions, of course.

I did see some UFO's in the late 60's, and I know they do exist, but I don't necessarily connect them with crop circles.

Anyone out there got any theories on this?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: sophocleese
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 07:05 PM

Sure sign of escaped tiple players in the neighbourhood. Lock your door tonight. I know I will.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 07:12 PM

What is tiple?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bert
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 07:19 PM

Gotta be a hoax. Ain't no aliens gonna be measuring things in feet and inches. Unless they stopped at Home Depot on the way and picked up a measuring tape. Oh! I wonder if European crop circles are measured in meters.

Those are cardinal numbers aren't they? ??? so are 1, 2 & 3 (and 4, 5 and 6, and a bloody whole lot of other numbers) what's the significance?

...I did see some UFO's in the late 60's, and I know they do exist... - Be a bit more specific here. If I see a bird in the distance and don't know what it is - that's a UFO. If I see a flash of light in the sky and don't know what it is - that's a UFO. So how do you interpret what you saw if you don't know what it is?

Bert.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bert
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 07:21 PM

A tiple is a USI (unusual stringed instrument). Now THERE'S something that was almost certainly introduced by Aliens.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Lucius
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 07:22 PM

Morris Dancers.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bert
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 07:29 PM

I dunno Lucius, Morris Dancers usually dance in a rectangular formation. Much more likely to be Balkan Dancers.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 07:34 PM

Alien Morris Dancers? Morris Dancing Crop Circles? Please be more specific, Lucius!!

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Morticia
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 07:54 PM

more likely bodrhan players.......they put them down and dance around them making an ever increasing circle until they are far enough away to run for it......the depth of the circle reflects the dancers fear of their instrument.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: sophocleese
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 08:41 PM

So, Morticia, if I hang my bodhran on the door they will be scared, run around in circles, and mow my lawn for me tonight? Great! I'll get the hammer and a nail out now.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 10:26 PM

Sheesh! You are a skeptical and cynical lot! Little Hawk, have been to see them?

I saw a UFO out my back door about 5 years ago, and before my whole family saw one in the 60's in Colorado. No, Bert, they were not birds!*bg* The one I saw here was uncanny...hung in one spot in the sky, then dropped straight down like a ton of bricks, changing colours as it fell.

While I believe there is more to the crop circles than we may know, I suppose someone has already thought of smart gophers, who know how to excavate in a perfect circle and size? Or, one that is off its rocker and keeps turning in one direction, going round and round? I know it's a stretch, but, ya never know.....sorry, LH, I would be interested in hearing more of the serious theories.

katanotheralienlifeform!

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: JamesJim
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 10:36 PM

Little Hawk,what have you been adding to your Sasp "Orillia?"

Jim

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: WyoWoman
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 10:40 PM

Little Hawk, I have seen some photos of crop circles that are simply amazing. I have no idea who made them, or with what, but I do know that they're beautiful abstract art and, as with any good art, they leave me (I, who make my living with words) simply speechless. I've seen some of the "hoax" crop circles, too, and they're a completely different thing. The "real" ones are fascinating and beautiful and baffling.

I've put them where I put other Mysteries of the Universe, in a box in my psyche labeled "Awaiting Further Light." I don't know that we'll ever find out their source, but I think they're a thing of beauty and I would love to see one up close.

Where is Orilla? Remember you have a worldwide conversation going on here -- I don't even know which continent you live on.

WW

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Les B
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 10:55 PM

So are crop circles Alien song circles ? Inquiring minds want to know.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 10:56 PM

Hy Wyo. Orillia is one of the most beautiful towns in Canada. About 100 miles north of Toronto. Home of the writer Stephen leacock (not any more 'cause he's been dead for 60 years). Birthplace of the Mariposa Folk Festival (Leacock's name for Orillia in his books was Mariposa) and Gordon Lightfoot.

Nice place. I'm doin' a concert there later in the year.

I love that there's a POSSIBILITY of crop circles. Not convinced though. Too many websites about them with too many folks writing books and giving guided tours for lots of dinero.

Rick

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 11:03 PM

But, Rick, the crop circles came before all of the money-making hype, long ago, right? The originals at least?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: WyoWoman
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 11:07 PM

Yeah, well, I don't really care if they're extra-terrestrial graffiti or human artists having a good time goofing on the general public. Some of them are very cool to look at and for the time being I'm happy to take them as that and nothing more.

I do think they're much too organized to be caused by wind or some "accidental" phenomenon. There's obviously a consciousness at work creating them -- for what purpose, who knows? And with what technology? That's the part that puzzles me. The ones I've seen have been pretty precise-looking.

I've seen photos of some that were later confessed to as hoaxes, and they looked pretty rough -- the guys had just stomped down the hay or whatever. But the more complex ones are obviously being done with machinery. I think it'd be cool to see them from the air -- really large sculpture for your viewing enjoyment. Sure beats the in-flight movies!

WyoWoman

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 11:10 PM

some guys in England finally confessed to doing some of the circles that had the 'experts' puzzled for several years...even did a demo of how they pulled it off (was on TV)...so now there is a manual available...*grin*...

It is a BIG universe out there...I'm sure aliens live out there, but NO ONE has EVER caught one or photographed one or found a ship...or...or...(no, don't tell me about Roswell..*grin*...saw all the programs about THAT one!...)

It is just the case that some people are wired to WANT to believe, and some of us are wired to be sceptics...I have standards for what I consider 'proof'..(of aliens, elves, ESP, God, Elvis,..and a whole lot more..*giggle*..)The thing is, it doesn't bother me to just wait and read....I don't have to have an opinion yet.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Rana
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 11:23 PM

OK,

I know we (Green Fiddle Morris) danced at the Arts for Peace festival some months ago but I can vouch that we didn't do any crop circles! Might have been Orange Peel though - any comments from John B.?

On the other hand could the circles have been trying to be the Mariposa "sun" after their successful festival this year?

Rana

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Mbo
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 11:25 PM

My and my Dad saw a UFO once. It was pretty damn scary, and it was during the day too. When my Mom was an MP with my Dad, in Albany (Georgia) she and fellow MP Lumpy saw a UFO. They said it was spooky too. The other MP in the truck was too ditzy and didn't see it.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: sophocleese
Date: 15 Aug 00 - 11:52 PM

Well apparently its not a first for Orillia. September of 92 saw a crop circle as well.

NAICCR report states: "- one large oval patch of flattened corn was found in a field near Orillia. The area was 75 by 100 feet, on the south slope of a south-facing hill, only about 100 feet from a major highway. The corn was flattened and swirled in a counterclockwise direction. Reported to NAICCR. Source: Colin McKim."

I don't know if bodhrans had been seen in Orillia before that date though.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 12:51 AM

Well, I've been out much of the day, and am pleased on my return to see that people have been posting to this one.

The crop circles in the corn that sophocleese mentions were a few years back, and they happened about a mile and a half from where I'm presently living near Orillia, Ontario, Canda. They were a hoax, and a fairly obvious one.

There have been other well documented crop circles in many places that could not possibly have been hoaxes, and obviously were created by some form of purposeful intelligence. Whether it was UFO's I do not know, nor do I have any strong opinion on that.

Skeptics generally remain skeptics, because their emotional safety net is built around just that...and they will not bother to investigate further on the matter.

And that is why, Bert, I do not bother much any more explaining the details of my own UFO experiences to a skeptic. I know there will always be skeptics, as long as the UFO's don't descend by the thousands on every piece of land on this Earth and all on the same day (as in "Independence Day", a stupendously idiotic movie). And I know that no amount of personal testimony by me or anyone else (such as Jimmy Carter or a great many other famous and well-informed people) will serve to make the skeptic change his mind.

It is rather akin to a native on a little Pacific island trying to explain to the other natives that he saw a huge wooden ship go sailing by, with giant white wings hanging from tall bare trees...and what looked like almost human figures clustered on its decks, dressed in strange gear and armour! Ha! The other natives laugh at him, accuse him of being drunk on fermented coconut juice, say he had a hallucination, say he must have been asleep and dreamed it, because EVERYBODY knows that there is no such thing as alien beings from other islands. They'll even say he's lying just to get attention!

The UFO guys I saw could no doubt take over this planet if they wanted to. They obviously don't want to. Maybe they have reached a higher moral plane than the Spanish conquistadors or our own present civilization and are content to simply observe and not interfere. Or maybe this place is just too small and backward in their terms to really merit more than a bried look.

The possibilities are endless.

I have never met a born skeptic yet who had a sincere interest in finding out anything he hadn't already made his mind up about. Only a direct UFO experience of his own will change that...and that's been known to happen.

I find our present political, monetary, and social system a lot harder to believe in than space aliens...if you know what I mean...

What I meant to say about cardinal numbers is that 3, 5, and 7 are cardinal numbers, and that may have a symbolic significance, like a code. There has been a great deal of apparently intentional numerical structure of a coherent sort in crop circles, as well as in structures such as the pyramids in Egypt and Central America. This raises many questions. Numbers and geometry are sacred in most ancient traditions, as they reflect spiritual order and structure amid the apparent chaos of creation. As above, so below.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 04:34 AM

I'm a natural sceptic, if David Copperfield can make the Empire State building disappear....As has been said crop circle hoaxers have shown how they do it but some people prefer to believe other explanations. Not all hoaxers take the short-term view: Piltdown Man, Peter Scott's "Nessie" photos, the fairy photos that fooled Conan Doyle, were only revealed as hoaxes decades after they were perpetrated. I only studied Psychology as a minor subject but learned enough about human perception to know how we can delude ourselves about what we see and hear. After all, I believe I sing in tune despite all the evidence to the contrary (perhaps I use an alien scale!).
But I remain willing to be convinced!

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: bill\sables
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 05:15 AM

Mbo, what do you mean by an MP. In England MP means Member of Parlement and they, as we all know, are the best liars in the world.
Cheers Bill

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 05:50 AM

Please, my friends, read "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan. Then take a moment to reflect on the disasters of the first centuries of the second millenium.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Wolfgang
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 07:46 AM

There's not much to be added to the good arguments from Roger t.s., just three remarks:
- there are also illusions of memory (my study object) adding to the illusions of perception
- "some people are so open-minded that their brains start to fall out" (forgot the source of the ciatation) - Little Hawk, you do not seem to know what 'cardinal numbers' are. 1, 3, 5 are cardinal numbers, true, but so are 2, 4, 6, ...19,...,32,.... And you can measure the crop circle diameters in feet, meters, inches. Taking into account the unavoidable measurement inaccuracy , each conceivable crop circle on earth will have a diameter that is a cardinal number. So what?

Wolfgang

(Three new song circles have been found in the south of Germany. And for all three of them the number of members can be given by a cardinal number. That must have a deeper meaning)

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 08:08 AM

Mp in the US means Military Police, as far as I know.

Little Hawk, I am with you on this one, but don't have the info I wanted to post to hand. Will try to find it later. My brother has written about sacred geometry in music in ancient civilisations and took it into consideration when writing his book, "Earthquake Prevention Through MetaMusic©".

Wonder what the skeptics said to the Wright Brothers? As science is constantly evolving, I wouldn't want to fall prey to a rigid idea of what can and cannot be and in doing so wind up with it as my religion.

like i said,

katanotheralienlifeform *g*

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: MMario
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 08:24 AM

Does littlehawk perhaps mean "prime" numbers?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Grab
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 08:40 AM

I presume by "cardinal number", LittleHawk means "prime number"...

LittleHawk, I would take exception to your assertion that

Skeptics generally remain skeptics, because their emotional safety net is built around just that...and they will not bother to investigate further on the matter.

I'm sceptical, not bcos I can't be bothered to investigate, but bcos I've yet to see compelling evidence for it. Plenty of accounts of UFOs, so maybe they do exist, but I've yet to see any clear evidence (non-faked clear pictures, ie. not weather balloons or smears on a grainy film, or physical evidence). And don't tell me about government coverups and shite like that - it's amazing how governments can be so bad at running the country, but are so good at covering up alien activity (I know it's a Terry Pratchett line :-) Obviously personal experience or the personal experience of someone I trusted would change my mind, but until there's clear evidence, I'm a sceptic.

Incidentally, there's plenty of accounts of Nessie sightings too, but there's no evidence (unfaked, anyway!), no sonar scans have found anything, and there's not enough fish in Loch Ness to sustain an animal of that size. Hence I'm sceptical of that too, but if someone found some proof, I'd be prepared to change my mind.

And LittleHawk, "sceptic" does NOT mean "we're not prepared to believe". It means "there's no proof, so rational thinking says it probably isn't the case", but it doesn't mean we wouldn't change our minds if given proof.

Personally, I find some folk's blind faith in UFOs, ley lines, magnetic therapy and crystal healing to be a near-religious conviction, and the key point with a religion is that you don't try to prove it, you just BELIEVE. In fact, as Christianity and Islam have shown, when you prove scientifically that a religious belief is wrong (eg. the Flood didn't cover the entire world), there's some ultra-believers who just won't accept it. If it were possible to prove beyond doubt that UFOs didn't exist at all, and what you saw was a hallucination or some freak weather phenomenon, would you be prepared to accept that, or would you still stick with your version? If someone proves that UFOs DO exist, I'm fine with that - it'll fsck up the world something chronic, but it'd be indisputable. Would you be able to accept it if someone proved the negative?

The obvious next question - how do I explain crop circles then? Well, like UFO sightings, there's so many fakes that you'll have a hell of a job to find real "unexplained" ones. Sure, maybe a UFO with a tractor beam could explain it, but that's a "deus ex machina" explanation - an alien with a tractor beam could also be stopping my car from starting in the morning, and I couldn't prove it one way or the other. Now if someone can show me a crop circle which couldn't have been produced by folks armed with boards who walked through the crops carefully, which has been examined by impartial scientific investigators (as opposed to New-Agers, or "Erich von Daniken"s with a vested interest), and which conveys a message, I'll be interested. 3 concentric rings isn't exactly a message, is it? If this is being done by aliens to attract our attention, assuming these ultra-intelligent aliens can't be bothered to write or jam our TVs or whatever, why do they do it? If it's communication, then it can only be to test us, to see if we can understand it, but then how do we write back and say, "The answer's 3.1415927 - next question..."? Communication HAS to be 2-way, and I've yet to see any way to talk back. Unless they want us to scribble something in the grass ourselves, in which case they're going to be mightily confused by all the crop circles around Glastonbury! :-) And if it's just the space-ship's landing-pads where it touched down (assuming they've got anti-gravity drive so they don't need rockets which would burn the crop), then the 30-50-70 arrangement has no more mathematical significance than the spacing of wheels on your car, so that's out!

Grab.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: hesperis
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 10:38 AM

Grab - "it's amazing how governments can be so bad at running the country, but are so good at covering up alien activity (I know it's a Terry Pratchett line :-) "

I don't remember that one, was it from Fifth Elephant? That's the only one I haven't read. (Unless there's more now...) My friend was going to buy it and then lend it to me, but he didn't get it yet!!! Waaah! I need my Pratchett fix!

I don't know enough about crop circles, aliens, etc. Never really been that interested in aliens.
I always figured there are enough species here on Earth which are alien to our way of thinking, that we could be trying to communicate with them rather than looking for beings elsewhere.

I know plant devas exist because I've talked to them and had "coincidences" happen in my garden. Aside from that, if there really were aliens, why would they want to attract our attention? Humankind hasn't been the greatest at getting along with ourselves, much less with strange lights in the sky.

Just my $0.02

~*sirepseh*~

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 11:07 AM

Yes, it's prime numbers, not cardinal numbers. You are quite correct on that. "Little Hawk" probably could be analyzed in terms of prime numbers for all I know...that wouldn't prove or disprove anything, of course, so I'm not going to bother.

A number of you are entirely correct in your observations that there are many "believers" of paranormal things who do so because of their emotional needs, and that this is unrealisitc of them. Granted. Likewise there are many sceptics who are sceptics because of their emotional needs. In other words, there are some essentially quite irrational people on both extremes of the issue. This doesn't prevent them from being absolutely certain they are right, dead right.

I had no belief whatsoever in UFO's or in anything spiritual or other-worldly either at the age when I first had a sighting of what were unquestionably alien and intelligently piloted craft over a lake in New York State. In those days I was the most rational, scientifically minded kid you could ever have possibly met. I believed in science and proven fact...nothing else. I thought all religiously minded people were idiots.

I have since changed my mind on all of the above, due to actual direct experience. If you should chance to have such actual direct experience, you will also change your mind...or else go crazy.

Until then, rest comfortably in your chosen opinion.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 11:08 AM

Oh, a little story:

When they opened the first zoo in North America, a basically uneducated country farmer came in to look at it. He stood for the longest time in front of the giraffe enclosure, scowling at the giraffes. Finally, he remarked bitterly to no one in particular, "Ain't no such animal!" and left in a huff. Great example of a born sceptic.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bert
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 11:08 AM

So the numbers are significant AND the cicles are measured in feet, therefore these 'Aliens' also use Imperial Units. So their culture would have originated in England a few hundred years ago or less. REALLY!!!

They are a hoax Little Hawk, someone is pulling your pisser, get over it - move on.

Which leads to three possibilities,
first, the reporter was in on the hoax.
second, the reporter knew it was a hoax and wasn't prepared waste time on further investigation.
and last, the reporter attached some important significance to their origin, but was either too lazy or too stupid to obtain enough information to enable the readers to make an informed judgement.

If you say they are significant then tell me.
How many measurements were taken to arrive at the diameters?
To what degree af accuracy were they measured? To the nearest foot? To the nearest inch? To the nearest sixteenth of an inch?
How are the circles arranged? Concentric?, in a straight line? in a triangle?
If they are not concentric then how far apart are they?


Saying 'I saw a UFO' doesn't tell me anything. You saw something that was unidentified! So what? Now if you had said 'I saw something which I identified to be an alien spacecraft' That tells me something and I'll ask... How big was it? What colour was it? What identfying marks did it have? How big were the doors and windows? In fact I'll have hundreds of questions for you because if you're right then your sighting was of major significance. But too see something that you can't identify! - Big deal!

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 11:08 AM

On Crop Circles--I saw that TV documentary too. It seems that the intricate geometry was derived from the width of the furrows in the field (or subtle tracks where machines had been used previously.) Anyway, the hoaxers would walk in those tracks in order to hide their footprints. All the circles were made with fairly primitive tools and in only a few hours. The hoaxes they showed on the show were quite impressive.

On UFOs--When I lived in Alabama, the Air Force Base in northern Florida would sometimes sent all kinds of experimental gases and objects into the sky. It was quite disconcerting to see things we didn't understand. It was amazing the way colored gases would expand and dissipate in the atmosphere over time.

As far as believing either of these...I just don't have the time to think much about them. I believe in being very open-minded, but also know that there are just too many explanations beyond my understanding or willingness to invest time in learning about.

Now, back to the bodhran players...and Morris Dancers...I really need to learn more about them.

Mary

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 12:14 PM

"pluritas non est ponenda, sine necessitate"

.....William of Occam

briefly, it means "don't use a more complicated explanation than necessary to explain something"

I have read science fiction for many years...I would LOVE to know that there is some truth to the more....ummmmm....'interesting' stories and sightings. Being a sceptic does NOT mean dis-believing, just that I do not believe without strong proof....

Also,there is a big difference between things which could be proved, but haven't yet, and things which, by definition, are not succeptable to usual standards of 'proof'...(re-birth, ghosts, elves, etc.)....aliens in ships mashing our crops in silly patterns 'could' be proved...but an awful lot of effort has gone into it, and no one has yet. Sincere, honest people telling amazing stories simply are NOT proof...aliens tired of teasing us and parking one of those ships and walking into a lab and donating DNA samples would be MUCH better..(boy, do I want to ask them some questions about the game!!)

" If you should chance to have such actual direct experience, you will also change your mind...or else go crazy. ".....nope, sorry...I am too aware of what the mind CAN do, I have "seen" things that it turned out later were just no true...now if 23 OTHER people saw exactly the same thing at the same time and described it the same way without us comparing notes...*grin*...

This does NOT mean you didn't see a ship,,,etc..it just means you are in a LONG list of those who saw them and ain't got no Kodak prints...I sure DO wish I could join the list so I could compare notes...

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: sophocleese
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 12:37 PM

THanks Bill D. for bringing up Occam. Some or all crop circles may be a hoax and some may be a strange happening. They are interesting but I get frustrated when they get linked to UFOs. Efforts should first go towards proving that they aren't made by humans and then finding terrestrial explanations for them before even beginning to speculate on the possiblity of aliens.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Mbo
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 12:42 PM

There's was this (humorous) TV show that was about a kid who went back in time, and met Davy Crockett. In one scene, Davy and his other pioneer friends see a comet in the sky. Not knowing what it is, they are puzzled. The kid says "Hey cool! Maybe it's a UFO, or maybe ET!" One guy with a slow Tennesee drawl says "Nope, I don't think it's an oofo OR an et!"

--Matt

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 01:20 PM

hey...I saw this other thread entitled "Cape Cod Circles"...turns out it was about music....which makes me wonder...what if the aliens are landing to sing and play banjos and bodhrans and accordians and really do NOT want to admit to it?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bert
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 01:27 PM

banjos and bodhrans and accordians - Ah! That's where they came from - THE ALIENS.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 01:47 PM

There have been some comments that skeptics do not want to investigate these occurrences. I'm sorry to deflate that but there is an organization that specializes in such investigations. They publish a monthly magazine called the Skeptical Inquirer. The problem they have is getting results under laboratory conditions or getting the claimants to agree to a control on any experiment.

These are not people who necessarily go into these experiments with closed minds. They are genuinely interested in finding proof but they require that proof to conform to the scientific method. So far they have been unsuccessful. This does not prove that the phenomena do not exist, they insist, just that they are so far unprovable and therefore should not be accepted as fact.

William of Occam said it best. Paraphrased it is that the simplest of explanation is the best one. Which is the simpler explanation of crop circles, aliens crossing interstellar distances or weather and hoaxers?

I firmly believe in extraterrestrial civilizations. I do not believe that those civilizations would cross the unimaginable distances between stars to merely make circles in our fields.

One of the things that people seem to forget is how far apart our worlds are. The light from our nearest neighbor takes over four and a half years to reach us. The fastest vehicle cannot begin to approach the speed of light so we are talking twenty to thirty years to cross that gulf. Our next nearest neighbor is over 6 light years away. Where is the logic in crossing those distances and not stopping in for a chat and cuppa?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: GUEST, Banjo Johnny
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 03:19 PM

My theory is: Termites. When the moon is in the Seventh House (and Jupiter aligns with Mars), millions of termites come up from underground when nobody is looking. The males hold hands, forming concentric circles around the Queen Termite, dancing to attract her favor. There is a great deal of handkerchief waving, and shouting of "hopa!" and the like. Finally the Queen selects the one with the best looking moustache, and devours him. Then the other suitors follow her back down to the underground nest, where they wait patiently for the next moon, playing Mah Jongg. == Johnny in OKC

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: cleod
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 03:53 PM

How do we know that aliens aren't performing 'grafitti tagging' on our fair landscape, looking at it from above in their UFOs, and pointing them out to their buddies, "Look, that's the one I made three hundred years ago when I was drunk off my ass! Ha! Isn't it neat? Those darn humans still can't figure it out! What a hoot!" - loosely translated from alien

But seriously, I do think there's life out there. Looking at our track record, though, who would want to befriend us?

My two centavos, cleod

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: WyoWoman
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 03:55 PM

"The finest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle." Albert Einstein

Skeptics are only those who want to see proof and to come to conclusions after they've seen sufficient information and research upon which to make judgements. There's nothing at all wrong with being skeptical -- I am even a TRAINED skeptic, having been a journalist for 20 years -- skepticism is the foundation of our science and has an honorable place in human knowledge and culture.

Cynics, on the other hand, are as unavailable to logic as the most starry-eyed romantic and automatically assume that everything is full of shit, and have a great personal investment in being right about that. That's as stupid in its way as utter gullibility.

Anyway -- I'm not sure "hoaxer" is an appropriate term to use here. That implies that someone is making claims as to the extraterrestrial origin of ALL these phenomena, and I don't think that's the case. Some of them just turn up, without comment -- and of course, as humans need an explanation for absolutely everything, people immediately jump into the breach with their own interpretation of what these are.

Again, some of them are clearly a clumsy attempt to either make fun of people who believe these are UFO-related, or they're attempts to create the phenomenon for personal gain.

However, distinct from those are some others that are, purely and simply, works of art. HUGE, complex works of art at that. Again, I don't know how they were created, but they're beautiful, elegant and delightful to behold. If someone, or several someones are making the circles of which I've seen photos, he/they are brilliant creators and I'd love to just have a conversation with them about how they DID that. There are now allegedly about 10,000 crop circles worldwide, with 400 or so appearing yearly in England (Maybe it's the druids' ancient spirits playing around from Over Yonder, or as y'all would spell it, Yondre.)

Check out these: (If you can't find them on any Internet sites, I'll make copies of some images I have here and email them to you, if you'll PM me. But try to find them yourselves first because I'm dealing with multiple work deadlines and don't have time for much play).

Milk Hill, England, August 1997.
Litchfield, England, July 1995
Alton Barnes, England, June 1996
East Meon, England, July 1995
Avebury Trusloe, England, August 1994
Avebury, England, August 1994
Barbury Castle, England, April 1997
And a simply amazing one at, yup, you guessed it: Stonehenge, July 1996
My favorite, for delicacy and complexity, is one allegedly found at Windmill Hill, England, July 1996. It's this enormous spiral of circles coming off a center hub like filigree spokes, with smaller ornamental circles of diminishing size flanking the larger circles. The thing that impresses me about the photo (and maybe it's just cleverly superimposed photos. who knows? But again, the images are really sublime) is how perfectly balanced the circles are in relation to each other -- a symmetry you wouldn't really be able to appreciate until you've gotten a few thousand feet up in the sky...

I say it's art and I love it because it sends my imagination into overdrive -- as very little art seems to these days. So, bring'em on. (Of course, I might feel different if it were my crops being smushed, but that's another issue...)

WyoWoman

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Mbo
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 04:07 PM

The reason why the UFO my Mom & Lumpy saw flew away, so my Mom says, was the aliens went "No signs of intelligent life here!"

--M

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bert
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 05:05 PM

'Yes it's prime numbers!!!' Since when have 30, 50 and 70 been prime numbers? If you divide any number by all but one of it's factors you'll get a prime number.

You're right Wyo, some of them are very beautiful. I don't see anything wrong with wanting an explanation for them, and I think it's quite in order to lightly tease someone who gives a partial, incomplete or poorly interpreted explanation.

If Little Hawk had said that the diameters are in the relationship 3:5:7 it would have been different. But as this particular example is measured in feet, a terrestrial system of units, it is reasonably logical to assume it to be of terrestrial origin.

Bert.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 05:22 PM

I agree with WyoWoman on the beauty of the circles. They are works of art. But these works of art are a form of grafitti because in the creation something is damaged, namely the farmer's crops. So why would an all too human artist hang around to take credit (and the legal hassle and fines) for his/her works of art?

The quote by Einstein is appropriate if you remember that he was talking about something he knew very well, the ability to wonder. He said it very well when he said that ability was the "fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science"

Scientists and skeptics are well able to wonder and marvel at the world. They see the things that are and their curiosity drives them to look deeper. The difference between them and those who follow the pseudosciences is the way they pursue that wonder. The followers of pseudoscience see something wondrous and accept it on the surface without asking more about it. The scientist and skeptic asks why and how and thereby uncovers more layers of wonder and beauty than pseudoscience can even acknowledge.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 05:26 PM

Banjo Johnny reminds me of one of my all-time favorite Peanuts cartoons...

Charlie Brown is walking along when he comes to Lucy, kneeling and looking at something on the sidewalk..."What are doing , Lucy?"

"Charlie Brown--see this big black bug? Do you know why it's so much bigger than the others? Because it's the QUEEN!"..........so Charlie gets down and peers closely...

"Lucy, that's not a bug...that's a black jelly bean!"

Lucy gives him this LOOK and bends to scrutinize the bug again..."Why, so it is!...I wonder how a Jelly bean ever got to be queen!"

...I have met SO many Lucys in my time...they will just NOT have their favorite theories disputed.(Anthropologists who are SURE they have found the missing link are a prime example)

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Art Thieme
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 06:03 PM

I did hear that the Jim Kweskin jug band is practicing for some reunion concerts. This obviously is the site they chose to do that -- a cornfield. Why? So it would be music to their ears.

The circles are where Fritz Richmond put down his washtub bass.

Case closed.

That said, over a few decades a close relative of mine has been interviewing people who say they've had experiences with flying saucers. Just answer me this, folks:
Why should an 80 year old couple "come clean" after 40 or 50 years and have a huge need, in their declining years, to get an experience they had in their youth half a century earlier OFF THEIR CHESTS? They insisted on anonymity. There was no need for, or even a desire for, notoriety of any kind. They were terribly upset by their experience---which they simply had to tell someone about. There was a measure of serenity for them that was secured just by putting their experience on the record. And this happened many times in various places all over the map. My relative told me, when I asked if he believed these people, "Art, something happened to these people. All I can say is they were scared shitless -- quite upset by even wanting to tell the tale. It was something they needed to do before they died. They had no ax to grind and nothing to gain, moneywise or otherwise, except the small measure of serenity gained from spillng their guts---finally.

Just thought I'd toss that out. Personally, I've never had any experience even remotely like any of these folks' tales. All I can do is wonder.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: little john cameron
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 06:30 PM

OK fowks ah wis avoidin this threed but it sucked me in.Hae a wee keek in here,http://www.paradigmshift.com/
The brownies can fix this fur me please. LJC

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 12:36 AM

OK, perhaps I should know better, but can someone give me a straight (unbiased) answer to this: Simply...The circles that have been admitted to as prank...Exactly HOW are they different from the ones with no explanation?

Had it not been for observing the antics of the clergy over the years, I might be religious today.

Had it not been for observing the antics of "mediums" and "commercial psychics" I might believe in the spirit world today.

Had it not been for listening to several late night radio shows and hearing the advocates of "the spirituality of crop circles" I might not be so skeptical.

But I still find the dialogue interesting.

Rick

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: WyoWoman
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 12:54 AM

Some of them (the ones I have pix of -- notecards I ordered from some company on the web, just because I thought they were pretty) are elegant and complicated and don't resemble each other. Very original looking and ... fine. The "hoax" ones, as I understand it, are much more coarse and not as symmetrical and not as large.

ww

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CamiSu
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 01:33 AM

I was up watering the sheep in the north pasture this summer and came upon a circle in the grass--quite round and could find no tracks leading in and was a bit stunned. There was the skeptic saying "One of the kids" and this wanting to believe. But I'd walked into it and couldn't see my own prints either. I kept my mouth shut until my eldest told my that my Japanese son had done it--just walked in circles til it was done.

Understanding that I have cultivated my capacity for wonder, I remain skeptical of many reports. However, I have also seen stuff that I couldn't explain and am sure there are more wonders here on earth than any of us can imagine, let alone in the vast universe. So I'm with Art. There is SOMETHING out there, and maybe we'll find out. Just imagine, something two dimensional, (ie Flatland) cannot imagine or see something 3 dimensional. What if there were something 27-dimensional in the room with you? Would you even be able to see it? Or would your brain blank it out as non-existant because we are only trained to see in 3 dimensions?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Sorcha
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 02:31 AM

"Still I wonder as I wander...." I'm with WyoWoman and Art here, check out the Nazcan lines. Other than Eric VonDaniken's, is there an explanation for these? (Please leave out Stonehenge and Ley Lines....) Remember Copernicas and Galileo? They were both driven out of Church and Society for their findings/beliefs. I would hope that I am an open minded skeptic about this; I would like to believe in Other Sapient Life Forms from elsewhere, but I don't KNOW, just yet.

Who among us, ( of a "certain age" ) would have thought we "Sapiens" could ever reach the Earth Moon? Not me, it still seems an impossible thing, so maybe other Impossible Things are possible too.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 02:45 AM

I have not formed any opinions about crop circles, UFOs, etc. It's all ok with me.

However, re: the Nazca lines. I have been thinkng lately that there really isn't any reason why they couldn't have had hot air balloons back then. Just one possibility among many.

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 07:01 AM

Rick - Finding the dialogue interesting is what makes a skeptic. A cynic would just flame us and watch to see the results. A skeptic participates and looks forward to seeing either side proved right.

Nazca Lines - A recent edition of Discover Archaeology had an article about these. It appears that these represent walking paths for some sort of religious or territorial purpose. It's similar to the mazes used today in some of the new age system. There are cairns of stones set in high places that mark lines of travel. The process of making the lines is not that difficult as the scientists built one themselves in a very short time. Apparently the orientation of the figures conforms to water flow through the few water sources in that desert. One theory is that the figures each represent a totem of the tribe or group who made and maintained it.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 08:03 AM

I happen to have two hobbies, one is folk music and the other is reading sceptical and sometimes much less sceptical accounts of paranormal phenomena. I am chairman of the scientific advisory board of the German sceptics.
My personal preference by far is to keep theses two areas of knowledge separate. I'd write irate letters if my sceptics magazine would start publishing articles on folk music (except, e.g., if a claim that listening to folk music has an unusual healing power for terminal cancer is studied). This magazine here publishes everything much to my dismay but obviously to the contentment of a majority. Now I'm contributing to what I'd like not to read here but it's just too close for me to keep silent (and how often have I kept silent in those healing threads and still try to keep out of the astrology advertisement thread). Two points.
What is a sceptic?
I'm going to repeat here what has beautifully been said by grab and implicitly by others. But my impression is some of you do not read or understand what has been said in so many posts. A sceptic is definitely not a person not willing to change her mind when confronted with evidence. So the person portrayed by Little Hawk in the giraffe example is everything else but a sceptic. A sceptic avoids far out theories as long as much more easy theories are available for explanation (see Bill D pointing out Occam's razor). But when the weight of the evidence is getting larger the sceptic has to change her mind.
In my experience, the sceptic changes her mind, but the true believer never does (and often, unlike the sceptic, is unable or unwilling to say under which circumstances she would change her mind). Let's borrow Nessie from grab as an example. Grab has pointed out why the prior probability of Nessie being anything else than a hoax or an illusion is very low. But it could theoretically be proved. Stop all the water inflow and outflow and drain the lake (I hope that is not done for the sake of that beautiful region). Imagine they find a surviving dinosaur in that process. What would grab or another sceptic say? "Well, I must say, I wouldn't have believed that outcome before, but now I'm convinced. Let's get back to work and study that new species and rewrite out theories about the extinction of the dinosaurs." Imagine what the true believer would say if no species remotely similar to Nessie reports would be found. "Well, that doesn't prove it. Perhaps it is a being living in two parallel worlds, our real world and a spiritual world, only sometimes (and never to sceptics) showing in its real world form." Too far out? I haven't read that from Nessie believers yet, but I've adapted it from arguments of Bigfoot believers.
Katlaughing, your Wright brothers example seems to go into the same direction if I understand it. What would a sceptic who didn't believe in the possibility of flight have said (after the flight): Well, I've been proven wrong, so my theory that flight of this type was impossible was wrong. I've learned a lot.
Or is your point that (before the flight) there were scientists that have said it is impossible. So what? Many more have said before the flight that it is possible. Scientists have erred numerous times. Let's take the scientist Thomas Jefferson as example (the Americans know him for another achievement) who said few years before incontrovertible evidence came that stones do not fall from heaven. Or, for the British, take Lord Rutherford, a Nobel laureate, who said ten years before Hiroshima that if nuclear fission was possible at all (he was sceptical) it never would have any relevance outside of the laboratory. (Often I wish he had not erred). It also has happened that a crackpot scientist has been right for the wrong reasons. Scientists have erred often but the evidence is used as a correcting process. But with no evidence or hardly any evidence scientists will not go for extreme theories with low probabilities of being correct if other theories can explain the data much more easily.
The reliability of human observation and reports.
I have heard it so often in discussions. "You can say what you want, but I have seen it with my own eyes". The only thing I usually believe in when I hear this is in the sincerity of the person. Even very vivid memories ("I still see it like if it was today") can be wrong.
There are numerous reports and sworn oaths in the middle ages from sane persons that they have seen women flying on brooms that they have seen women giving birth to a litter of rats. People tend to see what their culture expects them to see. Reports on those women have become very scarce these days unlike reports on UFOs.
In a Dutch zoo an animal was missing and there have been over a week many sightings of that animal by reliable witnesses. It turned out later that the animal had never left the zoo when its dead body was found.
Sir Edmund Hornby, formerly Chief Justice of the Supreme Consular Court of China and Japan (surely not a person whose word is easily dismissed) has published in the 1880s a report claiming that a newspaper reporter has come into his room in the middle of the night (despite carefully closed doors) and insisted urgently on hearing the précis of a judgement to be published the next day. The judge wanted to throw him out but something in the manner of the nightly visitor held him back and so he did what the reporter wanted and said that the reporter would never be allowed in the house anymore. The man responded: "This is the last time I shall ever see you anywhere". The next day the judge found out that the reporter had died that night exactly at the time the judge had had that appearance. The wife of the judge corroborated all the facts.
It was found out later among other things that the reporter had died at daytime, that there was no judgement on the day of the death of the reporter and that Sir Hornby was not even married at that time. Sir Hornby confronted with the facts admitted they were correct and added: 'If I had not believed as I still believe, that every word of [the story] was accurate, and that my memory was to be relied upon, I should not have even told it as a personal experience."
However, usually these examples do not at all shatter the conviction of those telling me personal experiences. They only sometimes get mad at me.
There are very good reasons for scientists not to consider personal reports as evidence in the same way as they consider data from repeatable experiments.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Grab
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 08:29 AM

As far as Nazca goes, who says the guys who made them didn't know what they were? Maybe they couldn't see them from the air, but that's no big deal - Capability Brown couldn't see his creations from the air either. Landscape architecture isn't exactly complicated.

Nazca has been done recently - can't remember offhand which it was. But it's a big, BIG step from saying "I don't know how it was done" to saying "It was obviously done by aliens". The "no sitch critter" example is a specious comparison, LittleHawk - can you show me incontrovertable scientific proof? If you can, then don't bother with us, go to the papers and shout it to the world. Sorcha, the problem for Copernicus and Galileo was that they provided absolute proof in a society which could only function with blind belief. If you've based your whole existence around a particular belief, having the props knocked out from under you by proof it is wrong is quite likely to screw you up!

I presume that you have some kind of history with this, LittleHawk. Did you see a UFO? Up close (not a dot of light in the sky)? Any chance on a description? Are we talking a physical "ship" or a glowing ball of light, or what?

One trouble with UFOs is military research. The first SETI search came up with a hit in the upper atmosphere in the first few months of searching. There was huge exitement until the USAF admitted they had a secret (spy?) satellite there which they'd not told civilians about. Similarly, there's various odd new weapons and propulsion systems under way now, and the Skunk Works teams aren't likely to make their results on these public knowledge any time soon!

Incidentally Hesperus, I think the Terry Pratchet "coverup" line was from "Only you can save mankind". I'll maybe reread it tonight and check.

Grab.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: sophocleese
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 08:47 AM

Rick for a description of possible differences between hoaxed and genuine crop circles you could check out this site http://indigo.ie/~dcd/frame.htm Its kind of neat.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 09:45 AM

Very nice post, Wolfgang.

Unfortunately skeptics will always be suspect. I even lost a very promising relationship in part because my SO could not accept that I would change my mind if proof was offered. As far as she was concerned my questions were evidence of disrespect for her beliefs. She could not and would not accept simpler explanations for things that she swore were actual events.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 09:59 AM

ALL crop circles are 'genuine'....only their purported causes are hoaxes or not...

(BTW...thanks, Wolfgang..I needed someone with the right words to say all that)

You know, I once has dream that was so vivid and disturbing that over a period of years I found myself worrying that it had been a real experience...It would be SO easy for someone who was NOT a born sceptic like me to integrate the story into their life and tell others and create a believable myth.....sincere, honest people DO this all the time. When someone is able to replicate paranormal experiences under stringent lab conditions, or obtains an alien spacecraft, then, as Wolfgang says, I'll say,.."well, that's interesting...I learned something new...now let's study it"

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 10:00 AM

Naemanson,
your post sounds so familiar to me. Challenging deeply held beliefs with alternative interpretations usually doesn't make you popular.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: sophocleese
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 11:10 AM

Yeah Wolfgang, try persuading Mudcatters that a desire for anonymity does not indicate a depraved personality. Whoo boy!

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 11:48 AM

BillD, that has happened to me. I once told a detail memory to a friend and half way through my story I realized that it had never happened! It made me realize how subjectve experience can be.

And when I tried to share that experience with my SO she rejected it completely. She couldn't/wouldn't believe such a strange thing. Yet she could believe the strange explanation of whatever pseudoscience she was following at the time.

Ain't people wonderful?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Art Thieme
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 11:48 AM

Bill D,

Just last night I saw a segment of a TV magazine-type show saying that there is an actual "sleep disorder" where part of the brain is awake and part is asleep, this manifesting itself in dream images (demons, gods, God, anything) being perceived a actual waking reality while, at the same time, being totally frozen/unable to move/totally paralized -- this because you are, in part of your brain, completely ASLEEP. This real mallady could account, in part, for posessions by demonic influences, vivid completely real but fantastic night occurances, people being told by God to do things etc. etc. etc. (Might even explain some of what happens during nocturnal emissions. ;-)You might/could look into it.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 01:38 PM

I have had LOTS of nocturnal emissions....but it has been a long time since I was asleep during them ;>)

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 01:40 PM

Having just read the first post here, I have only this to say... All crop circles are hoxes on some level... they are ALL made by people...

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Grab
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 01:55 PM

BillD and Art: Sleep deprivation is known to cause hallucinations. At uni, I had a tough project and the labs were busy during the day, so I tended to work one night on, one night off, only sleeping every other night (LONG lie-in next day to make up! :-) I frequently experienced the onset of hallucinations due to lack of sleep. I never got full-blown "they're coming out of the walls!!!" kind of stuff - I didn't push myself that hard - but I got all sorts of strange corner-of-the-eye effects, thinking things were moving or ppl were there, when there was no-one there. As an typical example, cycling back home in the early morning one time, I thought I saw someone walking across the pavement (sidewalk for Americans) into me, just next to me. I looked back, to find it was actually a postbox! (Incidentally, in Britain we have old-fashioned postboxes we call "pillar boxes", which are about 4-5 feet tall and painted bright red) A few times cycling back, I've also had "alien abduction" type experiences where I've got home and not been able to remember anything of the ride back, I only knew that I set off and got back!

Given this kind of experience, that gives me some personal experience of the explanations of neurologists that ghosts, UFOs, etc are hallucinations. There's experiments showing that when certain areas of the brain are stimulated (to simulate a mild epileptic-type event), a person undergoes an experience strikingly similar to that described in out-of-body and religious experiences (feeling a "presence", tunnel of light, the lot). Others give bright lights and sensations of movement, and stuff like that. This is why I'd be interested to know what LittleHawk saw. I'm not going to get onto the "... or thought he saw" bit, bcos for all I know it may actually be what really happened (viz. Wolfgang's post) and to phrase it like that would imply that I'd already made up my mind.

I like Wolfgang's story about that Victorian chap. My (cynical) explanation would be that he'd had a night out with his mistress and wanted to cover his tracks... :-)

Sorry about getting off the crop circle topic here, but it's the scientific approach-type thing. If someone says, "I've seen a UFO, and an alien spacecraft could logically cause this crop pattern when it lands", then that's a working hypothesis which fits the facts, but it's difficult to prove. Suppose someone else says, "I've conducted experiments on ppl's brains which cause them to think they've seen things resembling how some UFOs are described, and here's the results, and there's zillions of folk who think it's fun to create crop circles, and here's some books about how they do it". Which one do you believe? Me, I'd go for the one with the evidence.

Incidentally, does anyone know if farmers get compensation for damage caused by crop circles? Is it covered by insurance? And if the insurer's read Von Daniken, would damage by aliens come under "act of God"?

Grab.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: sophocleese
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 02:08 PM

Grab, I don't know about the insurance but I read an article in the local paper this week talking about the people who came to see the crop circles. The farmer whose field it was in enjoyed showing them to people but figured at the end the strange things people did far outweighed the strangeness of the crop circles. I think that was his compensation.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: sophocleese
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 02:14 PM

Geez did I ever get my grammar f**cked up in that last message. OOPS.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 02:24 PM

A person convinced against his/her will, is a person of the same opinion.

I said this to a friend last week, and she thought I had lost it. Still says she can't understand what I was saying.

Also Bill, about complicated explanations (or at least esoteric ones):

If you hear hoofbeats behind you, don't expect to turn and see a herd of zebras.

Mary

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 03:08 PM

it is QUITE true that when a person gets a certain 'memory' , they DO have that set of images, etc. in their heads, no matter what I or anyone else trys to tell them about alternate ways it might have gotten there. It really is easier to 'believe' than to doubt for many folk.

Nope, I really would expect to see horses, not zebras...but IF I saw zebras, I'd sure look for some reasonable explanations about how they got there

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 03:37 PM

If I heard hooves behind me I would turn expecting horses but hoping for unicorns!

That is skeptical thinking.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 03:58 PM

..or Minotaurs...or Centaurs..or Satyrs

look..proof!

even better!

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 04:36 PM

...why not this?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: GUEST,Lyle
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 11:09 PM

Beautiful, Wolfgang, beautiful!

Lyle Member, CSICOP

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 11:11 PM

I think it is one thing to believe (or at least to give it the benefit if the doubt), that given this un-fathomed universe, with its' countless planets and stars, there must be other life; even more intelligent life, than ours out there.

Where we sully the credibility of this argument, however, is when we attribute every odd occurance to their intervention. This includes, but is not limited to, corn circles (or don't they care anymore about what which harvests they affect?), and UFOs.

Perhaps the Nazca Lines are ancient runways, or maps, or whatever. Perhaps every light in the sky that you see is a UFO.
Perhaps the Heaven's Gate people were right!

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: little john cameron
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 11:15 PM

Whaur did ye get the photie o mah wife,Bill LJC

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 12:28 AM

HELLO EVERBODY!!!

I'm back after 2 days in Toronto, and oh boy, am I ever flattered by all this fine attention and contribution to my humble little thread on crop circles! The sceptics, romantics, cynics, believers, non-believers, scientists, etc. have all charged out of the woodwork and are expounding marvelously on their particular forms of reality. Wonderful.

Where do I being? I don't even have time to read it all.

Well, Bert - my original intention was simply to indicate a possible meaning to the 3:5:7 proportion of size relationship between the circles...maybe. I'm not saying it HAS to mean anything. I just wonder if it might. It was late and I was very tired, so I made an error and said "cardinal" instead of prime. Hey, I ain't perfect, okay? I haven't studied prime numbers much since maybe 1969.

And Bert - I NEVER said that I thought crop circles are caused by UFO's or extraterrestrials. I have NO IDEA what causes crop circles...aside from those that are hoaxes...they are caused most likely by friends of Little John Cameron, or perhaps by one of my ex-girlfriends (Ha Ha). A good many of them do not appear to be hoaxes.

The discussion on extraterrestrials or UFO's simply arose as a spinoff from the original subject, because there ARE a lot of people who think extraterrestrials are responsible for some crop circles. I don't know if they are or not.

I do, however, know that there are extraterrestrials visiting this planet on ocassion...from my own direct experience, and from the direct experience of several other people whom I know well enough to trust implicitly.

If you must have a description of the vehicles (and said description will convince NO ONE of anything, and I know it...so why bother?)...here it is:

1. First type of vehicle I saw was shaped like 2 dessert dishes, one on top of the other...your typical flying saucer shape, in other words. The vehicle made absolutely no sound at any time. It was capable of traveling at various speeds, from very slowly to a speed far faster than any kind of machine we are presently capable of building.

It made many types of maneuvers in the night sky over Skaneateles Lake in New York State. It was capable of virtually instantaneous leaps across a huge distance in the sky, and could stop instantaneously at any point. If we did this with a vehicle, it would tear itself and its crew and its contents to pieces, due to forces of acceleration and deceleration. This vehicle was obviously independent of being affected by such forces.

The vehicle appeared to be at quite a high altitude, similar to what you would expect from a commercial jet, for example. What exact altitude I can't say, I'm not an aeronautical expert. I observed all this through a good pair of binoculars. So did my best friend and my mother.

There were scores of reports of similar sightings mentioned in the Syracuse paper in the next 3 days. Many local people saw something similar to what I did, and phoned police and military personnel about it.

The vehicle was also capable of illuminating itself from within in a huge variety of ways. It could appear as a very bright light, or as a dimly light luminous body, or anthing in between those extremes. When dimly lit it had a rather metallic and smooth appearance. There were no exterior details such as propellors, intakes, or whatever to bee seen...it was very smooth all over. It did have 2 running lights that cycled in a regular fashion around a central belt (like where the 2 dessert plates would meet)...one was red, the other was green (just like our airplane wingtip lights). Sometimes these lights would cycle, other times they were not visible.

It could hover and stay absolutely still in one position for minutes at a time...never making any noise. It could maneuver around like a helicopter. It could accelerate to utterly incredible speeds. When it eventually left the area, it accelerated to a speed which enabled it to vanish over the western horizon (from directly overhead to there) in about 2 to 3 seconds...much faster than any airplane, satellite or rocket, I believe. You could see it drop beyond the curvature of the Earth, basically, when it left...like the sun setting, but in about 2 seconds.

How big was it? Pretty big, I'd say, but hard to tell at that height. Maybe as big as a house, maybe as big as a 747, I just don't know. It wasn't near enough to anything else that one could draw comparisons as to size.

Okay...vehicle # 2: observed a few weeks later, this one looked like a cucumber shape, or like a fat cigar. It was also soundless, and had a row of what looked like illuminated portholes along the side of the "fuselage". It had a smooth metallic appearance, with no protuberances, propellors, wings, intakes, etc. It traveled reasonably fast, at a high altitude, moving southward in a straight line. No fancy maneuvers this time. It was overhead for about a minute and eventually passed out of sight, still going south. It gave the impression of being very large, at least as big as a very large jet airliner, but without the wings and usual attachments. It also appeared to be luminous to a slight extent. It had no specific running lights that I can recall, unlike the 1st vehicle. Again there were separate reports in the papers.

I have been fascinated by aircraft all my life, particularly military aircraft, and have seen most of them at airshows, airports, and so on. These were not Earthly aircraft. They were not balloons. They were not satellites or rockets. And they were not figments of my imagination.

If you think these were extraordinary sightings, you ain't heard nothin' yet. There is a wealth of fascinating literature out there on this subject if you bother to look, with testimony from airline pilots, military pilots, presidents and prime ministers, and just plain ordinary folks such as myself.

Again, I must emphasize that I am not saying that crop circles are caused by extraterrestrials. Nor am I saying that extraterrestrials are in the habit of measuring everything in feet and inches!

Wolfgang - you make many excellent points. Obviously, it is cynics for whom I should reserve my barbs, not sceptics. Point taken. A pox on thee, cynics! Thou has a mean and small view of life.

Rick - I too am generally repulsed by the antics of the clergy. I don't consider myself religiously, but rather spiritually inclined. If religion was all there was for inspiration, I would have remained an atheist, as I was until my early twenties. Religious dogmatism is precisely what has given rise to atheism. Until Christians came to North America there were no atheists here. Afterward, there were plenty, and it's no wonder.

Many of the greatest scientists have been people with a strong spiritual understanding, because there is no real dispute whatsoever between spiritual understanding and science. Each very much aids and abets the other. Science tells you how a process occurs, spiritual understanding tells you why...for what purpose...with what meaning and objective that process occurs.

I believe in science and I believe in Spirit. What has that got to do with religion? As far as I'm concerned, nothing.

Who were the Heaven's Gate people, Brendy? A bunch of lunatics, I presume? Did they all commit suicide together a while back?

I wasn't suffering from sleep deprivation, or substance abuse, at the time when I saw the aformentioned UFO's. It was a perfectly ordinary evening in a thoroughly conventional middle-class household.

"Sceptics will always be suspect." Yup. So will non-sceptics. Depends on your subjective viewpoint, doesn't it? Everyone vigorously defends their own subjective view of reality, and summons forth logic, evidence, and emotion, plus even ridicule and personal attack. Nothing new about that. Watch Democrats and Republicans go at each other for a classic example of this.

Little John - where is this picture of your wife?

PROOF??? You ask for PROOF??? I love Winona. And no one can prove or disprove it one way or another. You can't even prove to me that you exist, aa things stand right now, so don't expect me to prove anything to you.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 12:52 AM

I'm a bit puzzled, though.
What's the difference between a real crop circle, and a hoax, if nothing can be proved anyway?

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: GUEST, Banjo Johnny
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 01:26 AM

Wouldnt a "crop circle hoax" be something that was made to look like a crop circle, but was actually something else disguised as a crop circle? == Johnny

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 01:29 AM

What?

Like a cake-mixer or something?

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Escamillo
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 04:38 AM

This is what Carl Sagan had to say about crop circles: Click here - This scientist was one of the directors of early Mars missions and of the Voyager I and II projects, thanks to which we acquired more knowledge than ever in history, about the Solar System. He was also in charge of all the research on extraterrestrial life at Cornell Univ. for many years. He was also author of the most famous TV scientific series: Cosmos, and many books.

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Wolfgang
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 06:57 AM

Little Hawk (and others),
challenging someone else's perception and/or recollection is always a bit difficult for it seems to amount to saying 'I have no trust in you'. Well, the person I trust most in my life (that's myself) has had quite a few wrong and sometimes embarrasing false perceptions in his life. I do not mean to say that most of our perceptions are wrong, only very few are and I bet you are a person whose perception and recollection is about as reliable as everyone else's (including mine) - usually.
What do I do with your description of what you have seen? Well, I look for the most likely explanation. Skip all paragraphs until the last if you want to know immediately what I consider the most likely explanation. If you don't skip I'll take you through several hypotheses from extremely unlikely to likely.
Hypothesis 1: You've seen a real craft controlled by alien intelligence. I personally do believe in the possibility of other lifeforms in the universe, some of them even intelligent in our sense, but for reasons outlined in other posts I consider it extremely unlikely that we are 'visited' at this time. Are there more probable hypotheses? Yes.
Hypothesis 2: You're a hoaxer. From your posts and your way of writing I consider this also extremely unlikely and I am not working on that hypothesis (though I won't forget that possibility in general).
Hypothesis 3: You were deluded at that time. It can happen rarely (see grab for a fine explanation and description), but I have good reasons not to believe this hypothesis in your case.
Hypothesis 4: A complete illusion of memory. Not very likely, but it can happen. Think of it as, e.g., the recollection of a movie scene(or a vivid description in a book) in your mind transported into personal reality . Remotely possible, but I don't go for it for there is still a much better hypothesis.
Hypothesis 5(number 1 hypothesis for most UFO sightings): Mixture of real perception and partial illusion of memory/perception. This hypothesis goes as follows: You have seen something real which you couldn't find a mundane explanation for. The details of your description are not necessarily all correct, for under difficult sighting conditions we all make bold guesses as to what we see and our brain is wired in a way that we try to make sense out of what we see at nearly any price (conjurers work on that knowledge to fool us). So I do not have (nor need) explanations for all UFO sightings fitting all details of the descriptions. There are ample experiments to show that what we think we see will heavily influence our memory of what we have seen (an experiment in a nutshell: researchers had arranged that UFO believers on a hill were shown lights. Since the lights were under experimental control the researchers knew exactly which position they were and how long they were on. They compared UFO believers recollections with reality and found that many errors like reporting movement when there was none were made. These errors were not random, they were in the direction of the UFO hypothesis). And then there are a few facts from perception usually not know to lay persons like that especially in the dark you can mistake your eye movements for object movements.
There may be some more hypotheses possible but I am contented with these five and I won't go for the first one as long as much more probable hypotheses remain.
So in most cases I think the reporters have seen a UFO that is a flying object that was unknown to them but mundane and their descriptions from memory do not really fit the object they have actually seen for the combined work of illusions of perception and memory. But the appearance must not necessarily have been flying nor an object at all. And that brings me to what I considers the most probable single explanation in your case.
Your description #1 is a beautiful textbook description for UFO sightings originating from the action of laser lights from, e.g., a distant disco on the lower cloud surface (which itself is invisible at night). It fits the soundlessless, the cycling, the illumination, the lack of interior details, the standing still and sudden movement, the lack of clear size and distance and some other details. That's the single explanation for this case I would place my bet on.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 03:35 PM

Wolfgang - Fair enough. I understand your line of reasoning just fine. Here are some more pertinent details...

There were no clouds in the sky on either of the nights in question. It was a very clear starlit sky on both occasions.

I've seen the "disco laser effect" on cloud layers, but there were no clouds on those 2 nights. There was no such disco in that rural area anyway. Disco illuminations do not have the kind of observable surface details on them that I say through the binoculars, nor do they have running lights on the vehicle, as far as I know.

Why do you think it's unlikely that we are being visited in this particular time? I'm curious about that, since I think it's likely we have been visited since time immemorial. Are you aware that there's an extensive area in the Peruvian mountains where so many of the local people have seen UFO's so frequently that it is simply taken for granted around there? The government has even put up signs on some of the roads indicating that it's an official UFO (meaning extraterestrial craft) sighting area. Read Shirley MacLaine's book "Out On A Limb" for a larger exposition on this and other matters. Shirley, my friend, is no airhead. She's a level-headed, practical and tough woman.

Yes, I could be a hoaxer. So could you (regarding your German sceptics scientific association). I don't think you are, and I'm not either.

For a somewhat useful article on the Orillia crop circles, go to this address:

http://www.simcoe.com/news/stories/ostories.shtml

The "most likely explanation" could be one explanation for one person, and a completely different explanation for another. It depends on one's subjective view of reality. Scientists are not immune to this tendency, but the more open-minded ones are certainly ready to modify their customary views in the face of new evidence.

Brendy - I'd say that a crop circle hoax is a crop circle that has been created deliberately by humans for the purpose of fooling other humans. A real crop circle is one that does not meet the above criteria, and has been caused by some other agent in some other manner. I won't presume to say what that agent might be, because I don't know.

Any crop circle can thus be called a hoax by someone who cannot accept that it could be anything but a hoax...which doesn't prove necessarily that it is a hoax...but that the person in question is scared of things which lie outside of his usual beliefs and assumptions. Or maybe he's just scared of being fooled by someone.

Remember, I was a complete non-believer in extraterrestrial visitors or their machines until I had my first sighting of one...it was at age 17 or 18, as I can best recall...I didn't keep a diary at the time.

The most likely explanation for me is obvious...extraterrestrial visitors. But of course, I'm the guy who had the experience. I can understand that this would maybe not be so compelling to someone else...unless they already knew me pretty well.

Here's another possible explanation: The US military has built some extraordinary (and completely secret) vehicles that it decided to test over Skaneateles and the surrounding area, where it might be observed by hundreds or even thousands of civilians. HIGHLY UNLIKELY, but what the heck? It's another possibility.

Here's another possible explanation: Time travellers. People from our own future taking a brief look at our era.

Here's another possible explanation: Interdimensional travellers, hopping in and out of different universes.

Here's another possible explanation: Satan did it in order to mislead people from the gospel, mom, and apple pie. Yes, I'm being facetious, but there are some people who literally believe stuff like that.

Check out the link...

http://www.simcoe.com/news/stories/ostories.shtml

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 05:50 PM

You know, this is really great. At last it is possible to have a reasoned discussion of this kind of thing without anger or flame attacks. I love it.

Wolfgang, I think you've hit the nail right on the head. I'll bet your Hypothesis Number Five is the one most people fall prey to. I too do not believe that any of those in this discussion are hoaxers. I think every one on the "believers" (for lack of a better term) truly believe that what they saw or experienced was an actual occurrence. Those of us in the Circle of the Skeptic truly believe there are simpler explanations.

Where do we go now? We are stuck. Little Hawk will never be shaken from his position and we skeptics are also firm. It has been a lovely discussion but we need some new fodder so...

FLAME!!!

(Just kidding! Someone had to do it!)

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Sorcha
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 06:16 PM

I'm not getting involved in this discussion, because I am an UN informed skeptic, with I hope, an open mind. I would LIKE to beleive that we are not alone, that Nessie et al exist, but as of yet, I have no experiences, nor have I seen evidence I would accept----such as body parts, or pieces of a craft. Carry it on, people, it is VERY interesting, and I am learning a lot. And isn't that why most of us are here? To learn something, that is?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: little john cameron
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 06:39 PM

I will converse in standard english for this subject as the Scots vocabulary is not very conducive to noumenal subjects.For those of you who are familiar with the varying vibratory rate of material and non-material objects in the universe i will try and postulate a theory i have on the seeming speed of these alledged UFOs.
I am kind of starting in the middle here but in order to have a modicum of brevity i am assuming that some knowledge of vibration is understood.
Everything has a vibratory rate that determines how it appears or does not appear to our senses.When i have watched videos of the aforesaid UFOs i was struck by the speed at which they could vanish from sight.This to my small brain could be caused by the rapid escalation of vibration which in turn would give the illusion of speed as the object disappeared and re-appeared in a different location.
Now, this brings us to the question of alternate realities.It seems to me that if an object in another reality whose rate of vibration was higher,or lower,than ours would be invisible to us.Therefore if it were possible to control the vibrations then travel from one dimension to another would be possible.
This could also by pass the problem of faster than light travel as the objects in question are really just moving in and out of our reality.

AH hae tae stop noo as this typin in english has got mah brain jist aboot puggled.Onyway it wis only ah thocht.Mibbe mah psychiatrist is richt an ah'm awa wi the fairies. LJC.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 07:03 PM

"Everything has a vibratory rate"..??? where does this 'fact' come from?...I know everything reflects light in different ways, etc..and I know about theories of movement/'vibration' in sub-atomic particles....but 'vibratory rate' sounds a bit like 'aura' to me.....

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 10:25 PM

Any crop circle can thus be called a hoax by someone who cannot accept that it could be anything but a hoax...which doesn't prove necessarily that it is a hoax...but that the person in question is scared of things which lie outside of his usual beliefs and assumptions.

That is a rather large assumption in itself, George (you don't mind if I call you George, do you?), and also assumes that everyone else is wrong, except you.
But then, you've been born and re-born, numerous times, and have this all sussed out.

Who am I to argue in the face of such facts.

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Gary T
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 11:23 PM

My interpretation of some of the comments in this thread is that some of us differentiate between "hoax" crop cirlces (i.e. those obviously made by humans) and "real" crop circles (those made by unexplained/unexplainable forces, but surely not humans). I think this distinction gives short shrift to the imagination and capability of Homo Sapiens Mischieviens.

Read the link Escamillo provided to Carl Sagan for some background. The original "crop circlers" fooled a lot of people for a long time. One thing that's been brought up is lack of footprints. Footprints in a wheat field? It's not hard to arrange things so you don't leave footprints. Expert trackers might be able to find evidence of a path, but how many expert trackers have been called in on these? It's not exactly a high priority manhunt.

I don't find it any stretch to consider all crop cirlces as having been intentionally created by humans. Some are just more sophisticated than others, in design, execution, or both. Heck, I've heard of college pranks that are more intricate and baffling than crop circles. To embrace the notion that they're caused by extraterrestrials or hypothetical (read nonexistent) weather anomalies, while dismissing the possibility that there are people out there clever enough and skilled enough to make them without leaving obvious clues, strikes me as naive.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Escamillo
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 11:34 PM

Sorcha, you may beleive or have your hopes that we are not alone, and this is a genuine field of science research, absolutely not related to UFOs of any kind. This the MAIN FALLACY of all UFOlogists. They tell you "Aha! you don't beleive that UFOs are extraterrestrial ships ? SO you dont beleive we may NOT be alone ?" (read: SO are you so ignorant ?)

One thing does not imply the other. May be they exist, as we exist (why would we be so privileged?) but aliens visiting us, that's another thing, and is not related at all, until someone demonstrates it scientifically, not by personal impressions. That day I will probably die drunk during the celebrations.

Do you know what my screen saver is doing while it is active ? Mathematically analizing radio signals from outer space, seeking for an intelligent pattern. Anybody can contribute to this project, see their site at Berkeley University: Click here

By the way, I would like to see much more programs like this, to distribute the present backlog of data analysis relative to medical research, metheorology, astronomy, etc. among millions of inactive PCs, each one more powerful than a VAX of 1980 !

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 11:46 PM

For those of you who want to be a legitimate part of the search for extraterrestrial life please visit the SETI@HOME website at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu.

You too can show that you believe there is intellegent life beyond our atmosphere without believing in UFO's.

The site has a program you can download which sets your computer up with a new screen saver. The screensaver is actually a program that crunches the data gathered by the SETI team. Your machine will download a block of data, run an analysis on that data, upload it back to Berkeley and get another block of data. All you have to do is leave your machine turned on.

Check it out!

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 11:46 PM

Nice one, Andrés.
I'll download that tommorrow and have a decent look at it.
Interesting site!

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: hesperis
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 01:04 AM

When LJC said "everything has a vibratory rate" he was referring to modern physics, which has hypothesized that what we see as 'matter' is composed of particles vibrating together at Extra Low Frequencies, or ELFs.

I might be out of date on that.

As for Auras,
Why are saints portrayed with halos?
Why do you feel more comfortable with certain people immediately upon meeting them than with certain others?

Science, to me, just doesn't line up answers to those mysteries
(much less to Extraterrestrials, or UFOs, or whatever).
And maybe these things will always be mysteries,
I don't know.

The further science goes, the closer it seems to get to saying things that the Wise Elders have said for millenia.
"We are all made of energy" is just one example.
Now science has found out that we are all made of molecules made of protons and electrons, and those are energy, and that we exchange energy with other energies all day long.

I am willing to believe it, if I can experience it,
even if my experience is just a hallucination,
or even if I am just another human being searching for patterns
and finding that I have created my own
in this chaos theory world.

~*hesperis*~

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Sorcha
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 01:21 AM

Andres, I will checkout the site. I just have a difficult time believing that 2 legged humans, as we know HomoSapiens, could create some of this stuff (like Mandlebrot sets ) in the time span allowed for the occurance. It seems to me that it would take DAYS for a drunken fraternity to stamp out this stuff using boards and ropes, and get it RIGHT both visually and mathematically, surely someone would see them? I am waiting anxiously for another viable explanation. And, Carl Sagan died disapointed. No proof that he would accept was ever found, even if he looked more diligently than anyone else.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: GUEST, Banjo Johnny
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 02:28 AM

I guess it's alright for people to fool around with crop circles, auras, pyramids, astrology, UFO's, ghosts, etc. But I hope they are not wasting a lot of money or time which could be used for truly important phenomena, such as MUSIC. == Johnny in OKC

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Escamillo
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 04:23 AM

You're right, Johnny, I guess that we all know that music is our primary (or secondary) concern. But curiosity kills me.:))

Ok Sorcha, it is reasonable to expect another viable explanation, this happens very frequently in science, and sometimes drives us to new discoveries. What would be really misguiding is the line of reasoning that says "if this could hardly be done by humans, then it should have been made by the aliens" (what neither you nor me are saying).

Thanks Naemanson, we cross-posted above !

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 09:01 AM

I'm sorry Andres, I should have actually looked at the site you posted. I promised myself I would look at it later. That's what I get for skimming rather than taking my time.

I've been crunching numbers for SETI for a long time now. I have donated 9,566 hours of CPU time to them and completed 158 work units. It takes my computer, a 450 MgHz machine, about 60 hours to crunch through the 340 kilobytes of data. I feel like I actually doing something important with this thing. It certainly beats playing games but, of course, can't hold a candle to participating in the Mudcat.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 09:11 AM

Hey guys,

Lots more great stuff. Thanks. Congrats to LJC for bringing in the vibratory stuff. It's my impression that these vehicles (the first one anyway) had some way of isolating themselves entirely from our normal reality, because given the speed at which it moved at certain times it would certainly have started burning itself up in the atmosphere, had it been subject to the normal friction of something passing through the atmosphere. It did not do that at all, nor did it appear to cause any disturbance to the air, sonic boom or anything else like that.

Auras? Hell, I can even see those occassionally under the right light conditions. Auras ain't no big deal. They can be detected in a number of ways.

I will be out all day at an RC sailboat regatta. Weather looks good. See you tonight sometime.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 07:00 PM

Why are saints portrayed with halos?...maybe because someone with eyes as bad as mine saw a guy standing in front of a candle while they were in a religious mood..*shrug*

Why do you feel more comfortable with certain people immediately upon meeting them than with certain others?...because they smile?..because their body language is nicer?...etc....

"modern physics, which has hypothesized "...sorry,physics doesn't hypothesize ANYTHING...a few physicists may have presented something like that...but that doesn't make them accepted...Nobel Prize winners(Linus Pauling) have had 'theories' about vitamin C (outside his field)....but they haven't convinced all the other scientists

be careful that your speculations do not violate the rules of logic

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 07:21 PM

Bill D,

What good are rules if you can't break them every chance you get? We wouldn't be flying today if someone hadn't decided to try to find a way to violate the laws of gravity. Granted, they used other physical laws to do it, but who knows what other physical laws there could be that would make things that we now consider fantastic to be possible. I don't think we know all of the laws of physics yet, do you?

Only those who can see the invisible can do the impossible.

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: little john cameron
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 09:04 PM

How about Planck's Hypothesis, was he not a physicist?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 09:11 PM

*smile*...big difference between investigating physics and believing in your own hypotheses before they have been tested....

(and you don't violate the law of Gravity...you overcome it!)..and you need to be careful what you mean by 'rules'...a rule in a game or social situation can easily be broken, whereas rules of logic cannot...You can ignore them, but you can't change or evade them...Thus, it is possible to be absolutely correct in a theory, but for bad reasons...or to use perfectly consistent reasoning and be wrong because you started with incorrect premises..etc, etc...

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 09:12 PM

Don't you just love Quantum Physics!!!

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 09:14 PM

Sorry. My HTML is all over the place tonight!!! It should have been:

Don't you just love...etc.

B.
(I hope)

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 09:27 PM

Brendy, yes, I do love Quantum Physics (what I understand of it).

Bill D, I have spent a lifetime overcoming odds that to others would seem impossible by doing precisely that, by changing and evading the rules of logic. The history of my life is proof that it can be done. Who decided on these rules, anyway, and who is going to try to enforce them? They may work for you, and maybe that's a good thing, but they have never worked for me, and I think I prefer it that way.

Best wishes,

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: little john cameron
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 09:29 PM

Ah never said he was right ah said he was a physicist wi a hypothesis

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 09:35 PM

To quote Bob Dylan (which I love to do): "I believe in the impossible, you know that I do."

Bob is right.

Today's scientific assumptions will soon be added to and modified, and sometimes discredited and discarded, by new scientific discoveries. This has been the case throughout history. Modern physics has already thrown much of the old Newtonian model of reality on its ear.

Numerous things are considered impossible by most people until somebody does them...and then, if and only if that somebody gains public notice and acceptance. If she (I say "she", just to break a certain habit that's prevalent out there...) doesn't gain general notice and acceptance, then those things continue to be considered impossible by the authorities and the general public.

Here's an example of something like that:

Shortly after the Spanish-American War in 1898, a Cuban doctor proposed the theory that yellow fever was being transmitted to people through mosquito bites...an unheard-of notion at the time. Yellow fever was a scourge in Cuba, particularly to visiting American troops.

Virtually the entire existing medical and scientific community in both the USA and Cuba absolutely ridiculed and vilified him for even suggesting such a ridiculous notion. The general opinion was that it was unsanitary living conditions, bad food, and impure water that caused yellow fever.

Eventually the US Army medical staff decided to shut up this lone dissenter once and for all by conducting a test. Two groups of soldiers were sequestered in tents for an extended period of time. The first set of tents was absolutely filthy...even human excrement and rotting carrion was liberally rubbed on the floors and walls (pity the poor guys inside those tents!)...but they were very well sealed with screens so no mosquitos could enter.

The second set of tents was kept scrupulously clean, but had openings to allow mosquitos to enter.

After a testing period of a few weeks, not one soldier in the filthy but screened tents came down with yellow fever. Numerous soldiers from the clean tents did contract yellow fever. Bingo! Case closed. The Army set about at once eliminating mosquitos by removing sources of stagnant water or coating such water with a thin layer of oil to kill the mosquito larvae. During the next 12 months they drastically reduced yellow fever in the island of Cuba, especially in Havana, by this approach.

The REALLY ASTOUNDING postscript to this, however, is that the general medical community in North America (outside of the Army), and the media continued to hound and ridicule this Cuban scientist for some considerable time after the aforementioned experiment had confirmed the truth of his theory. It took several years before his views received general acceptance...and became the NEW orthodoxy.

Point is...old mental habits die hard.

We will one day have faster than light travel, auric diagnosis of illness (physical or mental or spiritual), and all kinds of things that are presently considered impossible by most scientists. We will also have brotherhood and equality on this planet, and eliminate poverty and war...and that's also considered impossible by cynics everywhere.

Or...we'll blow ourselves up and die from pollution and other assorted follies...all in service to the dollar and military supremacy.

The choice is yours and mine.

I believe in the impossible, you know that I do. I've already seen the possible, and I am less than enormously impressed.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: little john cameron
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 09:37 PM

http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Escamillo
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 10:29 PM

I like people who beleive in the "impossible", who have hopes, as long as they don't try to sell me their books and T-shirts, and as long as they don't blame scientists for not acheiveing those impossibles yet.

Dodecaphonism was a "no-no". Non-tonal music was an aberration. Until someone demonstrated that music could be made another way. I would be eagerly waiting for someone to demonstrate what we consider impossible. AND if someone shows me a viable way of reasoning, not based in fallacies, I would work hard to help him/her give birth to his discoveries.

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 10:48 PM

Y un abrazo a usted, Andres...gracias!

What is dodecaphonism?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: sophocleese
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 10:56 PM

A wild stab at the term, Little Hawk, comes out as 20 tones or noises. I'd guess its a 20 toned scale instead of a 12 tone scale. Either that or its the mating call of the dodo bird, which is now extinct.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 11:26 PM

There is such a beast as an Online Dictionary, LH

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: sophocleese
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 11:32 PM

Oops damn, I made a wrong guess. I figured on this thread it wouldn't matter if I didn't check another source but just made up my own language rules. Seemed logical to me.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Escamillo
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 11:36 PM

From the Greek dö deká and Phonos (twelve sounds), dodecafonism is the name given to the system of 12 notes in music composition, which are the same 12 semitones of the classical well-tempered scale, but used independently of any grouping or relationship (no tonic, dominant, etc) but only a SERIES of sounds, or a sound base for the construction of many SERIES, with which music can be made.

Serialism (the use of subsets of those 12 sounds in particular orders) is what governs a great part of modern academic works. Arnold Schoenberg was the father of dodecafonism, about whom you may find a good article in This clicky thing

One can like this music or not, but it is a good example of things that were considered absurd and impossible circa 1911 when Schoenberg invented it, but was finally widely accepted.

However, the similarity with pseudo-science and science ends here. He was not a pseudo-musician, he was an important musician and tonal composer, he knew everything about scales and modes before inventing a new way of expression.

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Rana
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 11:42 PM

Now wasn't it the White Queen who believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast?

Rana

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: sophocleese
Date: 19 Aug 00 - 11:43 PM

So that time when I was very nervous and was told my singing was "Very Schoenberg" it wasn't a compliment?

Drat!

Thanks Andres.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 12:29 AM

Oh, I don't think it really matters, soph. When it comes to definitions, that is.

Especially when it pertains to crop circles in Orillia.

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 02:50 AM

Escamillo,

You say are eagerly awaiting the demonstration of something that we consider impossible. I can't predict which of the currently impossible things will become possible in either the near or distant future (and if I could, I certainly wouldn't tell anyone about it ;). However, I can point to quite a lot of things that were formerly considered impossible, that we now take for granted. You are using one such example right now.

Best regards,

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 03:09 AM

When was it considered impossible?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 03:29 AM

Before it was considered possible.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Escamillo
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 04:23 AM

Carol said: "I can point to quite a lot of things that were formerly considered impossible, that we now take for granted. "

Yes Carol, that is what I would like to see: the impossible dreams become realities, but how many of those things were demonstrated or put in practice by self-educated(?) people, who bypassed the scientific methods, or studied unrelated matters, not to mention Von Danikens and commercial fortune-seekers ? Let's try to recall one. None appears. When something important was discovered, it came from scientists and knowledgeable people, as the case of dodecafonism I mentioned above.

There is an interesting idea from the great Isaac Asimov (who was a believer in extraterrestrial life as well as a UFO detractor):

Arthur Clarke's Law of the Science Establishment: When a young and still unrecognized scientist states a weird theory which produces a negative reaction in the established old scientists community, there are high probabilities that his/her theory is correct.

Isaac Asimov's Corollary : yes, but when that weird theory is widely supported and acclaimed by the masses of the general public, then it is far more probable that the old scientists are right, after all.

Un abrazo - Andrés (not a scientist, unfortunately);)

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 05:18 AM

Escamillo, I believe that Thomas Edison was largely self educated. As a child he was schooled at home. My understanding is that at least his early research was done independently. In fact, I think that many inventors in earlier times did their research independently. Sometimes it's necessary to be unshackled by any outside agency for true creative genius to take place.

Best regards,

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 08:56 AM

Carol - I think you are right about Edison. However, he strictly followed the scientific method and worked tirelessly to perfect his inventions. And he based his work on the work of scientists, not popular media.

As an example, People said you could not use electricity to light a city. Edison proved them wrong. However he was convinced that direct current was the best method. He was wrong but he worked very hard to show that alternating current was too dangerous. (As an aside: Do you know what he invented to prove his point? The Electric Chair!)

Edison was not a scientist. He was a technician and an experimenter. Down through history there have been plenty of people who say things cannot be. Fortunately there are plenty of people who do not listen.

There is an important difference between what Carol and Andres are talking about. The pseudoscientists resist a complete scientific analysis of their claims. They rely on the acceptance of a populace who wants to believe them. (Unfortunately they are making money off that populace which keeps them from revealing how they do what they do)

The scientists on the other hand want to see the pseudosciences explained. If it turns out to be possible to use telepathy then that will open up a whole new field of study and understanding. If it turns out that the UFO's are real then think of what that would mean to this world.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 01:35 PM

*sigh*...Carol...I bring a **formal** use of the word 'logic' to the discussion, you reply with a 'popular' use...we cannot talk about it much this way....I repeat, you do not 'break' the rules of logic, what you have done...admirably..... in your life is overcome difficulties and go against 'odds' or popular wisdom...(not knowing the details, I can't say exactly)...my quibble is with those who claim to USE logic, and do it incorrectly...

If someone says, "I believe" in'X', I cant argue with him...it is his privilege...but if he says.."I saw 'this', and 'that' didn't happen, therefore 'X' is true, then he can be shown to be using either correct or incorrect logic...but not necessarily proven right or wrong. And IF his logic is correct, he may still be wrong, because 'that' may have indeed happened, and he missed it...etc...

(and no one exactly 'invented' those 'rules'...they have just been refined over time and names given to them...Laws of physics may be 'better understood' as time passes...not changed...but laws of logic just *are*...)

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 05:28 PM

Bill D, was that the sigh of a martyr? ; )

I guess I have no real argument with you because I will never claim to use logic, either correctly or incorrectly. (However, when you say the rules of logic "just are", how is that different from someone saying non-terrestrial intelligences "just are"?)

Naemanson,

My only quibble with you is that what you call "pseudoscientists", I would call "charlatans". I am uncomfortable with the word pseudoscience because I think some people use it a little too liberally. I think that there are people who are doing legitimate research that is labeled pseudoscience by people who are unwilling or unable to accept it as a possibility within their accepted paradigm.

I think the difference is in the profit motive.

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 06:47 PM

Carol, I think charlatan carries a negative connotation that has no place in this discussion. I would agree to the use of the term as it relates to a specific individual such as Uri Geller. The people I am referring to as pseudoscientists are those who truly believe in what they are doing and could never conceive of using it for profit only. These people truly believe they are helping people.

I have a dear friend, my former voice teacher, who falls into this classification. She does voice analysis and reads auras, locates power centers in the earth and all that other stuff. We love each other as only the closest friends can but we also understand each other's position on this subject. She knows she will never convince me to change my mind without an accurate unbiased experiment and I know that she will never change her mind. Null set. We cancel each other out and maintain a healthy friendship.

The charlatan, on the other hand sees the believers as sheep ready for the clippers. No device is too low to use to take their money and explain away why the result was not as intended.

I'll let Bill address the subject of logic. He has done a great job so far.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 06:57 PM

Ah yes! The profit motive. That and the unhealthy desire for excessive accumulation of temporal power are the primary forces presently threatening life on this planet, and retarding the application of real scientific progress in a great many areas.

Not that it's wrong to make a profit...I certainly try to do so when running my export business, but I don't destroy nature and use 3rd World people as slave labour while doing so.

If the profit motive were not the dominant factor in high level decisions in our society, we would not presently be burning petroleum products in the form of fossil fuel...we would be using them to make much more valuable synthetic products (plastics, etc.), and deriving our propulsion energy from non-polluting sources. This could have been done decades ago.

We would not be embargoing Cuba (they interfered with the profits of some very big players in the USA). Cuba would most likely be a valued friend and partner of the USA.

We would be providing free health care for everyone.

Point is, the DOMINANT factor in doing anything should be the accomplishment itself...to do something which is valuable and beneficial to everyone concerned, not just to a few CEO's and stockholders. Secondary to that, one would of course try to make a profit in the process, which would be pretty straightforward, given that one was rendering a valuable service.

We would build cities for the health and happiness of human beings, not automobiles.

We would provide a hell of a lot more public mass transit in North America.

And so on.

Who is presently running this planet? The spiritual blood brothers of the Ferengi, the most morally corrupt aliens on Star Trek. "Rules of Acquisition"...that is the credo of our society. He who dies with the most toys wins. Shame, shame, shame.

Brendy - I didn't know there was an online dictionary...besides, it's more fun to just ask. It stimulates conversation. I could phone out for groceries too, but I prefer to go downtown and actually buy them firsthand. I could watch music videos, but I prefer to see a live show. I could have virtual sex, but I prefer the real thing.

"Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!"

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 07:26 PM

And you could have a virtual life.

And go virtually live it.

Before you virtually bore us to death.

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Alice
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 08:27 PM

GUEST Lyle, I am a supporter of CSICOP, also. I donated to James Randi's educational foundation, even on my meager income. My web page on Fraud, Quacks, and Cults has been online since 1998. Apart from Wolfgang, I did not know how many others on the Mudcat were aware of the Skeptical Inquirer.

Anyone interested in making a cool million should check this out. The $1,000,000 Paranormal challenge.

always in awe of the mysterious wonderland,

Alice

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 08:48 PM

*big grin*...Martyrdom is highly overrated,,,,that was the sigh of someone who used to have to explain the point to freshmen in college...and STILL have them repeat the wrong answer on tests...

I suspect it would make more sense to compare the rules of logic to those of math. 3+2=5...always...you don't get to choose whether it will be 4.83 on Sundays after supper...logic is like that. Logic is NOT homey sayings like Abe Lincoln used..that is 'folk wisdom'.

If I say there is a dog in front of the house, we can both go look, since, presumably we both recognize dogs...and can compare notes. It follows that we 'should' be able to identify space aliens the same way...except that we have no standard...and they never seem to wait to be identified..(and, we can look around the area for the dog..not sure where to look for aliens who don't wait){ the problem of investigating, ghosts, elves, spirits, ESP, gods, auras, Tarot cards, etc., is a bit different, since people can't seem to agree on what would count as evidence..[evidence of 'dogs' is pretty well standard..*grin*]

Now, as a matter of interest, I am confident that somewhere in the universe there ARE other intelligent beings...just too big a place not to be....but I am NOT convinced that they could get to us, or, if they could, that they HAVE!...the same math that makes me bet they exist also makes me aware of how hard it is to GO between the stars. Better science than ours? Perhaps...sure hope they quit playing games and drop in and show us before I die.....

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 09:00 PM

- Click here -

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Sorcha
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 09:03 PM

BillD, it does help to connect LOGIC to Math. Maybe Carol can understand this--if "A" is true, and "B" is true, then a conclusion--"C" is true. If either A or B is false, then C must also be false, because of false premises. We must start from valid data if we are to have valid conclusions. Carol, Rules of Logic ARE, just like gravity IS,or as Bill says, 2 + 3 ALWAYS equals 5, at least in THIS Universe. Logic is not Common Sense, nor is it Folk Wisdom. Logic is a special kind of math which uses words instead of numbers.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Cap't Bob
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 09:16 PM

The circles are actually caused by "side hill gougers" ~ These animals have evolved traits that make them highly adapted for walking on hill sides. Legs on one side shorter than legs on the other side. Occasionally they wander out onto flat land where they continually walk in circles. Their only hope for escape is to run faster and faster until the centrifugal force is great enough to propel them to a hill side. Apparently the "side hill gouger" in this case had to make three attempts before he escaped to his hillside domain.

Cap't Bob

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 09:24 PM

....And as if by magic....

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Alice
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 09:46 PM

another crop circle photo...

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Alice
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 09:56 PM

and...www.circlemakers.org Yes, they are works of art, deliberately made by human artists. At the time crop circles began to appear, I was in fine arts school. The trends at that time were going toward performance art, conceptual art, site-specific art, and earthworks, like Cristo's wrappings and Spiral Jetty. The crop circle makers were and are artists working in this genre of contemporary art.

Alice

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 09:56 PM

Bill D,

I think I understand now why logic doesn't work for me. I can count a pile of something ten times and come up with a different number every time. I say this humorously, but it is also true. Numbers are very amorphous things to me. I'm sure this makes no sense to you at all, but I think it has something to do with the way my brain is wired.

I also want to say that I'm not advocating either for or against any of the paranormal concepts that have been brought up in this thread. I just had some problems with the way things were worded in some of the posts.

Naemanson,

Does your friend call herself a scientist? If she does, then I concede your point. If she doesn't, then I still have a problem with the word pseudoscientist. Perhaps metaphysician would be a better word.

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 09:59 PM

Brendy - Thanks for the compliment.

I looked up the two addresses you listed. Very interesting. By golly, maybe it is "side-hill gougers" making some of those crop circles! Ha Ha. Do the males run clockwise or counter-clockwise?

As for the other one, on those guys who spend their free nights creating beautiful crop circles...pretty impressive. Downright astounding, in fact. It's almost more extraordinary in a sense than if aliens had done it. I mean, look at the time and trouble involved. It doesn't surprise me that they can't find women who want to do this. I've noticed all my life that women are generally a whole lot more mature than men (with some notable individual exceptions, of course).

Curiously enough, the hoaxers seem to have had some UFO encounters themselves lately. Stranger and stranger...maybe the aliens are trying to figure out who is making crop circles and why. Ha ha. If so, they no doubt think it's a religious ritual of some kind.

I had some friends once who went to a great deal of trouble creating what appeared to be a comatose body lying on a road at night, just around a hairpin turn. They made a dummy with some clothing and stuffing and laid it across the road. Meanwhile, another guy hid in the bushes dressed exactly like the dummy. In due course of time a car came around the corner and ran over the dummy. The driver screeched to a halt 15 or 20 feet down the road. The dummy was whisked off in an instant by a pull rope, and the non-dummy quickly lay in the road in its place. My friends had conveniently made tire marks across his clothing beforehand, one across his chest, and one across his legs.

The driver came rushing over, yelling "Oh my God, oh my God..."

As the poor man bent down to take a closer look, the supposed victim stood up, dusted off his clothing, and said "Why the hell don't you watch where you're driving!" He then walked away, leaving a very upset, virtually incoherent man standing in the road.

My sick friends thought this was pretty funny, but they were only 17 at the time, so I guess I can forgive them.

So, that was a hoax. A well planned one. Like the crop circles those guys did. However, not every body lying across a road is therefore a hoax. Perhaps the same can be said of crop circles...or UFO's...or anything else unusual that you could care to mention.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Alice
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 10:09 PM

Little Hawk, did you read how you, too, can become a circle maker? Cool, eh! It's at the circlemakers website link I provided. Here's a quote:
-------

This site is designed and maintained by artist and circlemakerJohn Lundberg [left] at developmental labs in London, UK. Welcome to the 'circlemakers' website. Within this site you will find a wealth of information by and about England's crop circlemakers. You'll be able to learn how to become a circlemaker using our easy to follow 'Beginners Guide'. Read about the history of circlemaking, 'hear' a circle being made and learn about some of the weird experiences the circlemakers have encountered whilst out making formations and gain some insight into 'why' this tight band of individuals spend their summers out in the fields of England flattening cereal crops in various intricate patterns! There's loads of stuff here, so stop loitering and explore the site. Don't forget to sign the guestbook before you leave... see you in the fields.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 10:14 PM

Metaphysician? I didn't know metas ever got sick! *BG*

My friend is a believer in pseudoscience not a "researcher" though recent reports are that she's writing a book and may be crossing the line. I do know that she is convinced she is doing good with her work.

Perhaps a key here is the term researcher. How do these conepts in pseudoscience come about. Where do they come from? In real science a learned person comes up with a hypothesis based on an observation. S/he then designs a test to see if that hypothesis is true. If, after extensive testing, it is proved true s/he publishes the findings and other scientists try it out. It may fit into whatever they are working on and be helpful. Or it may throw all their work into the trash. Either way science has marched on.

Would someone, not a skeptic, please provide a similar type of explanation for where the concepts and beliefs of pseudoscience come from?

Oh, and BTW, one does not "believe in" science. Science is an accumulation of proven facts and unporoved hypotheses.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 10:19 PM

Don't know if this guy's a sceptic, or not, Naemanson, but, Click here anyway.

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 10:19 PM

Little Hawk, was that some logic I detected in your last paragraph?

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 10:29 PM

Naemanson, once again, I have a problem with your wording. I think it might be instructive to look up the word "metaphysics" in your cyber-dictionary. I think that most people like your friend consider themselves to be students of that school of thought, rather that either real, or pseudo, science. There is a real difference there. Numbers may be amorphous to me, but words are not.

Best wishes,

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Brendy
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 10:30 PM

This one isn't as long winded, I think.

B.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 10:34 PM

Thanks Alice, sounds like a great website. I'll take a look.

Naemanson - when I say that someone "believes" in science, all I mean to say is that he believes in the scientific approach to existence more than he believes in any other kind of approach to existence...such as a political, emotional, cultural, artistic, religious, spiritual or romantic approach to existence. He might be inclined to bury his face in issues of "Popular Mechanics" or "Science Digest" or whatever, rather than reading biographies, fiction, history, fantasy or some other subject.

Language is never a perfect tool, but that's what I meant.

He would rather absorb himself in science than anything else...that's what I mean by a guy who believes in science.

I was just such a guy until about age 18. I still believe in science, but I have a considerably greater interest in a number of other things now, science notwithstanding.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Aug 00 - 10:40 PM

well...I JUST stumbled on this site by the NSA which is a release of documents about UFOs under the Freedom of Information Act...have had NO time to read any...(PDF format)...maybe something interesting

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Escamillo
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 12:35 AM

LOL, Capt'n Bob !!

I think someone should should start a thread named "Explaining the Unexplained" or something similar, and give us a space for our theories. Can you imagine how Spaw would explain the cause of AURAS ? Or what's the real reason why aliens don't show up ?

To all: Please don't post here about this, because we would rapidly mess up this serious discussion, but.. (LOL) wouldn't that thread be funny ??

Carol, I guess I can understand your view of logic, I think it's part of a sensible spirit, but when we are trying to find true facts, we are stuck to the pure logic, no matter how cold it could appear. If we were discussing wether these "unexplained" (or well explained) things are desirable or not, it would be a different story. I personally would be the happiest man in Universe the day aliens say HI! (or the Side Hill Gougers make contact)

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Grab
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 09:23 AM

LittleHawk, I know exactly what you mean by a "believer" in science. That's the scientific orthodoxy which was (and is still, to some extent) popular. However, given the number of improbable theories which are true, or at least match the evidence (particle/wave duality, superstring theory, multidimensional space, etc) then I think physical scientists are better at this now.

The problem is that the burden of proof lies on the person with the new idea. If you take us "sceptics" who require some visible/tangible/logical proof to be 100% convinced as the "orthodoxy" on this, it's up to you (or other "visionaries") to explain why the orthodoxy is wrong and to provide proof of this, before your new beliefs become popularly accepted. Once proof is available, rest assured that I will be quite convinced.

But as you yourself said above, you require PROOF. Until the yellow fever experiment was conducted, the doctor's theory was just a theory - it wasn't until the experiment was a success that it was shown to be true. Pasteur's work on disease went much the same way. But these are just the success stories, where the early adoption could have been beneficial. Consider the theories which may have seemed logical at the time, but which never made it into the orthodoxy, because they couldn't be proved. Galvani's experiments with corpses to "create life"? Grinding up human bones to make effective "medicine" from the powder? The "powder of sympathy" which Dava Sobel describes in "Longitude"? All featured in English scientific/medical culture in the 18th and 19th centuries, and seemed eminently logical at the time (at least to a small group of people practising them), but I doubt you'd seriously consider these to be worthy entries to a science book today!

And here's the rub. If dowsing, crop circles, UFOs, crystal healing, etc can be proved to be true, given suitable experiments, then they'll be believed (it may take some time for the word to go around, viz your doctor, but it WILL happen). But until that day, they'll stay as theories which may explain the facts, but can't yet be proven. No more, and no less.

There've been a few attempts to prove/disprove stuff. The problem is that there's either the chance of blind luck (given 10 bags of which only 1 contains a crystal, which one heals best? 10% chance of success there), or in the case of failure the "alternative" theorist can say "Oh, but you didn't follow the rules I said you had to stick to" (a recent test of Breatharianism, a cult which claims you don't need to eat, got stuck with this). To do the experiment, you need a true dispassionate test in which the results can be proven beyond reasonable doubt to be true, and in which neither side can claim the other has "weighted" the odds.

Grab.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Alice
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 10:11 AM

This discussion reminds me of the young American Science Fair student who did her experiment on "therapeutic touch". Her subjects, all self proclaimed practitioners, who did not even get the 50% correct that guessing would have achieved, were of the opinion they performed rather well. Her comment - besides not being able to do what they claimed, they don't even understand statistics.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: little john cameron
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 11:17 AM

Here's a wee story ah send tae mah pals in Dundee'Dinnae mind the the typin as a didnae ken hoo tae edit if ah made a mistake.

While ah wis sittin' here huv'n a pint ah wiz listenin' tae the wireless an' there wiz a story oan that micht be of interest tae ye especially tae JJ. see'in as how he works at NASA. If ye remember that when Neil Armstrong did his famous walk on the moon an said "a small step fur man etc." when he wiz signin' aff tae mission control he made the enigmatic statement"Goodnight Mrs Grabowsky. When he wiz asked whit he meant he widn'y say.Noo that aboot 35yrs huv' gone by an' the Grabowsky's are gone, when he wiz asked again he finally decided tae tell whit he meant.When he wiz a youngster he wiz playin' aboot the Grabowsky hoose an he heard an argument between Mr an Mrs G. Mrs G wiz shoutin' tae Mr G "Oral Sex!!Aye ye'll get Oral Sex when that young fella' next door walks on the moon" So there it is the secret is oot!! Ah hope this dizny get clipped as it's a good story. W.y. PS, Watch oot fur flyin' pigs next!!!

LJC

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 12:13 PM

Carol - you should've met me at age 15 or 16. I was so logical it would have made your head spin. It got me very good marks in school, but it did not make me happy.

Sounds like Mrs Grabowsky was the logical type too!

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Wolfgang
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 05:50 AM

Alice, I also had that feeling: We are not alone!

Little Hawk, I could tell you about layers of drops of water in an otherwise cloudless night or of layers of dust which let the sky visible but act as a partial mirror for light from the earth. I could hint that laser light may have been hired for a private party and not come from a disco, but that'd be of no use. You don't seem to have been in the least impressed that I was able to come up with a possible explanation for your perception that was different from the ones you had mentioned and did cover all the details you had mentioned so far. I've talked to a lot of credulists and I know how it goes. I present one explanation after the other only to be told: 'But how do you explain this...?' It has no end if I don't stop.

But your later statements lead me to ponder a bit about science. Science is not a belief system like faiths for it doesn't cover all aspects of life. There are so many questions in my life I do not turn to science for answers: Why do I like my friends? What makes me happy? Why do I love one song more than another? What makes me to support one special football (soccer) team? What makes life worth living? To be disappointed that science has no answers to these and similar questions only shows a wrong understanding of science. Science or logical thinking is not supposed to make happy (my pocket calculator doesn't stroke me when I'm unhappy but then I never did expect that from it). I know happy and unhappy scientists and happy and unhappy nonscientists. Science is a method of investigation, no more but also no less, and like any method of investigation it cannot be applied to all questions. It is just the best method I know of for many questions and it can explain some more things than some like to believe.

Like, e.g., auras and haloes. Yes, I often see what you call auras, I demonstrate in my lecture how to get that percept and then I tell how you can explain it with a little knowledge from physiology of vision (adaptation of cells in the visual system in combination with minor eye movements; can lead to beautiful colour effects which change over time). And as for haloes, the only remaining mystery for me is what these persons had in them that made others to stare at them over a prolonged time without making saccades.
Science, to me, just doesn't line up answers to those mysteries says hesperis above. Wrong, it does but you don't know (and perhaps don't care). If I read pseodoscientific literature I often find statements like "scientist are baffled" "science knows no answer" and in about nine out of ten cases that is flatly wrong (and perhaps in ten out of ten and I don't know the explanation of the last ten percent). Yes, scientists never agree about all details of an explanation, so in this sense a case is never completely settled, but in most of these cases there is an explanation that satisfies those who have studied the phenomenon but it cannot be found in the parascientific literature.
That's one of the big differences between science and parascience. In the scientific literature about paranormal phenomena the paranormal explanation is mentioned and referenced and then it is explained why and by which arguments another explanation is considered more likely. In the popular parascientific literature there is too often the (or: a) scientific explanation neither mentioned nor referenced. But you might read the sentence: 'Science has found no explanation' when the author just has not bothered to look.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 06:24 AM

Wolfgang,

Thank you very much for taking the time and making the effort to explain your point of view. It has been interesting, even exciting, to read your posts.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Wolfgang
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 07:04 AM

Thanks for telling me, Sourdough, for I was this morning very near to point of not posting anymore to these threads.
Wolfgang

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Escamillo
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 07:40 AM

I'm sure all of us appreciate those efforts, Wolfgang, even those who don't agree, for this is what keeps discussions alive and all we can learn. Those with other points of view are appreciated too, as their are counterparts in the controversy ! Perhaps the thread is getting too long, and someone should initiate a saga.

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 11:43 AM

Hey, Wolfgang, don't be discouraged by my tenacity in holding to my own position. I thoroughly appreciate your well-thought comments. It's just that I actually had that experience, and that's why I have no doubt of my position. I realize that it's entirely different for anyone who hears about something secondhand.

My humorous comments in another thread were just for the sake of humour...which is its own justification.

Escamillo - you're right. This thread is getting too long. Maybe we should just bail out now.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: flattop
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 09:43 PM

I spoke with Colin McKim, Orillia's crop circle expert, tonight and he has a major scoop coming out in an article in tomorrow's paper.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 01:18 AM

Ah, thanks, flattop. I will watch for it.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 04:50 AM

I have been waiting for a chance when I had enough tme to write about my own experience with the Loch Ness Monster. As the man in the back of the hall said excitedly, "Tonight's the night!!"

I was living in Boston when the Search for the Loch Ness Monster suddenly seemed to get real. What had happened was that the hints that there might actually be something worth investigating going on in Loch Ness began to intrigue scientists. The point here is that even people with a devotion to a rational approach to problems can become interested in things that are considered sensational - but only if the topics meet a certain level of sensibleness.

What had happened was that some people had done some very interesting mental exercises as well as some on-site investigation and their results were causing at least some poeple, the more open-minded, to rethinnk old opinions.

One group began with the assumption that the Loch Ness monster seen by St. Columba in the 13 or 13th century was unlikely to be the one being sighted in this century. Therefore, there must be a breeding population. Population biologists theorized the number of Nessies that would be needed to provide the genetic variability and the security to last for more than a millenium. Having done that, there were two things that came to mind. Was there enough biomass in the loch to support the school of Nessies? and why haven't we found their bones. These large animals dying there presumably over thousands of years should have built up a layer of bones but none have been found.

The survey of the biomass showed that there was enough to support the Nessies but there was no clearly satisfying answer to that. THe bottom of the loch is a steep "V" underwater valley and the bottom had not been explored. Maybe searching the bottom for bones would lead to a definitive result.

Somewhere around this time, a researcher using automatic equipment took an underwater photo of looked to be a fin of a Plesiorsorus-type animal. Photo interpreters tried to get every bit of information out of that photo. They looked at things such as the light level reflected from the possible fin. They tried to extrapolate the distance from the lens since they knew the power of the light source. Knowing the distance, they could begin to make estimates of the size of the mystery object. They knew the size of the lens so they could tell the angle of its opening. Given that, they could calculate what it takes to fill the camera field at the distance the light told them the fin was from the lens.

Of course, all of this was inexact reasoning but it was a disciplined kind of thinking.

The late Harold Edgerton is one of the finest examples of the kind of scientist who could harness together his wonder and his couriousity to his scientific training. When he was in college working a summer job as a telephone lineman in the American midwest, he saw what happened during lightning flashes at night. He saw that it froze action for that instant. Years later, he took that curious observation and used it to develop the strobe light.

He also developed a variety of other technologies based on his understanding of basic scientific principles. For instance, the sidescan sonar we used for the search of the Hunley was a DOc Edgerton device and it is a standard oceonographic tool today as are airport landing lights, strobe photography and much more. What all these things had in common were that they were tools for investigating the world. Strobe photography, which he developed, told us of things that went on in a falling drop of milk or a bullet going through an apple that no one knew before. His photogrpahy taught engineers a great deal about the behaviour of materials.

Anyway, DOc Edgerton became intereted in the possibilitiy that there was a Loch Ness monster or at least something unexplained going on at Loch Ness and he got involved in the search. This didn't mean that he believed in a monster, just that the hints that something was going on there made it worthwhile investigating. The resulting study found nothing but here a curious, well-trained scientist investigating what had been an off-the-wall claim because evidence had reached a level where it intrigued him. A good scientist is by definition curious but he can not spend his time, energy and resources on will o the wisp ideas.

I like the story of the Loch Ness monster even if it led nowhere because it does give an idea of how an open-minded scientist approaches the world. People who say that scientists are close-minded people who close themselves off to observation maybe just has not met the right kind of scientists.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 05:15 AM

Einstein was a visionary, but he was not immediately accepted by the rest of the scientific community.

Also, did you know that whenever he had a problem that he couldn't get past, he would take a nap? Upon awakening, he would find that the answer had come to him in his sleep. How scientific is that?

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Escamillo
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 06:11 AM

Carol, if you allow me, I have some remarks on that:
"Einstein was a visionary, but he was not immediately accepted by the rest of the scientific community. "
- That's correct, and it is the normal way that great scientific discoveries are finally accepted. And that doesn't mean that scientist are less open-minded than common people, it is just that they are very strict in their analysis of any new theory.

".. the answer had come to him in his sleep. How scientific is that? "
- That's scientific too :) When I don't find a solution to a programming problem, I sleep 9 hours! If the problem blocks me awake, a pint of Guinness is very helpful, and that constitutes a complete scientific method !

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 07:25 AM

Un abrazo yourself, Andres.

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: little john cameron
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 12:22 PM

Ah wis jist wonderin tae masel,has oney o ye read aboot Edgar Cayce?Noo,there wis an awfy strange man. LJC

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 02:46 PM

Yeah, I read a bunch of Edgar Cayce stuff. Very interesting man. I recommend to anyone, check it out if you can find the time. Plenty of stuff about "past" lives there.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 07:59 PM

I am VERY grateful to folks like Wolfgang...who seem to be able to make my points better than I could myself..*smile*....in person, I could have a discussion and say a LOT more...but composing clear and well-phrased thoughts at the computer is a lot of work......I know none of us are likely to change each other's minds with threads like this...I suppose we simply want to be counted.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 09:50 PM

Yeah, that's about it. We all just say our piece, for what it's worth. I'm not (honestly) in this world to change anyone but myself, I just enjoy talking about certain things, so I do...and sometimes I get impassioned on the subject of whatever. It's good to hear all sides.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: catspaw49
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 10:46 PM

I have actively NOT participated here because I saw no impact I could make. Bill D was also a philosophy major and explains logic in a fine manner and Wolfgang......Well, I don't have words to say how well you have made your points and it would be folly for me to believe that anyone, especially me, could do better. Many others have contributed insights as well and I have enjoyed this lurking immensely. As the thread winds down, I have a few small comments, not even worth the 2 cents I'm assigning to them, but what the hell.....

Anyone who believes that a true scientist does NOT believe in the impossible is mistaken. The best also take great pains to view experimental results for what they are, even, and especially if, they disprove a particular theory. It is the essence of science to theorize and experiment and accept the reality to formulate new theory.

IMHO, the absolute greatest free thinker and most wondrous mind of the past century belonged to Richard Feynman, a Nobel physicist in Quantum Mechanics, artist, drummer, lecturer, and critical thinker. He professed to have no knowledge of the social side of life, and yet had one of the most beautiful and touching love affairs in history. "The Feynman Lectures" should be required reading in every school, no matter what the couse of study or major. He was never afraid to question anything and never so vain that he allowed reality to be negated by his own theories. And....he had a wondeful sense of humor to boot. For a lighter read, try, "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" or "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" Like most physicist, he believed in "elegant" solutions. The universe is simple and it exists in organized chaos......but we have not yet found all the keys to the filing system. We will never find them until and unless we apply the rules of experimentation and logic to that we believe is impossible.

Wolfgang, Bill, Grab, and others......you have my sincerest respect.

Spaw

Spaw

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Sourdough
Date: 27 Aug 00 - 01:54 AM

I can't agree with the posts that suggest that by taking the time to write here, we don't change minds. I can't be the only one who learns something from these posts other than ideas to buttress my own conclusions.

Sometimes, there is new information here, something I just didn't know, or an insight phrased with enough experience and care so that it is more than the repetition of a half-digested idea picked up from a magazine article or a television show. Perhaps I misunderstood. Maybe people weren't saying that changing others ideas is not really possible by communicating your own ideas, insights and reasoning. Wouldn't living there be living on a very bleak landscape?

I'll phrase this differently. How do you think people are convinced to change their minds?

Sourdough

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: flattop
Date: 27 Aug 00 - 08:58 AM

The new information from Colin McKim, who wrote the three original newspaper articles on the Orillia crop circles, is that two boy have admitted creating the crop circles. They got information from a science show on TV.

Quoting Colin: They used a rope to mark the circumference and a board to flatten the grain... They wanted to see if they could do it. They didn't know how perfect it was till the media took the (aerial) photo... The woman from Warminster said the boys flattened the grain a few days before it was discovered and rains that fell inbetween would have washed away any prints.

Colin told me on Friday night that the instructions for creating crop circles are on the Discovery Channel web site.

To me, the aerial photos show three circles that are less perfect than crop circles that I've seen on TV. All three are seriously lopsided. Following the horizontal line, the radius of the larger circle seems to be off at a ratio of approximately 17/21. It looks worse on the diagonal from top left to bottom right but perspective would have to be figured in.

Presumably, perfect Plutonian pranksters would use pristine parameters to create impeccable perimeter.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Naemanson
Date: 27 Aug 00 - 10:54 AM

Sourdough, people are convinced to change their minds all the time by discussion but almost never about a deeply held belief or something that touches their soul.

That is the tricky side of what we are discussing here. The peole on both sides of the issue find a great deal of comfort in what we believe in. There is no shaking that without something serious dislodging a person from that bedrock. There is a post in the Astrology thread that describes a very dramatic event through which one person was switched from one side to another. It is a story of horror and degradation. The victims were lucky to survive though there were none who emerged unscathed.

Basically people believe what they want to believe and there is no shaking that from them. The Amazing Randi once introduced a young psychic to the world. His ability was phenomenal. Every prediction was on the money. Peole flocked to see him. Then after a few weeks Randi and the "psychic" revealed on national TV that it was all a hoax. He was no more than a simple stage magician doing a few standard tricks. Do you think that changed anyone's mind? It didn't. In fact, people flocked to him even more after that for they figured he had been forced into the shamefull confession. The people "knew" he was for real and they wanted him to continue. They wouldn't listen to the news, to Randi, and surprisingly, to the psychic either.

I think this was done in Australia though I am certain the outcome would have been the same anywhere. Check out PBS's NOVA program on psychics.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Aug 00 - 03:44 PM

My hope, and really the only reason that I feel the need to post to these types of threads, is not to change anyone's mind about what they believe, but to help make a change in how we behave toward each other.

I think it is possible for people to have different beliefs, paradigms, attitudes, and ways of thinking, and still be kind and loving toward one another.

Sometimes we find it easier to judge people who think differently than we do and to treat them with less consideration than we would like to be treated with.

I know it requires more effort to be tolerant and to treat people who are different from us with kindness and understanding, but in my opinion, it's truly worth the effort.

Warmest wishes,

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Aug 00 - 03:59 PM

Good stuff, flattop. Thanks for the new info. We now know how those particular crop circles were created. It definitely hasn't been a waste, since it has stimulated all kinds of hopefully useful discussion which would not have occured otherwise. Colin's revelations about these particular crop circles being a hoax will probably simply be denied outright by a few people who went there and did ceremonies or whatever...you know how people can be. I still did see some extraterrestrial machines back in '69, but what the heck...we've already been over that from A to Z.

Sourdough - we definitely CAN change others, and we sometimes do by stating our opinions clearly and effectively. Other people have changed me more than once. And for the better. What I did mean to say was that it's not my business to change others, unless maybe they are willing to change or they are desirous of it. If so, great. If not, then I will let them be happy in their own chosen way.

The great danger with dictators, religious fanatics, political fanatics, or fanatics of any stripe is that they are absolutely determined to change EVERYONE...into their own chosen image...by any means possible. Or if not...watch your back. And that is bloody dangerous.

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Alice
Date: 27 Aug 00 - 04:16 PM

flattop, I posted the website for the original crop circle makers earlier in this thread. They are artists (and human beings). www.circlemakers.org

This thread was reminding me of something that happened in the '60's when there were many UFO and alien sci fi movies and books that were popular, and lots of folks "seeing" flying saucers. I was wondering if these particular crop circles had been made by youngsters or adults. When I was a kid, the radio and newspaper in our town reported a landing of a UFO witnessed by boys near our town. There was a spot on the earth where there were depressions from the legs of the flying saucer, and the parents called the sheriff in, who was followed by reporters. One newscaster got down and smelled one of the dimples in the dirt where a UFO leg had pressed in. Yup, it sure smells different. (-- A cat had just previously peed in that spot). -- The boys finally had to 'fess up, espcially after the cat pee UFO odor was broadcast. They just couldn't hold their giggles any longer, but knew they were in big trouble. They had done the trick to tease a little sister, telling her the whole story of seeing the UFO, showing her the landing site. She ran to her parents, and it was awhile before the boys were able to back out of the sticky situation once all the grown ups became involved.

I had an art history professor who was very clear in his dismissal of the misguided who can't understand that humans in ancient times were capable of building very complex and awesome buildings and artifacts. The dedication that people have to a belief, and the lengths they will go to worship or appease their deity, is great enough to achieve grand constructions without any "alien" help. Just think of how many people went to their deaths in Aztec human sacrifices. The ability for humans to do things unthinkable for us or to build complex constructions existed long before our more developed technology.

Alice

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Escamillo
Date: 27 Aug 00 - 10:45 PM

I agree that this kind of discussion can be a valuable school of tolerance for everybody. Because we always have an evil side, for example the evil side of the skeptics could be "I'll demonstrate your ignorance", and that of the beleivers could be "I'll demonstrate you are close-minded". But fortunately, we manage the conversation so as we all have learnt something, and this is wonderful, beyond the fact that the Orillia crop circles were a hoax or not. If the aliens were witnessing this discussion, as civilized as they are supposed to be, they would have been deeply satisfied.

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Aug 00 - 07:39 AM

Andres,

You have been a shining example of civility, and a perfect gentleman throughout these discussions. And I must say, very sincerely, that I respect and admire you for it.

Warmest regards,

Carol

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: Escamillo
Date: 28 Aug 00 - 01:12 PM

OOps.. (with one foot stepping on the other). You are so kind, Carol. Hope you don't change opinion when you hear me singing ;)

Un abrazo - Andrés

Subject: RE: 3 crop circles near Orillia
From: GUEST,Hippie
Date: 28 Aug 00 - 03:08 PM

My father told me about bizare circles that he had found in the bush when he was growing up near Sudbury. Apparrently all of the vegetation had been distroyed, and only asshes remain. Perhaps they are connected to these crop circles.