3 crop circles near Orillia

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: 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: 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: GUEST,Lyle
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 11:09 PM

Beautiful, Wolfgang, beautiful!

Lyle Member, CSICOP

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: 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: 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 - 03:08 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.