3 crop circles near Orillia

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