3 crop circles near Orillia

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

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

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

LJC

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

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

Sounds like Mrs Grabowsky was the logical type too!

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

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

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

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

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

Wolfgang

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

Wolfgang,

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

Sourdough

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

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

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

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

Un abrazo - Andrés

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sourdough

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

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

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

Carol

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

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

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

Un abrazo - Andrés

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

Un abrazo yourself, Andres.

Carol

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spaw

Spaw

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

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

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

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

Sourdough

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warmest wishes,

Carol

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alice

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

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

Un abrazo - Andrés

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

Andres,

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

Warmest regards,

Carol

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

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

Un abrazo - Andrés

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

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