All of the man-made crop circles committed by hoaxsters LOOK man-made, and are not perfectly symmetric like the circles which are made by unknown entitites.
Not true. I saw one demonstrated by college students that rivaled anything you can show me. Clean lines, complex geometry etc. It was even done at night in the dark.
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." James Madison, Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831
When Doug Bower and his co-conspirator Dave Chorley first created a representation of a flying saucer nest in a wheat field in Wiltshire, England, in 1976, they could not have foreseen that their work would become a cultural phenomenon.
Almost as soon as crop circles became public knowledge, they attracted a gaggle of self-appointed experts. An efflorescence of mystical and magical thinking, scientific and pseudo-scientific research, conspiracy theories and general pandemonium broke out. The patterns stamped in fields were treated as a lens through which the initiated could witness the activity of earth energies and ancient spirits, the anguish of Mother Earth in the face of impending ecological doom, and evidence of secret weapons testing and, of course, aliens. Today, one of the more vigorously promoted ideas is that they are messages, buried in complex numerological codes, concerning a Great Change connected to the pre-Columbian Mayan calendar and due to occur in 2012.
To appreciate how these exotic responses arose, we need to delve a little into history. Before todays circle-makers entered the picture, there had been scattered reports of odd patterns appearing in crops, ranging from 17th century pamphlets to an 1880 account in Nature to a letter from astronomer Patrick Moore printed in 1963 in New Scientist. In Australia, the mid- to late-1960s saw occasional reports of circles in crops, and they were often ascribed to UFO landings. At around the same time in England, the Wiltshire town of Warminster became a center of UFO-seeking sky watches and gave birth to its own rumors of crop circles, or saucer nests. None of these, unfortunately, was photographed.
It was such legends that Bower had in mind when, over a drink one evening in 1976, he suggested to his pal Chorley: Lets go over there and make it look like a flying saucer has landed. It was time, thought Doug, to see a saucer nest for himself.
Since then, crop circles have been reported worldwide in a multitude of crops. In southern England, which sees most activity, circle-makers tend to concentrate on canola, barley and wheat. These grow and are harvested in an overlapping progression: canola from April through May, barley throughout May and June, and wheat from June until early September. In recent years the occasional rudimentary pattern has been found in corn, extending the crop circle season as late as October. Since Bower and Chorleys circles appeared, the geometric designs have escalated in scale and complexity, as each year teams of anonymous circle-makers lay honey traps for New Age tourists.
A crucial clue to the circles allure lies in their geographical context. Wiltshire is the home of Stonehenge and an even more extensive stone circle in the village of Avebury. The rolling downs are dotted with burial mounds and solitary standing stones, which many believe to be connected by an extensive network of leys, or paths of energy linking these enchanted sites with others around the country. It is said that this vast network is overlaid in the form of sacred geometries. The region has also given rise to a rich folklore of spectral black dogs, headless coachmen and haunted houses.
Crop circles are a lens through which we can explore the nature and appeal of hoaxes. Fakes, counterfeits and forgeries are all around us in the everyday worldfrom dud $50 bills to spurious Picassos. Peoples motives for taking the unreal as real are easily discerned: we trust our currency, and many people would like to own a Picasso. The nebulous world of the anomalous and the paranormal is even richer soil for hoaxers. A large proportion of the population believes in ghosts, angels, UFOs and ET visitations, fairies, psychokinesis and other strange phenomena. These beliefs elude scientific examination and proof. And its just such proof that the hoaxer brings to the table for those hungry for evidence that their beliefs are not deluded.
False evidence intended to corroborate an existing legend is known to folklorists as ostension. This process also inevitably extends the legend. For, even if the evidence is eventually exposed as false, it will have affected peoples perceptions of the phenomenon it was intended to represent. Faked photographs of UFOs, Loch Ness monsters and ghosts generally fall under the heading of ostension. Another example is the series of photographs of fairies taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths at Cottingley, Yorkshire, between 1917 and 1920. These show that the motive for producing such evidence may come from belief, rather than from any wish to mislead or play pranks. One of the girls insisted till her dying day that she really had seen fairiesthe manufactured pictures were a memento of her real experience. And the photos were taken as genuine by such luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doylethe great exponent, in his Sherlock Holmes stories, of logic.
The desire to promote evidence of anomalous and paranormal events as genuine springs from deep human longings. One is a gesture toward rationalismthe notion that nothing is quite real unless its endorsed by reasoned argument, and underwritten by more or less scientific proofs. But the human soul longs for enchantment. Those who dont find their instinctive sense of the numinous satisfied by art, literature or musiclet alone the discoveries of science itselfmay well turn to the paranormal to gratify an intuition that mystery dwells at the heart of existence. Such people are perfectly placed to accept hoaxed evidence of unexplained powers and entities as real.
And so, the annual appearance of ever more complex patterns in the wheat fields of southern England is taken by croppiesthe devotees who look beyond any prosaic solution for deeper explanationsas signs and wonders and prophecies. The croppies do, however, accept that some people, some of the time, are making some of the formations. They regard these human circle-makers as a nuisance, contaminators of the evidence, and denounce them as hoaxers. The term is well chosen, for it implies social deviance. And therein lies the twist in the story.
In croppy culture, common parlance is turned on its head. The word genuine usually implies that something has a single, identifiable origin, of established provenance. To the croppy it means the opposite: a genuine circle is of unknown provenance, or not man-madea mystery, in other words. It follows that the man-made circle is a hoax.
Those circle-makers who are prepared to comment on this semantic reversal do so with some amusement. As far as theyre concerned, they are creating art in the fields. In keeping with New Age thought, it is by dissociating with scientific tradition that the circle-makers return art to a more unified function, where images and objects are imbued with special powers.
This art is intended to be a provocative, collective and ritual enterprise. And as such, it is often inherently ambiguous and open to interpretation. To the circle-maker, the greater the range of interpretations inspired in the audience the better. Both makers and interpreters have an interest in the circles being perceived as magical, and this entails their tacit agreement to avoid questions of authorship. This is essentially why croppies regard man-made circles as a distraction, a contamination.
Paradoxically, and unlike almost all other modern forms of art, a crop circles potential to enchant is animated and energized by the anonymity of its author(s). Doug Bower now tells friends that he wishes he had kept quiet and continued his nocturnal jaunts in secret. Both circle-makers and croppies are really engaged in a kind of game, whose whole purpose is to keep the game going, to prolong the mystery. After all, who would travel thousands of miles and trek through a muddy field to see flattened wheat if it were not imbued with otherworldly mystique?
As things stand, the relationship between the circle-makers and those who interpret their work has become a curious symbiosis of art and artifice, deception and belief. All of which raises the question: Whos hoaxing whom?
these crop circles are made by an alien race that's developed interstellar travel, and the crop circles are intelligence tests.
the aliens are trying to decide whether or not intelligent life exists on earth.
if we fail to figure the crop circles out, life on earth will be exterminated, earth itself will be overhauled so it can support alien life (ammonia atmosphere and nitric acid seas) to serve as an advance base for the aliens' conquest of the universe.
Both circle-makers and croppies are really engaged in a kind of game, whose whole purpose is to keep the game going, to prolong the mystery.
As things stand, the relationship between the circle-makers and those who interpret their work has become a curious symbiosis of art and artifice, deception and belief. All of which raises the question: Whos hoaxing whom?
After centuries of circles, and especially today with all our cameras and recorders, would not someone have infiltrated the hoaxers, and exposed them?
Not really. Secrecy is part of the game. Believing as I do that these are done by college kids, I'm sure they stick to friends and people they trust. Infiltration would be difficult and how would you know who was planning on doing circles etc?
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." James Madison, Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831
From time to time, they are. Groundresonance brought up a group of college students at Oregon State. It's back up the thread a bit.
And the article you are responding to is cause celebrie with Doug Bower and his co-conspirator Dave Chorley. BTW, Chorley just murdered himself over this stuff. And the only reason Bower was found out was because of his suspicious wife, thinking he was having an affair at late night hours.
The death of one of the leading lights of England's crop-circle world has led to a fall in agricultural artwork, it emerged yesterday.
Friends of Paul Obee admitted they had been devastated by his suicide this year and no longer had the will go out and create the circles.
Fellow "croppie" Andrew Byrne, 41, said: "There was a slump in crop circle-making after Paul's death. The community of circle-makers was whacked by his death because we're all quite close. People just didn't want to go out and make them."
The huge intricate patterns that adorn fields are believed by some to be the work of a paranormal force.
In reality the geometric designs are created at night by "landscape artists" who are considered vandals by many. The designs attract tourists from around the world.
Wiltshire, where Mr Obee lived, has seen a slump in the activity of the crop-circle makers in what is traditionally their peak season.
The professional driver from Horton, near Devizes, was found dead in his Volkswagon Polo by a walker on a remote country track in May. The engine was running with a pipe feeding exhaust fumes into the car, which contained two suicide notes. He had also sent his partner, Debbie Keogh, a hand-written journal in the post entitled These Are My Last Words, in which he told her: "I want to go off and see what's on the other side."
Signs have appeared that the county's croppie fraternity, which is based at the Barge Inn in Honeystreet, near Pewsey, have come out of mourning and will continue to work. In recent weeks, a crop-circle jester has appeared in a field at Eastfield, near Alton Priors, a nod to Mr Obee's nickname - "The Fool".
Yesterday Nigel Brookes, assistant deputy coroner for Wiltshire, recorded a verdict of suicide on Mr Obee's death.
Groundresonance, thanks for forcing the correction. You are a human dyna-mo digging for truth just like the rest of us!
Not true. I saw one demonstrated by college students that rivaled anything you can show me. Clean lines, complex geometry etc. It was even done at night in the dark.
I find that hard to believe, unless it were a six foot diameter circle or something. Please post an image if you have one.
I doubt it was TRULY similar in the way the grass was weaved and/or genetically altered, and that there was no abnormal magnetic readings within the circle, as found in the REAL circles.
Did the man-made one you saw look anything like these?
Or more like these?
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
Your head hurts? Think of how those who hire fellow alien crop circle professionals to do this for them. It must not be cheap, and the travel mile pay must be huge.
Did the man-made one you saw look anything like these?
Those are man made. I find it incredible that you would believe it is more plausible that aliens from a distant galaxy did this rather than a group of creative college students. Why discard a plausible explanation for an implausible one?
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." James Madison, Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831
Those are man made. I find it incredible that you would believe it is more plausible that aliens from a distant galaxy did this rather than a group of creative college students. Why discard a plausible explanation for an implausible one?
FormerLurker will be the first to deny all scientific evidence.... just like Mr. wudiditz
You're insane. Of course, you'll never post an image of that man-made crop circle you claim you witnessed, more than likely because you never witnessed it.
I find it IMPLAUSIBLE that we are alone in this universe, and find it incredible that people are so short sighted and can ignore SO much evidence, all because they cling to their religious beliefs that don't allow them to think beyond some book a bunch of desert people pieced together thousands of years ago.
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
FormerLurker will be the first to deny all scientific evidence.... just like Mr. wudiditz
Oh is that right bucky. Please point out ANY thing scientific that either you or farmfriend posted. Have you even researched the topic at all,, or did you skip over those reports which point out evidence of molecular abnormalities in the bent vegetation, and are here just trolling and talking out of your ass as usual?
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
BTW, the bottom two ARE man-made, the rest are of "unknown" origin, and I'd pretty much bet they weren't created by anyone born in this time on this planet.
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
I find it IMPLAUSIBLE that we are alone in this universe
I think most of us share your opinion but what I don't share is your zeal that an alien culture gives a damned about us. And if they did, I am confident in all their creativity to come all this way to do nothing more than make a few crop circles in some wheat and relative grain crops during harvest season.
Here's a few more images of that human butterfly formation. It's EXTREMELY large, I just can't see a bunch of drunken college kids, or ANYONE ELSE for that matter, being able to create it in the middle of the night with a bunch of sticks and some rope.
If you think that it would be possible for it to be done that way, you are engaging in magical thinking, where you believe the impossible is possible simply because you can't accept the idea that it might have been created by those you believe can't exist.
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
I think most of us share your opinion but what I don't share is your zeal that an alien culture gives a damned about us.
There is evidence that we had visitors from the heavens even back to prehistoric times. The Indian Vedic legends speak of sky ships, and the Sumerian legends speak of gods from another planet who taught them science, agriculture, and government.
The Universe may well be a VERY busy place, and we are just noticing those interactions more than in the past due to our technological advancements this past century.
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
I'd really like to see some college kids try to copy this one, even in the day time with as many people as they can muster up...
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
And if they did, I am confident in all their creativity to come all this way to do nothing more than make a few crop circles in some wheat and relative grain crops during harvest season.
Is it not apparent to you that there are mathematical formulas embedded in many of them, and also that some may just be there to awaken those who somehow cling to the idea that there can't be people from other worlds or other realities here visiting us?
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
You're insane. Of course, you'll never post an image of that man-made crop circle you claim you witnessed, more than likely because you never witnessed it.
Once again you twist what I said. I never, NEVER, said I witnessed anything. Watching a documentary is hardly witnessing anything. I also never maid the claim that we are alone in the universe. Nor did I link any of it with religion in any form.
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." James Madison, Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831
Did the man-made one you saw look anything like these?
Those are man made. I find it incredible that you would believe it is more plausible that aliens from a distant galaxy did this rather than a group of creative college students. Why discard a plausible explanation for an implausible one?
The data is what it is. Yes, some crop circles have been hoaxed, but there are a significant number that show anomalies that are not in keeping with a bunch of large footed college students or two drunks hanging out at an English Pub.
I do believe that some of them are government staged - and again the reasoning goes back to the planned controlled society that our would be Psychiatric masters want. People inspired and intrigued by new and unusual phenomena start asking questions and thinking. Not good from the view of our social controllers who want a hive of placid cud chewers.
Pranksters lose interest very quickly and they do not have the power to produce magnetic fields nor create genetic changes in the crops. There are other anomalies as well - such as the apparent softening of the plant tissues in the area of the bend - such that they are laid over without external physical damage.
So, given their complex structure and time it takes to create them we can say from the evidence that:
1. They show signs of advanced creative intelligence (unless they are created by some physical phenomena of which we are unaware).
2. The volume and complexity, along with geographic distribution, argue against a group of frat boys out on a lark. Although easy to conjure up in the mind it is not the simplest explanation as the logistics, planning, and mathematical precision with which the apparently legitimate circles are laid down would require some very sophisticated planning and I doubt they could be done in one night - particularly the fractals and attractor patterns as the symmetry and placement are not just close but precisely on.
What we do know is that many of them are simply unexplained. We can observe, and investigate but the reality is that despite attempts to explain them away they continue happening as a phenomena which is unexplained by any known science. However, as I mentioned earlier we can see the signs of advanced intelligence, and by implication some very sophisticated mathematics in their design. Who and why is an unknown.
"One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order." K.M. Heaton, The National Educator
You said you saw one demonstrated by college students that would rival anything I could show you, and later claimed the ones I showed you were man-made, so excuse me if I misunderstood, but that is what I thought you meant.
The perfectly symmetrical patterns covering sqaure miles worth of terrain are obviously NOT man-made.
In terms of religion, I was assuming that was the reason you were dismissing this phenomenon as simply the work of pranksters, since that is the most implausible explanation there is, yet would be the norm for someone whose religion doesn't allow them to think beyond it.
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
You said you saw one demonstrated by college students that would rival anything I could show you,
In post #30 which was after post #22 where it was stated to be a TV show.
In terms of religion, I was assuming that was the reason you were dismissing this phenomenon as simply the work of pranksters, since that is the most implausible explanation there is,
You assume too much. Obviously you have missed the few posts I have made on religion or you would not have made such a poor assumption. And religious reasons for dismissing this phenomenon are not the most plausible. I do so based on what I know about science and space etc.
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." James Madison, Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831
Results 1 - 18 of about 1,170,000 for navajo sand paintings
Are you seriously trying to say that the formations seen in wheat fields are as easily created as simply creating paintings with colored sand in a confined area?
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
I do so based on what I know about science and space etc
What part of science explains crop circles then?
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen
Science doesn't explain crop circles. It does cause me to dismiss the idea that we are being visited.
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." James Madison, Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831
It does cause me to dismiss the idea that we are being visited.
How so?
"The real deal is this: the royalty controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children." - James Hansen