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Top of the Crops 2002
Steeltoe writes "For those deeply familiar with crop circles, 2, they are truly an amazing wonder of the world. Not only are they getting unnervingly complex and beautiful, but last year researchers found themselves dumbfounded by an ET-face with an accompanying encoded CD-disc, 2, 3! Clearly, there are not enough wonders in the world, but lack of wonder and excitement! If you like adventure, you cannot turn your back on this, 2! Check out the cool circles of 2002 at Crop Circle Connector and at Circlemakers 'Top of the Crops 2002', or even take a physical *gasp* tour during the high-peak season next summer and see for yourself!! Only imagination may tell what will pop up from the crops in 2003."
I wonder when people will realize you can make these things with a 2x4 and a piece of rope? I'm from Nebraska, we've got a lot of corn there... So, well, its just fun, ya know? -Bill
-Bill
so i could increase the font size to the point that i could actually click on those 1-character long links, 2, 3!
C'mon, I want photos of the circle perpetrators! I can't believe that in this era of cheap technology that someone hasn't camcorder'd yay-hoos stomping around in their field in the act of making crop circles. Or, after hearing their dog barking at 2 AM, driven down the road to inspect their fence and photographed idiot kids in the process of throwing their 2x4's into a pickup before racing off. Forget the ET's - Circulate enough photos of the real circle makers and this one will go quietly into the dark night of historical obscurity.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
Clearly, there are not enough wonders in the world, but lack of wonder and excitement
What kind of English is that?
From http://www.paradigmshift.com/pecs.html a section from the crop circle website (the first link in the story):
Anomalous EM measurements - By doing a fluxgate magnetometer survey of several formations, Colin Andrews determined that the very center of these circles measured 40-50 nano Teslas. This is 10 times the radiation level of a normal field.
It looks like this was a cut-n-paste from http://www.infosourceresearch.com/tmatt/excerpt3.h tml
where they add:
"Inside the seven patterns, Andrews reported in a recent Sightings Online interview, the magnetic field registered up to 300% of the planet's normal field. "
Statements like these are hard to credit, since the earth's magnetic field is around 0.5 gauss which is 5x10^-5 Tesla (or 50 microTeslas). Magnetic fields don't qualify as "radiation" by any means either. There may be something interesting about crop circles, but the association with crackpots probably scares away real research.No, he said what he meant. That story was a hoax. $5 for 1 MB of RAM in 1991 my ass.
As long as religion reigns, ignorance will be our biggest social problem.
But is it really ignorance? Many "religious types" (and I consider belief in aliens a "religious" state of mind) want to believe so much, they are willing to either ignore repeately-proven facts, or they allow their imagination to fill in for their lack of facts (which is not necessarily due to ignorance).
Just think of the wild stories you could get if you took the news and filled in an adjective here, a verb there, and a noun elsewhere -- imagine MadLibs as the news. Now imagine if people actually believed it...
Generally, we got drunk after making the crop circles. (speaking from experience, oh the joys of a small rural town)
If you will notice, nearly all of these things are in fields that have tracks - parallel lines through the field. Is this a machinery (tractor, harvester, irrigatation) track? ANYHOW, if you look closely, the track always intersects the design in the center, or at a node that could be the "pivot point" of the design. Why does the design always align with the tracks? Could it be that this is the ingress and reference point for a clever ground crew? NAW, the aliens just like fields with tracks and the symmetry of aligned patterns!
I'd love to know how you did that seeing as the source picture is a JPG (hint: JPGs don't have layers, furthermore once you collapse a photoship image there is no way to tell it ever had layers).
Also, did they photoshop every frame of the video of the same crop-picture?
[disclaimer: I still think it was done by hoaxers]
and assumptions out there. 99% of the posts I'm seeing here are people who have heard something once or twice on the radio about some hoaxters with a tow-by-four, and who have made up their minds and decided that every single instance of a crop circle all over the world, past and future, can be explained away by that one method. I had expected a little more from the Slashdot crowd.
I am one of the biggest skeptics out there, but I always try to balance it with an open-minded analysis of all available facts. Looking at all the factors involved, it seems to me that calling every single crop circle instance a hoax with confidence is just impossible. Let's run down some factors here:
Numbers: First off, there's the sheer number of these things occurring all over the world. They often show up in areas where the locals have never heard of the crop circle phenomenon and don't care when they do. They show up in areas where everyone is so poor that no one has time for stupid practical jokes. They show up all over the world.
(This factor, in and of itself, I do not offer as complete evidence.)
Size: Some of these crop circles are huge. A pair of people may be able to flatten a circle 75 feet across in a few hours during the night, but even a team of people wouldn't be able to finish some of these things in one night.
(This factor, in and of itself, I do not offer as complete evidence.)
Precision: There is an amazing level of geometrical precision to many crop circles. They aren't all just flattened circles, they're quite often fairly complex geometrical patterns. And they're huge, layed out on flat ground with nothing high nearby to get up on and observe the progress of the pattern. I have a distinctly hard time believing that anyone could create a pattern that precisely in the dark. Even in the daytime, without precise surveying instruments and some way to measure and mark off every single arc of the pattern, it would be really difficult. Certainly more than a few hours work if it was just a pair of people.
(This factor, in and of itself, I do not offer as complete evidence.)
Evidence on the ground: In the types of crop circles that aren't immediately identifiable as hoaxes (yes, there are hoaxes, and they are almost always easy to identify, go check out some of the links), there are strange phenomena that happen inside the circles. The stalks of plants are bent without being broken. Have you ever tried to bend the stalk of any plant like grass, wheat or corn to a 90-degree angle without breaking it? Personally, I don't know of any way to do it.
There's also evidence of odd things like stunted growth within the circle and things not growing there even months or years after the fact. I'd love to know how a two-by-four could do that.
(This factor, in and of itself, I do not offer as complete evidence.)
History: Crop circles didn't just start in the last couple of decades with a couple of 40-year old guys and a board. There are instances of them a long ways into the past. I'd be willing to bet that the "original" hoaxters who claimed to have done some of the circles had gotten the idea from something they heard or read about that had already happened. I think the hoax is the fact that they believed they'd started it all.
(This factor, in and of itself, I do not offer as complete evidence.)
Human nature: The nature of the human animal is pretty set, and always has been. There are a lot of things that just don't jive if you make a blanket statement that every circle is created by a single person or set of people. People crave attention and recognition. Do you know anyone who knows someone who actually made a crop circle? No? The larger the circle, the more people it would have taken to create it, and the more chance for some dumbass to get drunk and start bragging about he and his buddies getting together and making "that big crop circle on the south side of town".
Saying that human hands created every crop circle ever made would also mean that there are a lot of copycats in the world. A lot of people who just love the idea of crop circles and think nothing would be more fun than going out and making their own, and then never telling anyone about it for the rest of their lives. Why? I don't buy it.
I see several people posting about how "somebody should just catch those dumb kids in action and show it on video, and all this would go away". So you know a lot of groups of teens who are organized, motivated, knowledgeable in the correct use of things like surveying instruments and laser distance measuring devices, or even know how to run a tape measure with the necessary precision to create a beautiful mathematically complex geometrical pattern 200 feet across in the space of a few hours? The idea is just ludicrous. Ever think just for a minute that there might be another reason that no one has been able to "catch them at it"? I'll let you ponder that one.
(This factor, in and of itself, I do not offer as complete evidence.)
Taking all of these factors into account, I, the skeptic that I am, find it scientifically implausible to believe that crop circles are a purely human-derived phenomenon.
Ever think for a moment that there might just possibly be things out there that we don't understand yet? That science doesn't yet have the answer to everything? That everything can't just be explained away on a moment's notice without examining all the evidence? Extra-terrestrials don't even have to enter into it. There are things right here in our natural world that we just don't yet understand.
I think that the treatment of the poster is deplorable. Everyone seems to be just immediately writing him off as a kook (like the first post) and not even bothering to examine the history and wealth of physical evidence about this phenomenon. Yes, there are plenty of kooks out there, but they can't all be kooks. That's like classifying everyone on Slashdot a troll because some trolls happen to post here.
As I said in the beginning, I had expected a little more openmindedness and intelligent discussion on Slashdot (yeah, I know, silly me, but it does happen here). I hope that a few of you who thought you knew everything will just take a few minutes to read the articles, and think, and wonder about our endlessly amazing universe, like the poster of the article suggested.
Why you trying to turn my world upsidedown? I don't want to believe it so I won't wont and no shred of evidence will make me think otherwise.
ps: this is sarcasm.
Has anyone tried to figure out what the CD says? :)
c rabwood2002sac.jpg, it's fairly clear to see that the marks are evenly spaced. There's an obvious smallest unit, which the others are multiples of.. So, take the smallest displayed unit as 1, and the absense of a unit as 0, the whole thing could be broken out to binary...
:)
Well, seriously think about it. What are the possibilities.
1) It was an alien.
They'd be trying to convey a message.. So it should be easy to decrypt.
2) It was a hoax.
Someone wants bragging rights. They're not going to go through all the work of trashing that field (great work though), and not make the obviously intricate CD mean *something*.
Looking at http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2002/Crabwood/
But, do aliens know ASCII to Binary translation?
BTW, have another look at the pic. It's not rings, it's a spiral like a record.. The beginning and end are solid, and taper up and down from nothing. The bumps are too infrequent to even attempt to simulate an audio record.. That'd just make pops..
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I don't know who are making the circles, but I find it highly improbable that they are man-made with planks and strings. I find the topic very interesting, because it lacks a good explanation so far. The fanatical sceptics that immediately buys the plank-and-string theory, are as much believers as the other side IMHO.
:-)
I'm planning a trip to see them for myself. Maybe I'll get wiser then
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Here's what I think is likely. There's a group of secret, elite crop circl creators. They started off small and simple, but their techniques have improved tremendously and have extended their efforts across the world. Whatever mundane method it is that they use causes a lot of those wierd things mentioned in the article above. Perhaps they have some fascinating machinery to produce the effect, or some chemicals, or both. I can explain the nausea, etc, easily: people who encounter these things and cannot explain them will be mentally affected. They will feel confused, amazed, scared, whatever. This translates into physical chnages.
Consider also the other wierd magnetic effects, noises, radiation, etc. Whatever method is being used to create the circles leaves this residue - whether it be alien or human technology. Just because the devices used to create the circles is unknown does not mean it must be used by aliens. After all, America and Britain can't even prove for certain that Iraq has WMD. What happened to their amazing technology and uber spies? We need you Mr. Bond.
I consider this the most likely scenario. If aliens, then why do they never visit us? I know that many claim that they do through channeling or mediums, but this is easily dispelled - these methods have been used for the last 4-5000 years for communicating with spirits, the dead (supposedly) and much more. Whatever it is that they communicate with, it is a liar and uses the same method for different deceptions. The answer is not aliens. We are supposed to be amazed by the amazing technology of these supposed aliens, yet they must resort to crop circles? No, I don't think the answer is there.
The answer seems to lie in the fact that the crop circles are changing and evolving. If it were aliens that knew so much, their methods would be rather stagnant if the crop circles are a common method for them to achieve whatever it is they are trying to. Changing crop circles over time seems to me only explainable by forces or labor that is learning it's art, changing its methods and improving. Sounds like a human influence to me.
Of course, I don't pretend to know the answers. These are just my musings on the topic. These circles impress and make me curious as much as the next person. I don't deny the possible existence of aliens, but I think it is very very unlikely, and even if there are, none of what we've seen so far appears to originate from outside our planet. Lets consider the possibilities, keep an open mind and see what we can learn.
From the article:
A major transformation occured in 1990 when the circles became complex pictograms composed of straight lines, angles and spiral rings (see Barbury Castle formation below right).
Or was it simply the widespread adoption of global positioning systems that allowed people to make much more complex designs? I know where I'd put my money.
Take two thumbtacks, a piece of string, a pencil, and a pad of paper. Stick the thumbtacks into the paper. Tie the string into a loop, then drop the loop onto the tacks so that they are both inside the loop. Now, put the pencil inside the loop as well. Move the pencil outward so that the loop is stretched tightly into a triangle. Now, keeping the string tight, move the pencil around the thumbtacks, and draw with it... Voila, you got an ellipse. And you didn't even need GPS.
If they can miss a basic thing like ellipses, which they should have learned in Algebra 2, I wonder how reliable the rest of their site is...
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