Crop circle mystery?

Do you mean the circle makers make sounds as they make them, or the circles themselves make sounds? Where was this documentary?

I am saddened to think that you consider crop circles to be anything other than the hoax which their inventors intended when they set out upon their foolish prank.

And the long pauses... I think the visitors abducted Thelonious Monk.

CSICOP: Circular Reasoning: The 'Mystery' of Crop Circles and Their 'Orbs' of Light

Cincinnati Skeptiks: Crop Circles

Skeptic's Dictionary: Crop Circles

The New England Skeptical Society: Crop Circles

Circlemakers: "Circles" news from those who really know

National Geographic: Crop Circles: Artworks or Alien Signs?

BBC: "I make Crop Circles"

UnMuseum: Crop Circles from Outer Space?


There's lots more, but its pretty much a "Why Bother?" sorta deal; some folks gotta believe in the fantastic, no matter the evidence to the contrary. It satisfies some inner need, I guess.

I have always wondered, who pays for all the crop damage, insurance?

Tourism.

That's a good question, Acquiunk - I imagine if insurance was in place, it would pay, provided the insurance investigation - which would be all but automatic if the damage to the overall crop was significant - revealed no connection between the insured party and the damage. Hafta be a buncha damage even to qualify for crop insurance, though, and there's a fairly hefty deductible involved for any crop dasmage insurance of which I'm aware - and I do some farmin'. I dunno if a crop circle, or even a few circles, in a typical several-dozen-acre field would qualify, percentage-of-area-affected-wise - for payment.

I don't recall the venue, but i did see a televised interview with the two gentlemen who began making the crop circles in the 1970's. They used collapsible painters scaffolds to move from the edges of the fields to the center so as to leave no footprints. The would set up such a scaffold by "flipping" it out into the field. Then one of them would crawl along the scaffold and erect another one until finally they reached the center of the field. Apparently, the scaffolding left no significant telltale signs, and at any event, everyone was distracted by the circles, to which it appeared no tracks lead from the edges of the field.

In the same program, they interviewed members of the New Age lunatic fringe (did i hear a redundancy in here somewhere?) gathered at Stonehenge for the solstice, and showed them videotape of the two pranksters as they explained the process, gave a brief history of their efforts, and actually made a crop circle while being videotaped to explain the procedure. These folks simply replied that they (the pranksters) weren't responsible for all of the crop circles, and that they (the NALF) personally knew of crop circles in fields where there were burn marks from the "rockets" the aliens had used. The producers commented that no one had to date provided physical evidence of that contention.

The most hilarious part of the program is that there were then underground contests by university students to see who could produce the best crop circles.

I saw a program a few years ago that proved crop circles to be a hoax and showed how they were actually made. A few young guys having fun :-D

Setanta
Must have been the same program I saw.

I really had a ball watchin' that program, Montana, now it bothers me that i can't recall what network i saw it on . . . Discovery? . . . Learning Channel? . . . i don't remember . . . .

I don't remember either, but I do remember getting a good laugh from it :-D

- another example of the well-known fact that fooling people is easy; convincing them that they've been fooled is much harder.

Well I'm scientifically rigor(mort)is, and I believe in crop circles.

There were crops. If you look at them, there are circles in some places.

There they are. What's so difficult about Simplicity?



Get as upset as you want about all this, but I think the world is far, far bigger than places that ... are ... smaller than it. By a wide margin.



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While shaving questions, Occam's Razor makes for reasonable logic and better good things.

I believe in simplicity too. There are crops; there are circles; there are some people who have demonstrated how they made the circles; and there are some other people who are so hung up on their previous theories of how supernatural or otherworldly forces made the circles that they can't bring themselves to believe it.

Simple really.

Glad to get everyone responces.The doc was on TLC. Here are some moreof the findings.All the stocks of the plants are bent at 90 degrees uniformally.The wheat stockswere found to be all alive except that the seeds were shrunken and no good. What is most intriguing is the circles all have facets of the golden formula 1 to 1.618 . Which means this is a more accurate prank than anything random.They have evolved over time to be so complex as to make one really want this investigated because it is so dam good. The ultimate sculpture art likethe Nastec lines in Peru. I wonder about crop damage cost too but apparently the influx of tourism keeps all happy because in England unlike NA the communities are run by a series of business run by the locals and it keeps the money evenly distributed. In NA they let Wall Mart into places that completely destroyed the infastructure of the town and closed all the Mom and Pop business and destroyed the wealth of the community. Skowhegan Maine is a prime example of this.

The soil has also picked up somekind of magnetic quality as well. From the air some of the designs are so perfectly done with elaborate details that only durning the day could this complex mathematical formula be rendered in such a perfect fashion. Yet no one is ever finding out who for sure.Some guies are claiming it's them but they donot say anyone is exactly theres. Whatever it may be...The crop circles shown across the road from Stone henge was so vast in size and so close to the site how they accomplished this is anyones guess.

I do crop circles on the side.

I charge only $30/hr, if anyone's interested.

There are some people who will do it for free, as long as they can add a photo to their portfolio.