There was an excellent, and in many parts, hilarious, documentary done by one of the English television companies (ITV?) about crop circles. It had two points to make. One was to show the two gentlemen who began the phenomenon, and their method; the second was to show the hype and hysteria which has gathered around crop circles.
From the Wikipedia article:
Quote:Crop circles are areas of cereal or similar crops that have been systematically flattened to form various geometric patterns. The phenomenon itself only entered the public imagination in its current form after the notable appearances in England in the late 1970s. Various scientific and pseudo-scientific explanations were put forward to explain the phenomenon, which soon spread around the world. In 1991, more than a decade after the phenomena began, two men, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, revealed that they had been making crop circles in England since 1978 using planks, rope, hats and wire as their only tools. Many other people around the world are also openly making crop circles, notably Circlemakers.org. Although the commonly accepted view today is that crop circles are a man-made phenomenon, paranormal explanations, often including UFOs, are still popular.
The program i saw included detailed footage of Mr. Bower and Mr. Chorley making a crop circle, revealing the clever method by which they entered a field without leaving footprints. They would take a collapsible painters' scaffold, and "flip" it out into the field. Crawling along the top of the scaffold, they would erect another, and by that means, reach the center of the field without leaving footprints. The small circular depressions left by the "feet" of the scaffold went unnoticed.
They then investigated the hype which has arisen around crop circles. They went to Stonehenge on midsummer day, and showed the video of the two gentlemen making a crop circle to the "new age" types there. Nonplussed at first, these jokers then insisted that what they had seen does not account for all crop circles. Eventually, they became disgusted and angry, and would no longer speak to the interviewer who was showing the video of the creation of crop circles.
No one will ever go broke banking on the credulity of the general population. People who write books about UFOs, crop circles, the "Devil's triangle" will always make a good living selling their hogwash to the credulous.
