Babloggee Duncan Kitchin directed me to an incredibly bad article on the ABC website about … wait for it… crop circles. The title alone, "Circular Sightings Tough to Explain" should key you in on the level of discourse of the article (as well as the fact the writer quoted Stan Friedman about crop circles — or about anything for that matter).
The article is somewhat self-aphasic, as it says:
From crop circle designers and top-level researchers to the baffled farmers who usually find them, nobody really knows the origin of crop circles.
… and then goes on to extensively quote a guy who admittedly makes crop circles.
Sheesh.
But the best line belongs to crop circle expert, Jeff Wilson, with my emphasis added:
If you’re looking for an angle to sell, the mystery is still out there.
So true, so true.
September 17th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Don’t forget, this is the same organization that put out the mind-bogglingly bad “Last Days on Earth.” Sometimes I almost wonder if the big networks aren’t being paid to encourage the U.S. population to be dumb & credulous…
Lorne
September 17th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
“For centuries they’ve…”
I’m sorry, for…what?
September 17th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
That’s odd. They didn’t blame Bill Clinton.
September 17th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
I think they are somehow trying to imply that those who design and implement mundane crop circles got the idea for doing so from “real” crop circles. kinda like “copycat” killers.
September 17th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Curse the Liberal Media! Only they’d buy something like this! Unlike good Conservatives, who buy only truths like Creation Science… ahem.
Silly journalists…
September 17th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
“Andrews and his team conducted a study in central-southern England during 1999-2000, which assessed more than 200 circles.
That study showed around 80 percent of crop circles to be man-made with the remaining number unaccounted for. ”
Heh! The tacit argument in this passage is that, if 20% haven’t been verified to be of human origin, then they’ve been verified to be *not* of human origin! Gag!
As for Stanton Friedman, I always love how he still refers to himself as a “nuclear physicist”, even though he hasn’t worked in that field for decades. What a hack.
September 17th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Lame. Is there any paranormal field that has been more thoroughly debunked than crop circles? I mean, I can even get why the UFO thing hasn’t died out, because it’s hard to say definitely what some of these sightings actually were… but with crop circles, 80%+ of them have been definitely connected with hoaxers, including the very first circles that started the craze. The other 20% are almost certainly haoxers as well, because none of them display elements that are not found in known hoaxed circles.
Why are we still talking about this crap?
September 17th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
Huh. What I think the funniest part is is what you quoted, Phil: “From crop circle designers… nobody really knows the origin of crop circles.” So the people who design crop circles – most likely to be implemented by other people – don’t know the origin of the crop circles they design? Huh??
September 18th, 2006 at 2:01 am
“Sometimes I almost wonder if the big networks aren’t being paid to encourage the U.S. population to be dumb & credulous…”
They are – by advertisers!
September 18th, 2006 at 3:13 am
Oh, those aliens… http://lug.oregonstate.edu/index.php/Projects/Firefox/Firefox_Circle
September 18th, 2006 at 5:08 am
Joshua Says:
“Why are we still talking about this crap?”
It’s because, like Maulder, people “want to believe”.
September 18th, 2006 at 5:46 am
I find it interesting that we never see similar circles in fields where the crops have been cut or in empty fields full of snow. They only appear in fields where it is easy to hid human activity.
September 18th, 2006 at 6:16 am
Typical example of modern day journalism; no stand-point and everybodys opinions should be considered on equal terms regardless of how stupid it is.
Journalist everywhere, do you bleeping research in a proper manner and we can stop stupid people from slowing the development of the human race in one generation.
September 18th, 2006 at 6:57 am
jrkeller, you’re quite right. Crop-circles only happen in crops. Never in another medium. Cearalogists never seem to ask why sophisticated E.T.-artists never work in something with more longevity, such as solid rock. If pictures started appearing overnight carved in the sides of granite cliffs, then we’d have a mystery.
September 18th, 2006 at 7:03 am
[...] Crop Circle Failure Phil Plait the Bad Astronomer has found the best quote I’ll read today in a news story on crop circles. From crop circle designers and top-level researchers to the baffled farmers who usually find them, nobody really knows the origin of crop circles. [...]
September 18th, 2006 at 7:08 am
Don’t you all know? Most “journalism” these days is “written” by sixth generation Eliza-like programs.
You : Who makes crop circles
Eliza: Why do you ask?
You : I’m curious
Eliza: How long are you curious?
You : What?
Eliza: Is this question interesting for you?
You : No
Eliza: Why are you so negative?
September 18th, 2006 at 7:24 am
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I would never have parsed that “nobody really knows the origin” quote as meaning that no one (including the ones who make them) know where crop circles come from. I think we all agree that’s silly. I read it as “no one knows where the IDEA came from”, which is not a lot better, since the people who started it have now “come out”, but it’s less stupid than the alternative.
September 18th, 2006 at 7:39 am
Mark: Let me rephrase, then. If you’re going to believe in something, why crop circles of all goshdarn things?
September 18th, 2006 at 8:32 am
lol Ghost of Tookie
I agree, journalism is way out of control in the stupid department. They lost the stories of drama, of well fed and well loved an/or not. They haven’t even noticed the story about our rock through space, Earth. Now these so called story tellers only spew the silliest stories glorifying silly philosophies. What’s worse, for the past few years on my cabel tv, the supernatural story quota has gone through the roof.
Somebody ought to do something … sillyjournalism.com ??
September 18th, 2006 at 8:36 am
Any idiot can make a circle. If aliens really wanted to impress us, they’d make crop heptagons or crop tridecagons for which there is no ruler+straightedge construction.
Of course, they’d still be fakeable, but if did it in fields of turnip or broccoli, I certainly would be willing to cut them the slack just for the destruction of nasty vegetables
September 18th, 2006 at 8:38 am
ruler+straightedge really means “compass + straightedge”, but it was affected by alien influence^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hit being Monday.
September 18th, 2006 at 10:01 am
That “Firefox circle” was great. . . . The funniest part (for me) was when they said “inspired by the discovery channel” — I know the guys who were recruited to make the circle in that documentary. Nice to see their hard work being acknowledged.
September 18th, 2006 at 11:10 am
To be fair to Stanton Friedman, he may not have identitified himself that way to the reporter. The reporter may have dredged that label out as the obligatory nod to Friedman’s credentials. Once someone gets labeled, they tend to remain labeled that way.
September 18th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
That’s possible in general, but Friedman never seems to see fit to point out that he’s not a working nuclear physicist by any stretch of the imagination. Occasionally he’s even referred to as “eminent” nuclear physcist, and he makes no effort at modesty about it.
There’s not any publicly available evidence that he was even a *good* nuke-physicist, since by his accounts all his work was of proprietary nature, and not published externally. (In fact, to make sure, I just did a Google Scholar search. The only article which appeared under any category is just a transcript of a lecture he delivered on UFOs conspiracies.)
September 18th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
How much of the news is active in crop circles…..meaning, the cash crop circles.
September 19th, 2006 at 2:14 am
My brother used to help make some in Wiltshire:
This is one he helped make back in 2001:
http://www.gaiaguys.net/Milk%20Hill%2001.jpg
I remember watching a programme on crop circles which showed this one.
They claimed it couldn’t have been made by humans.
Either angels or aliens did it.
I asked my brother which one he was.
December 11th, 2008 at 4:18 am
What a bunch of ignorant kooks most of these posters are ! ! I guess thats what to expect in a society manipulated by a contrived Scientific Theocracy , Obviously nobody here has done a Shred of research because they can’t see beyond their pre conceived limited mind sets and present weak straw man arguments and statements that make them feel all nice and secure in their scientific ideology-Obviously their are no historians of science here and nobody capable of asking the right questions so that human consciousness may evolve , you all wallow in you self appointed roles as gatekeepers of a consensus reality, When in fact you are so far from understanding fundamental reality that it is a comedy of errors of galactic proportions…..
How quaint…….
December 11th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
ps, Im sorry, I shouldn’t have called you kooks, I was just in one of those moods… The rest stands..
August 2nd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
The aliens are landing on our beaches!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1202491/Race-tide-Artist-creates-intricate-masterpieces–sea-washes-away-hours.html
August 22nd, 2009 at 9:31 pm
The conceit and ignorance on display here is astounding but entirely expected.
Places like this are where the insecure gather .
A place where they can let their superiority complex run wild and feel secure without the need for any real discourse or intelligent insight as you are not here to learn or understand but feed your complex.
If some of you did any research at all you would know that there is a reason that 20% are unexplained – that is that no hoaxer/debunker has ever been able to reproduce the characteristics exhibited in these examples.
That does not mean all crop circles are not Man made but it does not mean that they definitely are Man made either.
It is worthy of investigation certainly and whether crop circles are Man made or not they are certainly things of beauty.
Even the most fundamental things such as Life, consciousness and the nature of reality itself are complete mysteries to even our greatest minds but here we have people who know the answer to everything and everything is mundane.
Thank God all humanity is not so trapped we would still be in the dark ages not daring to believe there may be things exist as yet unexplained.
Perhaps a little light reading on quantum mechanics might help expand some of your minds.
There are experiments with outcomes that would literally blow your minds.
I will leave you with this pertinent thought;
The paradox is that a sceptic is far more likely to accept a believable lie than an unbelievable truth.
Question everything and discount nothing, your World will be unrecognisable just a couple of decades from now.
September 4th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Since this original blog was posted in 2006, there have been several well-documented multi-witness sightings by independent camera crews, of large and complex crop pictures forming silently in a field where no humans were detectably present, whether by visible or infrared light.
The two most well-known cases were East Field of July 7, 2007 and Silbury Hill of July 5, 2009. Since I have spoken to both groups of witnesses, and was able to confirm that they were quite relaible people, then simple logic compels me to believe that some quiet, invisible energy made both of those crop pictures.
While my wife and I visited England one month ago, two large crop pictures appeared seemingly in early morning daylight, while another appeared after a night of cold, wet rain. All of tho direct observational evidence now suggests, therefore, that the basic theses of this post and of “Discover” magazine (the name seems like a contradiction in terms) are both outdated and wrong. In fact, it has now become a kind of intelligence test, to see whether the typical bloggger can think independently from his herd? So far, only a few have passed.