"Anyway, how do you know it's a phoenix?"

Flames at the bottom.

do you believe it's all a hoax...

is there any reason to not believe it's all a hoax other than the desire to believe in hoaxes...?

do you believe in the loch ness monster...?

is there any evidence...?

who cares...?

do you believe in the innate corruption of people and all of nature and all manifest and thus unmanifest existence...?

oh dear...

that last example doesn't fit...

there is no need for belief because it is always omnipresently there as irrefutable proof... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!!!

unless you get distracted by a bad photo of a twig floating on the surface of some godforsaken landlocked arctic fjord and cereal stomping alien logo designers that escaped from the big house wearing the white coats of their landlords... ;)

"as if you really believe in 'magical incantations'"

Of course I do! Here's an article that's full of 'em. Enjoy!:

Geometric Phases and Multiple Degeneracies in Harmonic Resonators
www.mi.infm.it/manini/berrybilliard.html

"The reports describe a total stillness in the air; the morning song of birds stops, proceeded by a trilling sound and the banging together of wheat heads despite an absence of wind. The crop then lays down in spiral fashion, the whole episode lasting no more than fifteen seconds."

So, in your parallel universe, an ET, transdimensional being, angel, or some such entity makes a trilling sound and creates a crop formation in less than fifteen seconds? Whatever.

"So you think that, 'Clever performance artists with simple tools and a mischievous sense of humor who get a kick out of baffling and amazing appreciative audiences. Nothing more and nothing less.' are the ones who are creating CCs? What are the tools?"

Yes, that's exactly what I think. What are the tools? I told you already. (But maybe I left out a few, like duct tape and a magnetic compass.) The complexity of crop circles owes a lot to the availability of cheap laser pointers. All one has to do to get a perfectly straight line dozens of meters long is shine a laser pointer and have someone shift side to side with a pole (like a broomstick) until the red spot hits it. Simple technology that yields amazing accuracy. It's basically similar to using a straightedge and a compass on a piece of paper to get beautiful and complex designs. Using a protractor (or, in the field, a magnetic compass) to measure angles helps a lot.

Orpheus and Leslie are accomplished artists. Maybe they can explain how it's done.

"Do you believe it's all a hoax?"

How can something be a hoax if the persons doing it are not claiming what they're doing to be something other than what it really is?

Attributing crop circles to supernatural entities is like saying musicians like Paganini and Robert Johnson must have sold their souls to the devil in order to play their instruments as well as they did. Crop circles, like magic tricks, are easy to explain once you know how they're done. However, like good magic tricks that require many hours of practice, the really good crop circles do require a great deal of experience along with cleverness and virtuosity. It seems clear you're someone who prefers to believe the illusion. So be it.

If you haven't read it yet, I urge you to read Rob Irving's essay "Art and Artifice":

www.circlemakers.org/art_and...ice.html

PDF version:

www.circlemakers.org/art_and...fice.pdf

Or, of couse, you can ignore it. Your choice.

"According to a leading crop circles researcher Colin Andrews,"

Will someone please pass me the Monitor Clean?

hehe.... looks like "lettuce tissue" is the most symetrical and balanced of them all here: www.molecularexpressions.com/mic...html

Thanks for the links.

why does Hoopes consistently demonstrate his incompetencies and prove the impoverishments of what appears to pass for logical thought processes if you squint at what is offered according to our school trainings(?). It's fabulously Mind-Numbing to gaze upon the Starkness of Shattered Logic-given-legs-of-insanity ..... and to KNOW that (from a lifetime of experience) that this is Actually Celebrated and Rewarded by the corpsecultural power players who hand out the monies and titles of "academic virtuosity:".
There is a correlation between the feigned 'commitment-to-a-convenient-pattern-of-explanation' that is displayed by Orpheus,.... and the nonsense-as-authoritative-anal-assis that Hoopes dumps with a highly-fibered regularity. ..... As If this amounted to a debateworthy offering.

Yes, NASA has been hoaxing people for decades. Yes, hexagons occur in nature. Yes, Aetheric Vortexual Physics Explains the hexagons and 19.47 degree latitude formations on Saturn (and other planets) WHEReAS conventional Physics as Heavily, Heavily Promoted and Commited to by this 'thing' that names itself 'science' ....Fails Miserably to explain these Huge Evidences that Cannot be hoaxed or dismissed.

Game over.

If you 'Believe' and place your FaiTh in science as the gospel, you've clearly been duped, as we All have. It's a scam, and the sooner you start facing the Facts, the sooner we can start working to overcome this scam that much of the world is Buying Wholesale as Holy writ of Intellectual study, as ensconced in gothic-windowed academies and heavily-endowed institutions of lab-glassware&expensive-electronic-instrumented symphonies (discordant-ala-HarryParch) of badly-improvised nerdology.

www.youtube.com/watch

"Of course behaving like a nutjob invites more of the same, so best not dwell on it, but rather get your own Trip together,"

Physician, heal thyself.

well that's the kinda disappointing world this is...

the funny aren't funny and the enlightened seem to tend towards the darker shades of dim...

that's really cool...

I don't mean wishing bad for others but...

"stuck in this hell hole with all the other dumbshits"...

that kinda sums it up really...

isn't that exactly why there is this tendency to set up projections for apocalyptic dates for transcendental consciousness shifts etc...?

because we're all kinda stuck in this hell hole with all the other dumbshits...

I mean yeah there are stronger drugs and sunnier days and prettier flowers and cuter kittens and easier jobs with more pay and power relations and privileges etc...

but however uneven "they" can make the playing field...

however nice the inaccessible sides of the socio-eco divides can be...

there's got to be something more to it than this ubiquitous perverse circus of gore...

maybe I should get out there when the sunflowers are in full bloom and spell out an SOS...

but who would see it...?

who on earth might care...?

maybe the military or the passengers of ryan air flights...?

not very likely...

there has to be something nice somewhere further out in the twilight zone...

something that might actually give a damn and offer the hand of friendship and a retirement plan... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!!!

I'm much more interested in the simple circles that have been showing up here and there throughout history.

More counterpoint...

temporarytemples.blogware.com/blo...html

It must be true. It was in the papers ...
by Michael Glickman June 12

During the 1998 crop circle season I was approached by John Vidal, a journalist with the Guardian newspaper who wanted to put together an article on the crop circles. I was a Guardian reader and I knew John Vidal’s work. He reports for the paper on environmental issues and he had written some outstanding material.

The hoax claimants were very active at that time. They would produce trademarks and logos for advertisements - making substantial money. They would simulate crop circles for debunking documentaries, again making a great deal of money and they would produce the occasional “hoax”.

I have no evidence that they were paid for this, but in any case, their endeavours in this area were pathetic and readily identifiable. Certainly, though their skills at stamping and manipulating crop had improved year by year, their design skills were shockingly limited.

They relied for their success on the two dominant characteristics of the average croppie. First, their poor discernment in visual and material matters; any area of flattened crop could be considered a beautiful formation. Second, their absolute belief in the veracity of any sentence which containing the words “hoax” or “man-made”.

It is the latter one which they so skilfully exploit. Whenever did you hear of a confidence trickster who was not plausible? They are very good at persuasion and, over the years, I have seen many good people turned by their lies.

Because of this I made it clear to Vidal that I could help him only if he undertook to stay away from the hoax claimants. I could only speak honestly but I knew that my adversaries were utterly without conscience. They would lie as necessary.

Of course, John Vidal gave me the assurances I was seeking but, in reality, the article when published was, essentially, a hoaxers manifesto. Vidal became their mouthpiece and believed and reported only that which they told him.

I must confess here that I was warned. “Don’t trust him” my friends said. “He’s a journalist. They’re all the same. He’ll stitch us up.” In my optimism and naivete I trusted him.

They were right. It was a complacent, prejudiced and disgusting article and I wrote a sharp letter to John Vidal complaining of his deceit. Of course, there was no reply.

We move forward to the present. A few weeks ago I was called by a photographic agency called “Picture It Now”. They said that they could help me publicise my book, “The Bones of God” and they wanted to know if they could use the images. I gave them Steve Alexander’s number and they approached him to secure the pictures, suggesting throughout that they intended to promote “Bones”. (We should note here that Steve, having been caught before in this kind of scam, normally works through his own agency who have been well briefed.)

Imagine, then, my horror when on Friday 5th June, eleven years after the first disaster, the Guardian published another Vidal article debunking the circles.

It was as sloppy a piece of journalism as the 1998 article. That it was essentially no more than another piece of spurious propaganda by an enthusiastic mouthpiece and tool of the hoax crew was confirmed by both the lies and the language. We were told (and this will come as a surprise to many readers) that “the last two summers have been terrible”. The reason for this, again we are told, is the death of three people, who, by implication were hoaxers. Both of these statements are untrue and Vidal should be ashamed for accepting them unchecked.

The source of this nonsense is confirmed by the language. We are referred to as “believers”, a pejorative word used only by hoaxers. And, as always, there is a cheap shot implying that our interest in the phenomenon is financial. It is suggested that a good aerial picture can make tens of thousands of pounds. Both of these are foul lies. Every crop circle researcher I know is under financial pressure and - as a journalist - Vidal should know (or could quickly find out) the market value of a single aerial shot. Meanwhile, if our activity is to be condemned by its commercialism, why did this investigative reporter not point out that the “circlemakers” earn substantial sums trivialising the circles for advertising projects for the likes of Nike, Pepsi and Big Brother. Shame on him. Shame on them.

Then, a week later, the Express, another national daily, published an article so sloppy and so transparently inaccurate that it could curl the hair of a discerning reader. It informed us for example that the Silent Circle Cafe was owned by the Wiltshire Crop Circle Study Group. I am sure that both Francine Blake and Charles Mallett will be enlightened by this.

What is happening here and what can we learn?

This season has started explosively in both number and quality of formations.

The newspapers initially published pictures with little comment but, as the phenomenon became more insistent and more undeniable the debunking began.

Whatever the Crop Circles might mean or suggest or imply there can be little doubt that they are now knocking more insistently on our door. Does the fact that two major British daily newspapers have taken the time and trouble to publish scoffing pieces suggest that there might be a media conspiracy to belittle the phenomenon?

Ross Holcomb has said that a lighted match will start to illuminate the darkest of rooms. Each year, our own dark space is illuminated by the arrival of circles. Many of us cannot stand the glare, avert their gaze and simply deny the evidence of their eyes. I pity them.

I pity the sad fakers and liars whose greatest skill is deception and whose highest aspiration is the delusion of others.

Most of all I pity those supposed members of this community who themselves cannot stand the glare and who, for their own comfort, promote lunatic and unjustifiable fantasies about man-made circles and paranoid fantasies about others in the community.

Every time they pronounce “man-made” they are trying to strike a darkness match to defeat the brightness. Every time they say “hoax” they are trying desperately to add a little gloom. They cannot win. They have already lost.

Remember the first axiom. EVERYTHING you ever hear about a hoax is a lie. When you next hear some saddo condemning a formation, challenge him. Simply ask him to prove it. He never will. He never can.

MG

"First, I know of smart English (and now American, see below for starters) college techies who have been making crop circles for years with the tacit agreement of the farmers on whose fields they do them."

There are plenty of farmers that will not allow anyone on their land to "experience" or photograph the pictures at ground level. You can check www.cropcircleconnector.com for many examples.

"Second, I can't believe that extraterrestrials would have made such dramatic improvements in their designs' complexity, etc., over the past 25 years!"

I think we need a paradigm shift out of ETs or Man Made into something a little less defined such as multi-dimensional "bleed throughs" that we participate in. This would explain an evolvement of design to mirror and evolvement of conscioussness (although I'm sure plenty of people would argue the point of whether we have collectively evolved or not).

"Finally, NONE of the designs have been unknown in our earthly culture and history, in other words a design or picture or such previously not known to us (i.e., alien)."

Exactly - they are aligned with our language of symbols - be they math, astronomical or religious or mythical as the case with the recent Pheonix and Native American Thunderbird designs. If we can stretch or imaginations to entertain the possibility of creation from the higher levels of our own conscioussness, this would open up a more constructive dialog in approaching the study of these pictures and help us understand some of the pronuncements of Native Americasn such as "we are the ones we've been waiting for".