h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Crop Circles - A695784
Author: Zaphod: alchemically treated with "tickety-boo" tea - U176577

Crop circles are described as the most fascinating of modern day mysteries. Living close to where most of the sightings occur (though not in the famous triangle) it seems natural that it falls on me to write and submit this entry. A bigger mystery is why there are there no H2G2 links to Great Mother Earth. There are opinionated parts to it but, given the nature of the subject, and with so much speculation, it is only reasonable to outline where the author stands. Hope you enjoy it and look forward to your comments.

Very thorough.
I take issue however with one aspect of your thesis. You say that crop circles occur mainly in southern England, with others forming throughout Britain. You continue in this vein later on, calling on similarities between crop circles and stonehenge and other neolithic sites. You seem to want to connect crop circles with a sort of fairy/celtic power.
But what about the crop circles in America? Your thesis doesn't even mention them. I know there was a famous one in Kennewick, Washington, just across the mountains from where I live. Are you leaving them out because they are inconvenient, and don't fit with your celtic/fairy circles?

In all, good job.

Thanks for your comments Theanthrope.
I do mention that it is a worldwide phenomenon but that approx. two-thirds of reported formations occur in the triangle in Hampshire and Wiltshire area. Therefore, there is an obvious focus on this area. If you can point out particular features of any of the american circles I'll be quite happy to include them. That goes for any country. I guess they're all individual and special and it's a matter of which ones to mention and which to leave out. As you can see in the bibliography, I did visit American sites and it was no surprise to find that of those searched the bulk of the news/reports were about English formations. I just had to draw the line somewhere otherwise it would be overwhelming.
Fairy/celtic power, as you say, is only one of many theories none of which I totally adhere to. So, no, I am not consciously twisting the facts to suit my thesis. What I say is that concentrating too much on theories and beliefs risks losing the phenomenon - the circles themselves. I have tried to address what they mean in relation to the wider social context in which they appear, the millennium thing and all, and also what is repressed in the culture, namely beauty and an aesthetic appreciation of nature (as opposed to a technological/utilitarian/functional view that has brought about an ecological crisis). In short, my thesis suggests we have become an-aesthetised, still carrying a cartesian view of a world which is dead and soul-less. And so on. . . .
Zaphod

Excellent! Put all that in the entry.
I didn't mean to accuse you of twisting the facts, it's just that the omission struck me.
I'm skeptical of any significance being attatched to the millenium, as it is an entirly arbitrary number. Unless you believe Jesus is making them...

Well,

'Crop Circles' undoubtedly deserve an edited guide entry. This one looks well-balanced, is well-written and is obviously thoroughly researched. What I like most about this entry is that it shines light on all aspects of the phenomenon without forcing the reader to believe in any particular explanation. So, I think this one should go into the guide.

*However* I don't believe any of it! Crop circles are mere fakes like the unicorn and alien landing-strips in the Andes. But that's just me.

HELL

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.....

Hell, I don't know how you can possibly say that this is well-balanced! It makes the barest mention of any evidence on the sceptical side.

Zaphod, if you are going to give a bibliography, how could you possibly leave out this one?
Jim Schnabel Round in Circles (published by Penguin in 1993)

Why didn't you mention Dave Chorley and Doug Bower, who started making circles in the mid 1970s, and continued to make them for 12 years or more? Most people would regard them as the originators of the whole modern crop circle phenomenon

Why didn't you refer to the http://www.circlemakers.org/ site?

In its present form, this entry is totally unbalanced. It is heavily loaded with pseudoscientific ideas. Some of what you say appears to be totally meaningless, for example, 'This has opened up new areas of research, including photographing at the photon level of water that has been subjected to the energies of crop circle formations, showing clusters of energy patterns.'

Since this entry is neither balanced nor factual, I don't think it has any place in the Edited Guide.

Azara

Hey, Azara, I'm not professing to be an expert though I did a fair bit of research on the subject. You obviously don't approve the entry and that's fine. But if we want to encourage the h2g2 community to submit entries then I suggest a less dismissive and a more conciliatory tone would help. If you find it offensive on the grounds that it is neither balanced nor scientific then there's ways of communicating this to the author other than trying to blow it out of the water for the sake of it. Obviously, the whole point of peer review is to invite feedback which is constructive, designed to encourage any recommended changes. For instance you can say "Have you thought of doing this, or including that, etc." instead of "Why didn't you refer to this, why didn't you mention that, How could you possibly not do so and so" which sounds very harsh and disapproving. Hardly going to elicit a sympathetic response, is it?
As for the entry itself. I feel passionate about the subject otherwise I wouldn't have embarked on it. Whether you call this already biased, subjective and unbalanced is a matter of opinion. But show me someone who doesn't meet this description. As for pure fact. Isn't it is a fact that crop circles exist, that it is a worldwide phenomenon, that they attract alot of controversy, that there are many beliefs and theories, that research studies are conducted on crops/plants found on sites, that formations have an aesthetic appeal, etc. All things I have mentioned. So how can you have many factual elements in an entry without itself being factual? Apart from which crop circles are ART whether manmade or not, so it seems reasonable to take an aesthetic approach to the subject.
Perhaps we need to disagree on this one.
PS Didn't dave and doug claim they were being used by a higher power while making their crop circles?

Hey Hi... Relax... Sit down... Have a .

Zaphod: Don't be so touchy in PR. Opinions differ. It's not Azara's voice that's going to let your entry in or out of the edited guide. Take things with a grain of salt...

Azara: As you might understand, this entry was very difficult for me to swallow. But - let me try to convince you why it went down in the end:

1 - Crop circles are real. (IMO all hoaxes, but that's me)
2 - Many people think there's something to it.
3 - In this entry you only find _suggestions_ and no 'final truth' (You can choose what you want to believe)
4 - There are entries like 'What happens to you at lightspeed' that are way less balanced. They tell you it's like this on a allegedly scientific basis, but no-one knows. No-one _can_ know.
5 - There are entries about time travelling through donut-shaped white-holes. In contrast to crop circles these aren't even hoaxes. They're mere conjectures.

1 and 2 tell me they're worth entering the guide. 3 tells me it's format is OK (Maybe you're right, Azara, and some more mention to the skeptical part should be included) 4 and 5 are precedent cases of entries that are a lot 'worse' as far as content is concerned (IMO, IMO). So, concluding: I don't think it's a 'no go'.


H

This entry will need a lot of work before it is suitable for use as a guide entry. One of the guidelines is that if the subject is controversial, it should present a balanced view.

This entry could not be described as balanced: it presents a great mystery. It doesn't mention the other side of the coin, in which the guys who made the crop circles admitted it was all a hoax, demonstrated their techniques and finished the whole saga by doing an enormous crop "circle" in the shape of the Mandelbrot set (A photo of this appears on the cover of Led Zeppelin Remasters). They then gave it up and that was the end of the crop circles. I know that these guys were not responsible for every crop circle in the world. But they were responsible for most of them. This must surely be strong evidence that there is nothing supernatural involved and should be presented in the article.

I wouldn't call the subject controversial. I wouldn't similarly call the 'Loch Ness Monster' phenomenon controversial, or 'UFO landings' or the existence of the 'unicorn'.

The entry clearly mentions hoaxers. But it also shows what other less-convinced people think. The entry does not state that these alternative explanations are the ultimate truth. It only portrays what some people believe. Maybe that point just needs to be made clearer. Maybe in a disclainer chapter right in the beginning.

The topic 'crop circles' is definetly worth going into the edited guide. And people should be left free to believe in what explanation they choose.

However, there IS room for improvement, before it goes in.

H

Balanced?

"so far no-one has seen a crop circle in the process of forming"

The two guys who made the circles saw the circles in the process of forming. The people from the press that they invited to the demonstration saw the circle forming. How many times do you have to tell people that it is a hoax before they will believe you?

I didn't say it was ultimatively balanced. Add the disclaimer I mentioned and you get a whole new picture.

H

I agree there should be an article on this interesting subject. But I think that the balance is wrong in this one.

*nods in agreement*

All comments I have are already stated - the main hoaxers have admitted it, demonstrated it etc. People want to believe in the hocus pocus and there is nothing you can do about it. I have no problem with this getting into the guide *but* there must be more balance. It is most definitely written from a believers point of view.

Azara beat me to it. She even mentioned Jim Schnabel's 'Round in Circles (published by Penguin in 1993)'. Sadly now out of print, this is a blow by blow account of the phenomenon written by someone privvy to all the political goings on between various groups of believers. It reveals (SPOILER COMING UP) that the majority of circles swirled during the halcyon days of cropwatching were swirled by bored cropwatchers (including the author).

Dave and Doug have not claimed to have been controlled by a higher force.

If you go to http://www.circlemakers.org you will find a list of circles they have swirled commercially and for their own pleasure.

AZARA - This site is now Jim's main occupation as far as I could make out. Also, I got in touch with Prof Terrence Meadon to report a 18th cent reference to some similar weirdness - nice guy.

You didn't mention the fact that farmers quickly picked up on the fact that they could charge a quid for every person that wanted to walk into the circles. This is a great incentive to invite circlemakers onto your land. Over the course of a single summer, some made thousands of pounds. And when it needed to be harvested, tehy just lowered the blades on the harvester to pick up the 'downed' stalks - no harm done.

This is an interesting subject, but only if approached from the 'human nature' aspect. If you start invoking all sorts of mysterious energies, then I'm afraid the balls gone over the wall.

Hi, Zaphod!
I'd be the first to admit that my previous post was not in my usual PR style.

However, you're an experienced writer who has already produced quite a number of Edited Entries. I doubt if a gentle hint that you should check the guidelines would have much effect! You write with a very large vocabulary, in a very polished style, and have a thorough grasp of Guide ML, so that a passing scout might well consider this entry a suitable pick. I just wanted to draw people's attention to the problems with what you are actually saying.

As for the 'factual' part, you said almost at the beginning 'so far no-one has seen a crop circle in the process of forming.' How factual is that?

You say that but 'some are so complex in design that it would seem impossible to be the result of human intervention, and moreover to be made during the night.' But the circle-makers group specifically claim responsibility for some of the most complex patterns you refer to - look at http://www.circlemakers.org/htv.html to see how complex a pattern the experts can create in four hours.

I think that from the aesthetic point of view, the present generation of circle-maker artists should certainly be mentioned. The fact that many spectators take their work to be due to higher powers of some kind gives their artworks an impact that exhibiting in galleries could never have.

Azara

It sounds as if I've some work to do on this one, so > though I have declared my bias to the mystery of crop circles vs. manmade copies in the introduction. I'm not averse to making it clearer that many are manmade but .... all of them - come off it.

What do you mean come off it?
It's not like we're trying to convince anyone that their made by aliens/spirits/energies, is it? Now that would call for a come of it.
How come the mandelbrot circle only appeared after fractals were printed onto tee-shirts?
Personally, Id love to believe in the more outlandish explanations, but I'm afraid I don't. I can't see why we can't appreciate them for what they are - tremendous works of (human) art.

PS - Nice article, by the way.

"Although prime areas for formations are extensively watched during the summer months, so far no-one has seen a crop circle in the process of forming. That is, no-one other than circlemakers themselves in which case they obviously observe proceedings first hand."

The above statement from early in the entry seems to be contradicted by the later statement that people claimed to have seen UFOs during formation of crop circles.

"In many eyewitness accounts, Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) have been spotted either before, during and after a crop circle has been formed. These UFOs can appear in different shapes, including small lights, cylinders, large balls, and Ferris Wheels. Some people have witnessed UFOs appearing as a column of light shooting what seem to be electric charges, leaving behind circles and pictograms8."

I noticed a few typos, but overall a good piece. It seems balanced between the various theories, although you obviously lean towards endorsing the Mother Earth theory. However, your conclusions are obviously based on the idea that crop circles are not made by humans.

Some people may claim that your piece is not balanced, but I think it could be brought into acceptable scope of the Edited Guide by refocusing the title of the piece. "Crop Circles - Theories and Beliefs" or something similar.

Also, there are many Edited guide entries lately that make the guidelines about being "well-balanced" practically moot. Has anyone read "Vietnam - America's Mistake" or "The 2000 US Presidential Election - A Democratic Perspective"? How much less balanced could you possibly get? As far as I can tell, any opinion piece less controversial than Evolution vs. Creation or whether God exists can be shoe-horned into the Edited Guide depending on (1) whether you can narrow and define your "perspective" in the title of your entry, or (2) whether the scouts, sub-editors and editors mind how opinionated the piece is.

I think large portions of this piece could be used to form a generic "Crop Circles" entry (with the opinionated bits excised), or that the piece should be able to get into the Edited Guide as it stands with a little modification to the title. Perhaps "Crop Circles - A Believer's Perspective"?

I think this entry is great, thank you Zaphod.

http://www.geocities.com/cropcirclecanada/phenomenon.html
I found that "Corn Devil" from 1678 if you wish to link to it.

Whether you believe in things you can't see, feel, taste, smell or not, I appreciate the beauty of the circles and I wonder if there is someone {or something} trying to tell us - what?
That if we carry on the way we are we'll destroy the ?
We already know that.


I think too much logic applied to something which requires faith to believe, will ruin it.

The magic is there for you, if you choose to believe.

Yes, I clapped to save Tinkerbell, and I still would.

I may be a wizened old granny but I still believe in magic.