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From: Dennis Stacy <dstacy@texas.net>
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 17:57:32 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 11:21:08 -0400
Subject: Re: Crop Circle Characteristics - 'Real' vs. Fake


>Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 09:51:19 -0700 (PDT)
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>From: Jim Deardorff <deardorj@proaxis.com>
>Subject: Re: Crop Circle Characteristics - 'Real' vs. Fake

<snip>

>Here's one for you to  ponder, since you have Noyes' (editor)
>_The Crop Circle Enigma_. Go to p. 22 of that book and you'll
>see diagrams made by Terence Meaden and Colin Andrews of the
>crop circle of 1 Aug. '86 at Headbourne Worthy, Hampshire. It
>was a two-layer system, with an underlayer swirled one way and
>an upper layer above it, covering it, swirled such that the lay
>of the stems was at right angles to that of the layer just
>underneath. The diagrams depict the direction of the respective
>swirls. The photograph of it is shown on p. 36 of _Circular
>Evidence_ by Delgado & Andrews.

Here's one for you to ponder.

In his own crop circle book, The Circles Effect and Its
Mysteries (1989), Meaden indeed viewed the Headbourne Worthy
circle as incapable of having been created by humans. He was
even so bold (or foolish, depending on your point of view) at
the time to state, "We may be sure that none of the 250 circles
personally examined by the author as background material for the
present survey has been man-made."

But only a few years later Meaden was on record as admitting
that, while many of the complex-geometry formations were
undoutedly hoaxes, some of the simple cirlces were still the
product of his previously unrecognized "plasma vortex." A year
or two later he was out of the "business" altogether.

One wonders why, doesn't one? But why not contact him and find
out? Ask him what he thinks of  the Headbourne Worthy formation
_now_.

<snip>

>Such tell-tale signs have been found most notably in other
>crops, with wheat receiving the most attention, I believe. You
>could write the BLT research team for more details on that.
>Recall that posting from Nancy Talbott I originally was trying
>to bring to your attention, with excerpt below:

>>Yes, control studies have been conducted; BLT has made circles
>>with feet, planks & rope,and cement rollers, then sampled the
>>crop as we normally do to look for the regularly-found plant
>>anomalies.

>>We did _not_ find (1) node elongation of the plant stems, (2)
>>expulsion cavities at the nodes of plant stems, (3) altered
>>redox ratios (measurements of mitochondrial respiration rates),
>>or (4) altered germination characteristics in the downed plants
>>when compared with controls taken elsewhere in the test fields.

>> Nancy Talbott
>> BLT Research,
>> Box 400127,
>> Cambridge, MA
>> 02140, USA.

>The "B" stands for John Burke, the "T" stands for Talbott, and
>the L for Dr. Wm. C. Levingood [sic], who did manage to get a paper or
>two (or more since 1994?) into the peer-reviewed literature on
>it, and in it he does describe some of the anomalies in detail.
>His paper is "Anatomical anomalies in crop formation plants,"
>_Physiologia Plantarum_ 92 (1994), pp. 356-363.


For a balanced overview of the crop circle phenomenon, I can do
no better than to recommend an article by Montague Keen, "Keen
on Crop Circles," which appeared in The Anomalist 4 ($9.95 plus
$2.50 s/h from, and checks payable to, Dennis Stacy, PO Box
12434, San Antonio, TX 78212). For three years Keen served as
scientific adviser to the Centre for Crop Circle Studies.

Here's an interesting quote from Keen. "In order to use
artificially flattened pants as controls against which
differences in sample crops are measured, it is strictly
necessary not only to have a standard artificial flattening
procedure, using the same implements at the same velocities and
weights to flatten the crop, but to perform this operation at
the same time as the sampled formation is made -- otherwise the
crop may be at a different growth stage and exhibit all manner
of chemical and physiological differences. But this is
impossible. No-one knows where or when crop formations occur;
only when they are noticed. Such an objection may appear to push
methodology over the brink of pedantry, but this is an area
where we can afford to allow no rough edges." (pp. 52-53)

As for Levengood's much ballyhooed  measurements in the
diameters of minute pit holes in cell walls, I won't bore you
with the details, but Keen says, in essence, "it is doubtful
whether optical magnification could satisfactorily delineate
diameters to the level of accuracy required for the sort of
statistical calculations made by Levengood. There is a strong
subjective element here. It must cast serious doubt on the
reliability of measurements made and conclusions drawn." (p. 51)

There is much more in this important, intriguing article,
including the to date unanswered challenge made by hoaxer Rob
Irving to Levengood about Levengood's so-called "H-Glaze,"
described by Levengood and Burke as minute particles of iron
contained in the late-summer Perseid meteor shower [that] had
been drawn down from stratospheric heights by a plasma vortex.
"On entering the Earth's atmosphere," according to Keen's
interpretation of Levengood's and Burke's claims, "the heat had
generated microwaves of sufficient intensity to moltenise the
iron particles, some of which were found to be embedded in the
stalk running from the base upwards."

Irving claims he dusted the formation with iron samples obtained
from the chemistry department of one of the Oxford University
colleges -- and still has some, whenever Levengood wants to
compare his samples with his.

As for Levengood's 1994 "Physiologia Plantarum" article, Keen
has this to say: "This journal, the exclusive domain of plant
physiologists, makes no provision for correspondence or
contradiction, otherwise it might have been able to inform its
readers of my failure to find a single piece of supporting
evidence in the several footnoted citations."

Something else to ponder: Like Meaden, Keen was an early student
of the so-called crop circle phenomenon, who has since distanced
himself. I wonder why.

<snip>

>It's the other way around. There is a lot of conclusive evidence
>that the real crop-circle formations can't be hoaxed, because
>hoaxers can't reproduce any of the extremely important details.
>All they can do is make a pattern that, if they do it carefully,
>may look OK when photographed from an airplane. But that's good
>enough to satisfy those who don't want to admit that
>beyond-human intelligence is at work. They're the ones who don't
>want to mention or discuss Levingood's work, or that two-layer
>crop-circle system I mentioned above, or the braided systems, or
>the several cases where the stems were all bent over from one to
>several inches above the ground, or why, in thousands of cases
>of "genuine" crop formations, no hoaxers have been caught making
>them, etc.

>Jim Deardorff
>http://www.proaxis.com/~deardorj


Your conclusive evidence is a lot less conclusive than you
think, Jim, as are your undervaluations of human ability and
ingenuity (and let's don't forget gullibility). You ought to
hang out with some hoaxers more and see how it's done. But you
probably wouldn't believe it if you saw it with your own eyes.

Dennis Stacy
http://www.anomalist.com