http://www.benyeoh.com/misc/silburyxhill.jpg
Okay, this might be a little TOO off topic but sometimes I really wonder who’s responsible for creating those things.
Nice design, would make a great logo for a game.
Just remember, when the people responsible knock on your door, throw water at them. (Is that a spoiler?)
Falsum.
Real HF waves doesn’t do your living room carpet’s patterns.
I would be currious what would happen if something would be near when real would be formed.
Is it just me… or does that picture look a bit fake? Looks like the angle of the crop circle is a bit off. Then again, that might just be me looking for reason’s to call it fake :).
I know that there have been crop circles made, but did you hear about this one on tv, or did you find an article on the internet?
Of course they look fake - there are no crop circles that are known to not be fakes.
If you are more interested in “Reality” than “Bizarre Matters”, try the JREF 
FT is pretty sceptical, it just doesn’t jump to conclusions as quickly as Randi’s bunch. Certainly not on the fluffy new age “crystals are healing the cosmos” side of the world, but also not on the “we worship science as the one true god because science can already answer every question that will ever be asked” side either. Its kind of a “serious questions deserve serious responses” approach, which I find quite agreeable- if there is one thing that annoys me it is being preached at by a fundamentalist of any religion.
That’s not to say that Randi doesn’t to a great job of debunking a lot of nonsense that really needs to be debunked.
[quote]Of course they look fake - there are no crop circles that are known to not be fakes.
[/quote]
Really?
While I cannot vouch for the authencity of the above pic, I’m very sure crop circles with similar or more complicated (mathematical) patterns do exist in real life, even in the rice paddies of Japan. (maybe someone here from England or the US, where it is said to be most prolific, has seen it?).
If you’re inferring that they’re all just the works of bored pranksters, then I don’t quite agree. Basically, what kind of technology/organization can (as it is witnessed to occur under such conditions):
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Produce such a complex, mathematically precise and large scale (300 - 900 ft diameter) image in under a couple of hours
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Produce it in low-light conditions (without any artifical lighting of course), without any (pole) markers.
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Produce a drastically bent-over “weaving”/swirling pattern with the plant stalks without any breakage (plants are still alive), as opposed to just beating them down with planks etc.
Ideas?
Well, that question’s been thoroughly covered in the past, but I suppose not here.
Obviously SWP knows that crop circles “exist” - he’s asserting that they are all known to not be caused by alien/paranormal/whatever forces.
To answer your specific points:
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A team of people, lots of preparation, and computer modelling. No problem.
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Low-light is surprisingly easy to work in, once you get used to it. But from what I remember, they often do use marker poles, they just don’t leave any holes behind! Again, this is where the team comes in - you just get people to hold the poles vertical for you.
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Don’t mistake these growing plants for dry straw. Yes, straw breaks, but the lowest parts of the growing plant are very pliable - especially in damp conditions.
What I like is the weird stuff that the guys who do the crop circles have run into down the years…
I didn’t even go that far.
I said that none have been proven to be caused by any sort of “other worldly” force. I suspect that while many are suspected of being faked in the ususal means, that it hasn’t actually been proven either.
As cfmdobbie stated, the complex patterns with precision can be done quite easily with some planning. As I understand it, usually a rope is enough to control distance.
I find his weekly commentary particularily amusing, if not a bit depressing at the same time.
I also find religion/preaching annoying. Unless I agree with it 
From what I’ve read, about 80% of the crop circles are known to be man made, the remaining 20% not explained. They may still be man made, but there are some known cases that are very hard to explain. Like one case where such a large number of crop circles appeared overnight and unseen, an army of circle makers must have been active that night because one circle must have been made about every 30 seconds. While it must be quite easy to remain unseen at night for a small group of people, a group of people the size of an army must have had a very hard time to remain unnoticed.
That doesn’t mean it must have had an unwordly origin, it’s just that a number of those crop circles remain unexplained.
There are a few organised teams doing them.
AFAIK, 100% of crop circles are man-made. Some of these these teams have been going for over a decade, and they’re very good at it. the best teams actually do it WITH the farmers permission - and split the proceeds they get from charging ‘researchers’ admission 
As for mathematical formulaes for the circles - they usually all come down to bits of string. These lend themselves to proscribing:
Circles, Ellipses, parabolas & hyperbolas.
Using these as the base curves, and some stright lines connecting the points, you can create the patterns they do. There is certainly an art to it
Yes, also believe they’re all man made but there are still some things that makes you go ‘hmmm’.
the best thing I heard was some guy recently going on about them as being one the best current forms of ‘folk art’. By being anonymously, its being done for community enjoyment as opposed to personal gain. the creators should be recognised as artists in their own right.
He was the first ‘crop circle expert’ I actually agreed with
Call me crazy but I swear that field looks like a carpet.
Yes, you are right. It’s one of most easy way how can you discover if that circle is fake, or not.
BTW some circles have increased amount of radioactivity in them… So if someone created them artificaly…
When someone starts talk about all that circles in crops are artificial he is obviously doesn’t know about that circles in the medieval ages. No circlemakers back then. People weren’t as lazy to watch the field long enough to take fork and drive out ALL circlemakers.
On a side note, current amateur base of a crop circle research is underpaid, and lacks scientific apparatuses to tell the difference between real ones and fakes with reasonable degree of success. Circlemakers are attempting to receive more popularity, so trying to discover if that circle is fake, or not is sometimes useless, there are too much fakes on one or two possibly verificably real ones, and when you are appearing on the site, you are just driving them to create more fakes.
So what are ‘real’ circles? I assume you mean circles not created by circle makers?
If you want to tell the difference between ‘fake’ ones and ‘real’ ones, you actually have to be sure that there are in fact ‘real’ ones. AFAIK, nobody has witnessed ‘real’ ones being created. A number of them might be unexplained, but that doesn’t mean they’re ‘real’.
And if you know that there are in fact real ones, you have to know how they are created. But nobody ever saw a ‘real’ one being created, so how do you tell the difference?
Maybe ‘real’ ones are created by aliens, using poles and strings ;D