This is what I imagine pitchfork wielding farmers are yelling into the sky after waking to find that their wheat fields have been vandalized by unearthly visitors. Crop circles first began appearing in the media in the mid 1970's when crude circles were found in farmer's fields in Southern England. These circles were a mystery until Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted to making the circles as a hoax. Since then, circles and other increasingly complex designs have been mysteriously forming all over the world. But is it so mysterious? There are those that study this phenomena and claim that the circles are being made by aliens wishing to send us messages. These people are called "cereologists” (after Ceres, the Roman goddess of vegetation). They have yet to provide any credible evidence for their claims.
It's pretty self evident though that crop circles are man-made. Joe Nickell has done extensive studies and had the brilliant idea of creating a timeline and graph of all the circles found and documented. The results were telling. After the circles in England were exposed in the media, circles began forming in other parts of the world and followed a predictable pattern. An increase in complexity may sound like something a cereologist would point to as being indicative of intelligent alien life but it's clearly a product of man-made hoaxing and people simply trying to out do one another. New circles proliferated after each media report and conformed to the geographic location of said reports. Plus there have been many hoaxers who have demonstrated how complex circles are made and the best is when cereologists claim certain circles as not possibly being man-made but are later proven wrong as hoaxers come forth with video of them making the formation. The "professionals" clearly do not have any criteria to properly distinguish a "fake" circle from a "real" one. There is also what Nickell calls the "shyness effect" which means that circles are never actually seen being made. Why is this I wonder? Are the aliens shy?
So let's see. What could be causing crop circles? Intelligent beings from a planet outside of our known galaxy who are visiting earth with the intent of imparting some sort of arbitrary message to us hapless earthlings. And apparently the only way they can think of sending us this message is by doodling random pictures in our farmer's fields. Or there are people with too much time on their hands who have decided to have a little laugh and get a little attention by stomping down some wheat with a board. Occam's razor would strongly suggest the latter.
It's pretty self evident though that crop circles are man-made. Joe Nickell has done extensive studies and had the brilliant idea of creating a timeline and graph of all the circles found and documented. The results were telling. After the circles in England were exposed in the media, circles began forming in other parts of the world and followed a predictable pattern. An increase in complexity may sound like something a cereologist would point to as being indicative of intelligent alien life but it's clearly a product of man-made hoaxing and people simply trying to out do one another. New circles proliferated after each media report and conformed to the geographic location of said reports. Plus there have been many hoaxers who have demonstrated how complex circles are made and the best is when cereologists claim certain circles as not possibly being man-made but are later proven wrong as hoaxers come forth with video of them making the formation. The "professionals" clearly do not have any criteria to properly distinguish a "fake" circle from a "real" one. There is also what Nickell calls the "shyness effect" which means that circles are never actually seen being made. Why is this I wonder? Are the aliens shy?
So let's see. What could be causing crop circles? Intelligent beings from a planet outside of our known galaxy who are visiting earth with the intent of imparting some sort of arbitrary message to us hapless earthlings. And apparently the only way they can think of sending us this message is by doodling random pictures in our farmer's fields. Or there are people with too much time on their hands who have decided to have a little laugh and get a little attention by stomping down some wheat with a board. Occam's razor would strongly suggest the latter.
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