Talk:Crop circles/Archive1

What nonsense! Everyone knows that crop circles are messages left by aliens for Mel Gibson. Mostly about Jews and stuff. --Kels 13:52, 29 June 2007 (CDT)


 * Mmmm. Perhaps we need a popular culture section?--Bob_M (talk) 13:56, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Image
I object to the use of the image of the two aliens speaking in front of the crop circle with the noughts and crosses. It is completely unrealistic. There is no way in which a game of noughts and crosses in which the first move is traditionally made by "X" could conceivably end with this result.--Bobbing up 09:48, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * It's the aliens screwing with your head, man. Keep walking on by, don't linger or stop to think too long about the illogical nature of the game. If you do, you'll wake up two days later with no memory of where the last 48 hours have gone, and a blinding headache. You're better off going to Prague if you want that sort of experience. Bondurant 09:57, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Don't be so effing rational. [[Image:jollyfish.gif|25px]]Genghis   09:58, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Maybe the aliens are just really really really bad at the game?--Waiting for Godot 10:48, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * They're from Bizzarro World (cf Superman) where everything is backwards. BTW O's won that game. Silver Sloth 10:51, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * As the caption says - "I love to mess with their minds". [[Image:jollyfish.gif|25px]]Genghis    11:09, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I think it's proof positive the picture is a fake!!--Bobbing up 11:26, 31 July 2008 (EDT)
 * They might have been playing Hollywood Squares, where you have to determine the truthiness of a celebrity's humorous answer to a question in order to actually "get" a square.  ħ uman  18:25, 31 July 2008 (EDT)

Question
Why do the aliens leave messages that are in spirals, circles etc. Why don't they just write We come in peace, or We want to take over your planet.Resistance is futile, or something like that.They can travel millions of light years through space but can't learn English.
 * Because making spaces is hard. TyrannisAn Iron, but caring, fist 16:09, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Spirals and circles represent the intergalactic alphabet. It is typical of monolingual English speakers that they expect all foreigners - even intergalactic aliens - to be able to speak English. If only we could interpret their signs then the secrets of the ancients would be available to us.--BobSpring is sprung! 20:52, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
 * If they can't speak English, or at least Welshish, they don't deserve visas! 05:49, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Can't they not just learn Earth's languages via the World Wide Web? No, wait, that would make first contact a little awkward, imagine it: "I can haz see leeda plezz? Kthxbie!!". 13:58, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * If they learned communication via the web they would assume that humanity's main means of communication was via pictures of naked bodies.--BobSpring is sprung! 17:36, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe this is a case for Teflpedia? 14:08, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You think I could expand the mission into teaching English to aliens?--BobSpring is sprung! 17:34, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Who said that they only use spirals and circles? ;) --ZooGuard (talk) 14:25, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * We could do with that as an article. I'm amused by the top hit, especially the response from an extremely butthurt believer who doesn't quite understand that you need evidence that aliens exist in order to say that the "answer" is evidence aliens exist. It's a pretty impressive crop circle. 21:55, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That is indeed a cool link, and an article on it would be awesome. 22:36, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * For the record, article is here: arecibo answer. 00:08, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you want to see a clogosphere meme in the making?
So, Linda Moulton Howe's Earthfiles website offers a quote from a Carl Sagan letter to the UK MoD, carefully attributing it not to Sagan, but to the letter: "From March 6, 1996, letter by astronomer Carl Sagan to U. K. Ministry of Defence". (It's still on the Earthfiles homepage.) It's clearly intended as a sensationalist hook for the article, which is behind a paywall (Earthfiles requires subscription). As a hook, it's borderline quote mining, contingent on whether the article includes the full letter. It's easy to be read as a quote by Sagan himself, though, and people have started doing just that (example), turning it into proper quote mining. At this point, it's unclear if it will die out or it will become a new conspiracy meme ("Carl Sagan secretly believed in crop circles!" or "...had evidence that crop circles are monitored and faked by TPTB!"). Only time will show, so if you want to see a talking point in the making, you can follow its propagation with Google. :)

And some pre-emptive debunking: the quote is from a letter declassified with the rest of the "correspondence with the public" of the MoD bureaucrats that dealt with UFO reports and related inquiries. It's been released as a document called DEFE 24/1979 by the UK National Archives, and Sagan's letter is on page 135 of the PDF file. It's dated March 6, 1996, and addressed to the Chief of Public Relations of the MoD. The entirety of the letter's text:

Italics mine. Only the italicized part was quoted on the Earthfiles homepage, and later, propagated. :/ --ZooGuard (talk) 18:05, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * That's almost spectacular enough to go on the quote mining article itself. Scarlet A.pngnarchist silverbrain.png 18:15, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think we should wait to see if/when it will become more common, otherwise RW will be contributing to its popularization. :(--ZooGuard (talk) 18:20, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * We wouldn't be contributing to its popularisation if we're explicitly demonstrating it to be a bullshit quote-mine. Scarlet A.pngpathetic silverbrain.png 17:03, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Update: now in other languages (Spanish? (Brazilian) Portugese?) From the comments, via Google Translate: ''Sagan spelled backwards is NAGAS ... the word is Sanskrit for reptile humanoids. Sagan wrote a book "THE DRAGONS OF EDEN"...'', and continues in that spirit.--ZooGuard (talk) 16:19, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Where's the head-desk emoticon? Scarlet A.pngpathetic silverbrain.png 16:51, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * [[File:Coffee spray.gif]] or [[File:Wall.gif]] Humorless fascist sociopath 16:59, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The latter, definitely. Scarlet A.pngtheist silverbrain.png 17:03, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Update: the "example" linked above has reached Facebook:, but the discussion also includes a link to an image of the actual letter, again on Facebook: --ZooGuard (talk) 19:09, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm reading the comments, help me: Despite the apparent rigorous nature if the scientific community I do not believe they hold the monopoly on "what is real". Scarlet A.pnggnostic silverbrain.png 14:31, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Do you really want to be rational?
If you want to be rational about things, you need to take a sober, realistic look at the subject, and not crowd articles with rubbish and pseudo-facts. I don't know how serious this article is meant to be, but here are a few issues, starting at the top:

"Crop circles are geometric designs of crushed or knocked-over crops" - name some crop circles which consist of "crushed" crops. I'll bet you can't come up with a single one.

"These strange things were initially made by two Englishmen in the late 1970s" - no they weren't. There are photos, diagrams and descriptions from reputable sources published before the 1970s.

"Gullible people, however, continue to believe they are made by flying saucers" - name one! Go on!

I can't be bothered ploughing through it all - but just to bring this to the attention of you "rationalists" there's no more truth in this than in your average pseudo-scientific cereologist article.
 * So - the crops are not "crushed" but "pressed flat"? Is that what you're saying?--Weirdstuff (talk) 16:28, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
 * You can only read the first sentence? Look again. There's more.
 * There are photos of crop circles long before Doug and Dave, published at the time, not subsequently. Doug and Dave did NOT invent them in the late 1970s. Why is it rational to believe the unsubstantiated claims of these two guys? If they said they built Stonehenge for a laugh would you just believe that too?
 * No-one says they are made by flying saucers. Who claims that?? Name a single researcher who says so, or a publication with that as its angle.
 * You seem to think it's rational to just make things up without any facts to back them up!
 * I can't help but notice that you didn't mention any of these "reputable sources published before the 1970s". As for naming one gulllible person, here's an article from 2010 mentioning a few: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/7955868/Crop-circle-conundrum.html

If aliens did it
... they would leave patterns in other 'easily marked surfaces': or use paint and other materials. (How soon after the first people learnt to write more than 'lists of things received by the temple of the God(dess) X/the King-Emperor' was the first 'Z was here'/'Y is a (negative word of choice)' scrawled somewhere? 171.33.197.73 (talk) 16:24, 4 September 2013 (UTC)