Galactic communication?

Hey Karin,

How are you two doing… still under a blanket on the couch?

This afternoon I found some time to read your posts and the ‘order of time’ website you were writing about. Pretty interesting and this time-stuff is indeed related to what I teach in my ‘Tzolkin-courses’. For me the Tzolkin (or Mayan-calender although it is not THE mayan-calender, there is no such thing as THE mayan-calender) is about recollecting our connection with the galaxy… I realize this might sound a bit hocus pocus to you… but living with this calender synchronizes us with our spiritual path and gives us a deeper understanding of what it is to be a ‘galactic human’ on earth. So, I guess my perspective on galactic time is even a bit more elaborate then what I read on this website. 

Although I am very into uncommon ideas about time(perception), natural time-stuff, lunar, solar and galactic calenders I am not sure the only way to interpret cropcircles is to see them as an expression of alien or galactic beings (don’t forget we are also living in this galaxy and therefore are galactic beings as well) searching for contact and waiting for an answer. In my opinion galactic communication takes place at a different level and those wanting to contact us find ways, they are not waiting for a stamp in the grain. Anyway, If we are talking about this kind of subjects we have to go beyond the scope of our normal human mind… we have to think out of the box!

So, I can appreciate most things written on this site and in this article… And I’m sure the time-management/calenders we use reflect our mindset and our way of managing this planet as a collective but I find the cropcircletheory they propose a bit hollywood-like… (een beetje erbij gehaald, zou ik zeggen).

Well, are we getting any wiser on this cropcircle-stuff? I feel the need to visit one (not the best timing now) to experience for  myself. Everything I have read about the believerside of this subject is the same beautiful inspiring story, all echos from each other.

What to do? Let’s go plan our trip!  When do we have a meeting?

Hope you and Eise soon will be better (Let me know what you think about a distant healingsession, I know somebody…)

Love, Dees

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Critical review on W.C. Levengood’s crop circle research

Hi Dees,

No trip to Bloemendaal & Haarlem this weekend, unfortunately. Eise caught the flu (and an additional ear infection) and I’m not feeling too well either. So I thought this was a good moment to start reading some of the supposedly scientific research into crop circles myself.

But before I got to reading the articles, I found a nice review on W.C. Levengood’s crop circle research. This review addresses two issues I’ve mentioned before, the lack of double blind testing and the circular reasoning (“Although there are no guaranteed genuine formations on which to conduct research, the research supposedly proves the genuineness of the formations.”). Besides these two points, the author (Joe Nickell, Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), how cool does that sound!) also points to a fact I hadn’t even realised myself, namely that the correlation Levengood finds between structural and cellular alterations in plants and their location within crop-circle-type formations does not at all show a causal relationship. Of course! This reminds me to something I read earlier, that stalks that have been bent grow longer nodes (one of the signs of a “genuine” crop circle, according to Levengood and other croppies) because they simply have to elevate themselves again.

Just another nice skeptical read! 😉

By the way, I’m quite curious about Karlo’s opinion on crop circles and our blog, couldn’t you push him to leave a comment??

Bye, Karin

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Skeptic exploration

Hi there Dees!

My my, I do need to make time for our crop circle research! Too busy…. So now I’m dedicating my lunch break to our blog 😉 .

Wow, those microlight flights are so cool! Do you think they have aircrafts for more than two persons? Otherwise we’ll have to take some lessons first! How was your trip to the library, found anything interesting?

I have been searching a little on skeptics’ websites (I thought that would be the best starting point for the skeptic girl 🙂 ). I’m not nearly finished, of course, but I found two book reviews of the (self-proclaimed) crop circle scientist we already saw in the You Tube video I posted last Sunday: Eltjo Haselhoff. Apparently, he published a few books about his scientific approach to researching and explaining crop circles and of course, one of these books was very critically reviewed by the skeptics’ websites I visited. I have to admit that I haven’t read Haselhoff’s books myself, so I cannot really say whether I agree with the skeptics. But they did raise some interesting issues which I would like to explore further.

The first review I read was published on the website of Skepp, a Flemish group of curious people who study “statements and phenomena that are highly unlikely or impossible according to the current state of the art in science”. It is a review about Haselhoff’s book called “Geheimzinnige graancirkels”. The first thing in the review that caught my attention was a couple of terms used to refer to people who study crop circles. That’s us!! Although Wikipedia adds to the definition: “especially one who believes that they are not man-made or formed by other terrestrial processes”. That’s not me. Apparently these people are called cereologists or croppies.  So that’s another set of words to add to our search vocabulary. The main critique of Skepp on Haselhoff is that he claims to be a true scientist, while they doubt his scientific approach. They conclude that he doesn’t obey to many common scientific rules. Apparently, some of his hypotheses are based on very few observations and (more concerning), his experiments and tests were not done (double-) blind. An interesting problem that is explained is the fact that cereologists are trapped in a circlular argument. They study differences between ‘genuine’ and man-made crop circles to find explanations for the genuine crop circles. However, they don’t know which crop circles are genuine and which are man-made! Interesting thought…. The review ends with a list of common skeptics’ arguments for the hypothesis that all crop circles are man-made. This is quite an interesting list, you should read it! I recognized a lot of counter arguments used by croppies (love the term!!).

The second review I read I found on the Dutch counterpart of Skepp: Skepsis (what’s in a name?). Skepsis’ goal is “to critically study exceptional statements”. They reviewed the same book by Eltjo Haselhoff. Similar to Skepp, the Skepsis reviewer was impressed by the beautiful photos of crop circles. Also, they applaud the idea of approaching crop circle research from a scientific angle, as Haselhoff claims he does. However, Skepsis is also quite disappointed in the scientific explanations provided in the book. The largest part of the review was based on the mathematical and geometrical analyses and conclusions of Haselhof. As you know I am not a mathematician, so forgive me for any mistakes in interpreting Skepsis’ review, but if I understand the reviewer correctly, he used two methods to prove that Haselhoff’s analysis is not correct.

So, what should we conclude from this? I feel I should read Haselhoff’s book myself to decide whether I agree with the reviews. The Skepp review even suggests to buy this book if you’d want to read just one crop circle believers’ book because of the photographs and because Haselhoff is a bit more critical than many croppies. I have to say though, I liked the lines of reasoning from both reviewers! Also, I do feel somewhat more comfortable in refuting croppies’ arguments about why they believe many crop circles cannot be made by humans. There seem to be very plausible scientific explanations for many of the often mentioned phenomena.

A final interesting article (also by Skepsis) is a general review of Haselhoffs work and thoughts. Again, his scientific claims are seriously questioned, and I tend to agree with the skeptics here. Arguments Haselhoff is using just don’t seem right to a researcher such as myself. Two examples (from the article): Haselhoff apparently cannot imagine that one of the eye witnesses he spoke to was not telling the truth, and therefore what this eye witness saw is undeniably the truth. And my favourite: double-blind testing is a waist of time because good researchers are not influenced by any foreknowledge. Really!! Dees, even you don’t agree with this, or do you? 🙂

So please read the book review of Skepp and the article of Skepsis, I am so curious of what you think of it! Let me know!

Cheerio!

Karin

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