-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In the January/February 1996 Mensa Bulletin on pages 9-10 is an article by Teresa Fisher titled "An Enigma Wrapped In a Circle." The article is about a phenomenon which has interested me for quite some time, "crop circles" or "pictograms." I have tried to find this excellent article on the web and failed, so I will quote a few parts of it I consider relevant. All typos are mine, Ms. Fisher is an excellent writer, and I have changed her well done presentation only for brevity and clarity. If you think that this post has "no cypherpunk relevance" you can: 1. Flame me, in *private* e-mail. [I'll happily ignore you.] 2. Go hump a tree. Article excerpts (in quotes) and my comments follow: "In the late 1970s, farmers over the world were finding unexplainable, perfectly round, flattened areas in their grain fields. The flattened crops made irreproducible, layered swirl patterns. As time went on and crop circle incidents increased tremendously, the outlines of the formations became more complex and came to be called pictograms." They appeared overnight, "[by 1990] some 2000 circles and pictograms had been formed all over the world. A large percentage...were showing up in a small area in southern England, mainly in Wiltshire Downs." "Then, in 1991, two retired Englishmen named Doug Bower and Dave Chorley announced that they had been responsible for the crop circle phenomenon for the past 13 years." The dim media swallowed this hook, line, and sinker; neglecting to question "how they created intricate, sometimes braided swirls, executed elaborate pictograms in the dark, and caused crop formations in 19 other countries besides England." Brittle plants in the (non-hoaxed) circles were also bent in a way "that no investigator has been able to duplicate." Recent tests, including some at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories, show isotope changes in the soil, and differing biophysical and biochemical properties of the grain within the pictograms when compared to adjacent grain in the field. Gerald Hawkins was not fooled. He did "a systematic study of the geometry of the circles, and found ratios of small whole numbers that precisely matched the ratios defining the diatonic scale. Further statistical analysis revealed three other geometric theorems in the circle patterns, and he realized that all four theorems had a common thread that led to a fifth, more general theorem. His inability to find any of these theorems in Euclidean geometry or any of the math books he consulted caused him to conclude that whoever is making the circles had to not only know how to prove a Euclidean theorem, but also to conceive of an original theorem. Hawkins says that proving a theorem is easy; conceiving it in the first place is quite another matter." ["FN 6 Ivars Peterson, "Euclid's Crop Circles," *Science News* 141, No. 5, pp. 76-77."] In late 1991 in Ickleton "a perfect depiction of the mathematical configuration known as the Mandelbrot Set" appeared. ["FN 9 Beth Davis, *Ciphers in the Crops,* (Bath, England: Gateway Books, 1992)pp. 9-15."] I am now experiencing Tim's wish that I could draw in e-mail, as there is a diagram here of "a circle inside a triangle inside a ring inside a hexagon inside a ring." Don't even *try* to imagine it. The article points out that "NASA will be promoting the space program with a crop circle image and the slogan, 'We need to be out there.'" [Agreed, but with *tax* money?] Back to Ms. Fisher. "I have been amazed at the need many people have to dismiss this mystery. They will ignore all of the evidence to claim that the circles are being formed by weather or hoaxers. Neither claim stands up to even minimal scrutiny. I don't know what is causing crop circles to appear, but I'm certain it isn't being done by the wind or by an old man with a board. What do you think?" I must add that anyone who has seen the cover of Robert Plant's "Now and Zen" album would have trouble believing that a couple of drunks from the pub down the street did _THAT_! I do not know if "extraterrestrials" or "UFOs" are responsible for these images. [In my long-held opinion, governments tend to lie about UFOs (surprise!).] I do feel that these pictograms, these "Ciphers in the Crops," cry out for cryptanalysis, by someone far more adept at complex mathematics than I am. Results might well be felt worldwide. Thoughts? JMR Regards, Jim Ray -- Boycott espionage-enabled software! "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." - T. Paine http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray _______________________________________________________________________ PGP key Fingerprint 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 Public Key id. # E9BD6D35 <liberty@gate.net> IANAL _______________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh. iQCVAwUBMQmUiG1lp8bpvW01AQE+OwP/URevvKxeTnV75DfXm0+XM9JTWR9w2ZCn 9RbdwBmVK5WTw5228x2EBNrhAQeGeksFQX9z/YEZgLCbscX1vtAT1PydSf2JBruM jOBhRX/a4MJWo4l7UcyefQwK2NyB8YXwqGoDPQKYtC9dqY0X6wuDnRWP2SGVYkG4 pf28zVDk1Vc= =MxuH -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----