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Old February 4th 04, 11:46 PM
Eric Hocking
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"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
Eric Hocking wrote:
"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
Eric Hocking wrote:
[..]

Wow, that's a great deal of discussion you've decided to ignore there.

It would be easier after seeing your data.


Going to have to move this from an old PC (and work out how to make pages
without html coding by hand - new ISP) so give me a day or two.

How about you do a nice little table of when and where crop circles
appeared in UK with the dates that restrictions were lifted, as that is
your claim and it is a bit hard to look up. Then we can try to decide

what
percentage level of significance can be attached to any correlation in

the
data set, given the amount of data.

I had this discussion back when it when it happened, often with the
cropcircleresearcher site hosts and contributors themselves. You think

I've
not already charted this data and had this discussion over 2 years ago?

So it should be no trouble to repeat it, or else I have to assume it does

not
stand up to scrutiny.


This is one of my initial plots. It's a basic timeline (X-axis is date) and
Y-axis is cumulative totals. This plots only the circles in the database
for Wiltshire (in fact SU OS Grid Ref.). The only tinkering is that I
removed circles that the researcher team deemed to be caused by wind damage
or "hoaxes". I chose Wiltshire county as each year it makes up 1/2 of the
total circles found in the UK and, unlike Hampshire, had infected farms so
the resources for checking shutdown and reopenings is a little easier. That
said, at this point in time many of the notices are no longer on the
government site. MAFF is now DEFRA, and they copped a lot of stick,
deservedly in my opinion, of their management of the crisis.

The red line is 2001.
http://uk.f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/...lbum?.dir=/31c
a

I'm not going to be dragged, yet again, into a discussion only to have

it
culminate with the entire post being deleted and ignored. I smacks too

much
of the blinkered approach by "believers" of ignoring facts that they

don't
like (remember the weather?).


That is still a little bit possible - a day or two later, but there is not
really a large enough sample to say.


It's not a day or two - see the initial chart.

Two examples below, descriptions from the UK database, summing up why I
think it's next to pointless discussing this subject "scientifically"

with
proponents of non-humans being circle builders.


1: The word 'Sexsmith' within a circle - presumably made as a hoax to
promote the Canadian rock singer of the same name?
2. A series of letters, forming the word 'COCK' - presumably indicating

it's
status as a hoax."
Now there's scientific, unbiased analysis if ever I saw it.


There is nothing to stop people having fun.


My problem is that in the database, these obviously man-made circles are
"perhaps hoaxes". Not an unbiased approach to analysing the "phenomenon",
in my opinion.

And there is also a bit of a sinister side to pretence. When I used to

write
on talk.euthanasia quite a bit someone wrote a `manifesto' of the Church

of
Euthanasia under my name (though a different email address). And their
associations seem not too savoury.


I've had kooks from sci.skeptic attempt to go "real life" on me too - and
been threatened with legal proceedings and had my website suspended due to
some rather damning evidence hosted their that showed a well known "psychic"
being caught on video, cheating at his most famous parlour trick.

--
Eric Hocking
www.twofromoz.freeserve.co.uk
"A closed mouth gathers no feet"
"Ignorance is a renewable resource" P.J.O'Rourke
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