LINDY: "I know about Rod Dickinson. It is obvious to me you wish to believe this man."

MY REPLY: I have no reason not to. He has no particular motive to lie. His comments are quite detailed. He accurately explains how the Julia Set crop circle can be made using a Fibonacci number series. If you know enough about math, then you know how easy this is to do.

LINDY: "Who to believe? The pilot? Rod Dickinson?"

MY REPLY: What pilot? Do you have a name? How can you even know who to believe if you can't even name who?!?

LINDY: "Who made the fairy rings...?"

MY REPLY: I have no idea and don't care. The subject is contemporary crop circles and who makes them.

LINDY: "...how do you explain all of Levengood's plant anomalies?"

MY REPLY: What anomalies? Blown and elongated nodes?!? These occur naturally in every wheat field I know. Its part of the natural diversity of the crop (actually even Levengood admits this now). The problem is that Levengood is not a scientist and does not know how to conduct real research. His so-called "study" of plant "anomalies" lacks adequate controls and replicability. His stuff sounds good to the non-scientist, but if you know something about scientiific methodolgy you'd appreciate why his "work" fails the laugh test.

A simple test of Levengood's "theory" can be conducted in the privacy of your own home. Retrieve a few wheat stalks that have non-blown and "normal" short nodes. Remember that Levengood attributes the blown or elongated condition to "microwave heating." Well just put those puppies in your home microwave and see what happens.

Advocates of paranormal phenomena are fond of using the term "anomaly." But, frankly they misuse it. All "anomaly" means is a "deviation or departure from the normal or common order, form, or rule." In science this means something unexpected or not predicted. But, in order to state that something is anomalous, one must first have a pretty good idea about the normal background level about a particular thing is. That's where Levengood's "anomalies" fail miserably.

The term "anomaly" is used by so-called crop circle "researchers" because its a way of sounding officious when there's nothing substantive to say. Just claim that something's anomalous and immediately we must conclude we've found evidence of E.T. Its overused rhetoric by croppies, ghost hunters, and UFO fanatics.

But I now know that this information will have little meaning to you. That's because you are already convinced that there is something "anomalous" about crop circles. It doesn't matter to you that you know that even very complicated crop circles can be made by people. You've decided that at least some examples have to be made by something mysterious. Yet you can't even tell me how to distinguish a "real" crop circle from a "fake" one.

I can see that I'm wasting my time here. Frankly there's about as much evidence that crop circles are made by something other than people as there is that Saddam Hussein still had WMDs when Bush invaded Iraq. I am both amazed and amused that for someone not gullible enough to be taken in by George Bush that you have allowed yourself to be spoofed by crop circle "research." Pretty disappointing.