Date: Sun, 3 Dec 1995 20:27:19 -0500
From: Jim Martin <flatland@mcn.org>
To: orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Carl Sagan detects orgone in crop circles
Sender: owner-orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu

Just testing the new set-up. Thanks, Shawn for setting up the new server.

While I'm at it, today's (12/3/95) issue of Parade Magazine (that filler in 
everybody's Sunday paper) carries a debunking by Carl Sagan: "Crop Circles & 
Aliens: What's the Evidence?" 

"Best-selling books were on extra-terrestrial crop distorters were purchased by 
a breathless and admiring public. True, no saucer was actually seen settling 
down on the wheat, no geometrical figure was filmed in the course of being 
generated. But dowsers authenticated their alien origin, and channelers made 
contact with the entities responsible. 'Orgone energy' was detected within the 
circles." - Sagan, page12 of Parade Magazine.

Sagan apparently refers here to Andrew Collins book, "Alien Energy; UFOs, Ritual
Landscapes & the Human Mind" (1994, ABC Books, Essex, England) which had a 
miniscule print run of 250 numbered copies. Collins also organized a "Orgone 93"
event where a small cloudbuster was used along ley lines and near crop circles 
to stimulate alien anomalies. (A la Constable). Collins took a mystical 
approach, but the book actually offered some evidence that Constable's infrared 
photos of "space critters" could be the result of a normal film-developing 
anomaly called "helations" in printing. Collins demonstrated this by taking two 
photos of the same field at the same instant; one photo developed anomalies, the
other didn't. But that Sagan knows about this fairly marginal work shows just 
how carefully the skeptics monitor the paranormal scene.

Sagan piece in Parade assigns responsibility for all crop circles to the two 
self-professed hoaxters, Doug and Dave, who came up with the idea in 1980. 
(However, the first crop circle of mention in the popular book, Circular 
Evidence, show a crop circle in the Midlands of southern England which appeared 
in 1978.) Sagan complains that Doug & Dave haven't gotten the same kind of 
publicity as the original UFO-crop circle books. 

Are we supposed to thank Doug & Dave for playing with our minds?

It's not true that crop circles haven't been observed in connection with UFO's. 
Many, many sightings have been seen, and left circular landing-burns, or 
swirling patterns in long grass, long before Doug and Dave. Whether or not we 
believe these observers is really a subjective question. 

But the real insult here is the orgone energy conection to hoaxters. Is Reich 
going to be Sagan's new target? That would be his style, pick on someone dead 
for his object study in scientific heresy. He's got a new book coming out: "The 
Demon-Haunted World; Science as a Candle in the Dark." (Random House). 

For those interested in Sagan's methods, a good place to start is the new book, 
"Carl Sagan & Immanuel Velikovsky" (New Falcon Press). Sagan has a long history 
of snuffing scientific candles.

Most of the material Sagan cites in the Parade article come from a book 
published by Prometheus Press, "Round in Circles" by Jim Schnabel. Other popular
Prometheus books include a scholarly, even tome on cannibalism, and a 
hot-selling book called "The Horseman; Obsessions of a Zoophiliac" - the most 
unintentionally hilarious book I have ever read, which takes the whole 
pervert-as-victim, accept-us-as-we-are ideology to its logical extreme. 
Prometheus Press lists dozens of authors out of the Psi-Cop fringe, and its 
atheism is so confrontational, it makes Godlessness into a new religion.


-Jim Martin

********************************************************************
Flatland's new e-mail address is: flatland@mcn.org

Check out the new Flatland homepage on the Internet:

http://www.mcn.org/cbc/Bussect/Flatland/flatland.html

Subscriptions to Flatland Magazine are $16 per year, $25 overseas surface, $30 
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phone/fax: 707-964-8326, from 10-6 weekdays, Pacific Time


-Jim Martin

********************************************************************
Flatland's new e-mail address is: flatland@mcn.org

Check out the new Flatland homepage on the Internet:

http://www.mcn.org/cbc/Bussect/Flatland/flatland.html

Subscriptions to Flatland Magazine are $16 per year, $25 overseas surface, $30 
airmail. To receive a copy of the Flatland Books Mail Order Catalog, send $2 ($4
overseas airmail) to: Flatland POB 2420 Ft. Bragg, CA 95437

phone/fax: 707-964-8326, from 10-6 weekdays, Pacific Time



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