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Steve_De4

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Posts posted by Steve_De4

    Storms and Convective discussion - September 2023

    in Storms & Severe Weather

    Posted · Edited by Steve_De4

    Went out trying to take photos for an hour and a half around the North of Salibury Plain, but it was all very sporadic, and high-based, and so nothing but flashes through murk (even drove through quite dense fog at one point). So I came home. And now, after lots of high-in-the-sky rumbles, we've just had our first window rattler up here north of Salisbury. 🙂

     

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1

    Storm Viewing Vantage Points

    in Storms & Severe Weather

    Posted · Edited by Steve_De4

     

    An excellent choice by Andy there, and I'd just like to mention that Redhorn Hill is on the Wessex Ridgeway, which is a byway open to all traffic around the northern edge of Salisbury Plain. The road is maintained and can be driven all the way from the Lavingtons to Upavon if you get bored with staying in one place. Also at Redhorn, if you have a vehicle with ground clearance, is a premissive byway into the Plain which - if the red flags aren't flying - takes you through wide open heathland and down to the southern edge of the Plain.

    • Like 1

    South West/Central Southern England Regional Discussion 22/01/13 23z------------->

    in Regional

    Posted

    I once did a little essay on the pitch/settle distinction for an English language module. Suffice to say, west country people use it, and furriners come from the east with their fancy "settle". In my informal and entirely unscientific research, it seems as though Wiltshire born youngsters are now beginning to say settle under the influence of those same incomers, and of TV. Boooo!

    Crop Circles

    in Space, Science & nature

    Posted · Edited by Steve_De4

    Having a look at this excellent crop circle site.

    Ah yes, that site. I had reason to be researching crop circles the other night, and came across this quote from th same website, at http://www.cropcirclesecrets.org/crop_circles_early.html:

    One very crucial piece of evidence from the 1970 s posed an interesting dilemma for researchers and scientists trying to pin the blame on pranksters armed with rope and pieces of wood. In those days the fields did not have the hallmark tractor ruts (tram lines) that today cross the fields in parallel lines every 60 feet or so. This is very important in establishing the cause of crop circles, by virtue that a person trying to lay a perfect design upon the wheat would have had to do so by levitating. It could be argued that a balloon was used, although nobody has satisfactorily explained how a balloon could be maintained perfectly still four feet off the ground, around a wooden peg which, presumably, would enable a person to lean out of the basket while he moved the wheat in a perfect spiral, without damaging the plants and leaving no hole in the middle. And all this in the middle of the night. The debate raged on and all kinds of agencies were given credit for these mysterious circles- wind vortexes, little green men, poor soil conditions, sex-mad hedgehogs and, most popular of all, the plasma vortex theory.

    I emailed Mr Silva to point out that, although there might not have been tractor ruts/tramlines, the crop was often spaced apart enough to allow people to walk through the fields anyway. And I had practical experience of this, as, when I was a teenager, I had been employed for several weeks to remove wild oats from a crop of something or other. Four of us worked the field, side by side, slowly working our way up and down the field, pulling out wild oats, and putting them in a bag slung over our shoulders. Hence there was enough room to work the rows even when carrying bags - because only treading on the stalks would damage the crop, not simply brushing them aside. Mr Silva denied my experience (and I'm sure our little team wasn't a unique band of wild-oat pickers the likes of which had never been seen before). You didn't even have to walk carefully - in the end, walking through the crop became second nature.

    Mr Silva replied to me, saying that that couldn't be true, as he'd talked to the NFU, and apparently the "the drill would leave one or two seed rows empty by error, leaving gaps five inches or so." Now, the point of a seed drill *is* to leave gaps of five inches or so (or more) - look at any drill. Apparently in the 1970s it was "intermittent and rare but sometimes it happened." Well, the field I worked had about, at a guess, a six-eight inch row spacing *throughout the entire field*. "There were a few farmers who would also leave the odd narrow path for the purpose which you have obviously explained." No, there was no path, there was just the seed drill spacing. He then added: "However, none of the fields bearing genuine crop circles had any of the above, thus my explanation, albeit simplified for the web, remains correct." So, in the 1970s, only the fields *not* having any obvious means of access (and I cannot deny that some crops are broadcast or sowed in narrow rows) were the only ones to have "genuine" crop cirles. How neat. How obviously circular in argument. :)

    Cheers

    Steve

    Ufos - What's Out There?

    in Space, Science & nature

    Posted

    You might also check out Graham Hancock's site;

    http://www.grahamhancock.com/

    I certainly find it odd that we have been around so long yet only sprinted into the technological world over the past few centuries?.

    Wot? We became agriculturalists 10K years ago, invented the wheel blah thousand years ago, used and shaped stone tools for about 200000 years, have been manipulating metals since the Bronze Age, windmills have been around for gawd knows how long, milling using animals even longer, helical screws since, wot, Babylon, clockwork and clocks since about the 12th Century. Obviously since the industrial revolution the pace of change and rate of technological innovation has accelerated, but I don't find that strange, as a technological innovation can spread into other areas, and can also be the precursor to further technological innovation, and that since the invention of moveable type and the printing press (about 16thC) the dissemination of information to inquiring and inventive minds has been rapid and easy (meaning we really don't have to reinvent the wheel). Why then, should it be odd that we "sprinted" into the "technological world" over the "past few centuries" when there has been a continuing accelerationn of technogical innovation since the use of stone tools?

    What is the unspoken suggestion here, in a thread about UFOs? :)

    Cheers

    Steve

    Ufos - What's Out There?

    in Space, Science & nature

    Posted

    But if you continue to look until you find the genuine cases, you will come to a different conclusion.

    although, im sure there are still some people that would refuse to believe even if a craft landed in their garden, an alien got out and poked them in the eye!.

    I've been interested in the subject for 40 years - having grown up in Warminster[1] - and as I say, the more I hear, the less I "believe" - although, there's a lot of interesting stuff to read in many many subjects and UFOs are on the backburner for me anyway - as canonical UFO cases fall apart in a mass of contradictions, conflicting witness stories, evidence of hoaxing, dubious hypnotic regression sessions, biased investigations, poor investigations, witness contamination, leading questions, cults, hysteria... oh, the list goes on and on :). Every month in the digital age, there's some new best case ever, best video ever, best photograph ever, weirdest thing you ever saw, ever ever, etc. And still there's no breakthrough; UFO videos, photographs and cases remain as open to interpretation as ever, no definitive answer is forthcoming, no solution to the "mystery" is evidentially satisfactory, the big revelation hasn't happened, disclosure will happen soon, prepare for the landings and on and on. The big revelation has been set to occur since the 1960s, and is yet to happen. So convinced was I when I was 18 that something "big" would happen "soon" that if you were to search of the morgue of the Wiltshire Times, you would find a story involving me and my mate John stating quite happily that landings would happen in Wiltshire soon :) There's even a photograph accompanying it of us sitting on a gate at Cradle Hill, and almost certainly pointing at the sky (for UFO stories, it's important to include a photograph of somebody pointing at the sky).

    If something landed in my garden, and something got out, and poked me in the eye, I'd want some evidence that it was a) a "craft", http://nwstatic.co.uk/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cool.gif an "alien". Having got that evidence, fair enough. A mistake "believers" often make in the face of skeptics is the idea that skeptics don't want aliens to exist, or would continue to deny their existence even in the face of "good" evidence. Interestingly, many of the ufologists on the skeptical side I know (Dave Clarke, Andy Roberts, for example) started by believing weird things and wanted weird things to exist. They just couldn't find the evidence; and when they investigated weirdness, the weirdness collapsed into mundanity. I'd like there to be aliens, and ET craft bopping around; I'd like to be part of some galactic federation. I just don't see the evidence (remembering that anecdote is not evidence).

    Cheers

    Steve

    [1] Not that a lot of UFO-interested youngsters will remember the Warminster mystery of the 60s and 70s, which was the single largest UFO flap in British history. :)

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