Scepticism about the claims of hoaxers

What follows are Nick's words:-

We went out yesterday to see MW's new creation.

** At last, Conclusive Proof **

The Great Pretender himself, Matthew Williams, has notified us (as he said he would) of a formation made by his 'team' and it's a replica of the 1995 Solar System. Last week we received the announcement. This formation is entirely different in character from the 'real thing' in a manner that is quite unmistakeable. Why, it contaminates the East Field by its mere presence. As I discussed the original solar system mandala in my talk to the CCCS Conference last month (on Cereal Geometry) I hope I may be permitted to express this opinion.

In particular, this formation showed what the judges at the original crop-circle making conference (Rupert Sheldrake & the Guardian) concluded, that humans didn't seem able to replicate the vortex-flow effect at the centre of the flattened-wheat circles. Astronomically, the original solar system had the eccentric orbit of Mercury skillfully depicted in proportion, whereas these jokers clearly hadn't a clue. To the key question, 'could they make the thin, circular and elliptical paths of standing corn about a foot wide (as represented the planetary orbits) I think the answer has to be, in all fairness, 'no.'

So, although it hurts to see the East Field desecrated in this way, I guess we should be grateful for M.W. & Co. for giving decisive evidence concerning the credibility of HAH, the human agency hypothesis.

What follows is Matthew Williams reply:-

I would like to defend my position on the making of the recreation Longwood Warren formation also known as "The Earth is missing" formation.

I recently read the report sent to the list by Nick Kollerstrom. Whilst it is bordering on trying to be derogatory, Nick has made some points which need to be addressed here. Mainly I address these points because Nick has made some very wide assumptions about why we made the formation and who it was intended for. In time honoured tradition, of most crop circle researchers, Nick didn't bother to confer with me before sending out a report which contains statements about me, which are based on his own beliefs and opinions and not on facts.

I quote from the original here:

My replies to the above now follow in order:

Thanks for the great pretender comments. I find this a little childish though. I pretend nothing. I am a circlemaker - fact. Who knows, I've probably made more circles than you've probably been in. Some weren't even found!

Nick says that our formation is very different from the original. Well I never said it was meant to be anything like the original to any single crop circle researcher. I certainly didn't say it was to be a test of our skills to prove anything to crop circle researchers. I also never made any allusions to my representation being like the original formation at all. So why is Nick treating this formation as a yard stick of what I can do? Why did researchers assume that this was a demo for them. It wasn't. It was for a movie, not for crop circle researchers!

To set the record straight, I did not have accurate photographs or diagrams to work from. The photos I had of the original Longwood Warren formation were obtained from the net. They were low resolution grainy photos and they were taken at oblique angles. I managed to roughly correct the slant/perspective angles using PhotoShop to give me a rough idea of what the circle looked like. Still the lack of detail on the photo I was using meant I could not tell how big or small many of the circles were. Some of the circles were square pixels on my screen. Impossible to work with accurately.

I used these low resolution photos to trace from and my tracing was on Autocad, using the photos as a backdrop. Right from the very start I had decided this was an approximation, and would not emulate the real thing, because I had no accurate real model to work from. I even guessed the size of ours should be 300ft - and had no real idea of how big the original one was. So theres a major discrepancy for a start.

Next I was working with one circlemaker who was experienced and three others who had never made a crop circle before. With this in mind there was bound to be an error factor creeping in. It meant the circles around the edge we created were not the same size as I had planned on paper. However I knew this didn't matter. After all this wasn't me demonstrating to researchers just how well I could do, this was me making a crop circle for a movie that had to look similar to the original. From the air I knew that this would look pretty much as they wanted.

No effort was made, in any form to make pretty lay patterns with the corn as we went. This formation was to be made as a known man made formation, and with inexperienced circlemakers on board I didn't have the time to mess around with fancy lay. I was fully occupied (as always) with making sure people knew what they were doing and which bits they were flattening - to avoid mistakes. Thankfully there were no actual flattening errors, the whole formation was done without correction of errors or work-arounds. As I said, this was not a ground photography circle - it was only ever meant to be seen from the air. No layered lay, basket weaves, stepped pyramid lay nor 3d lay. Just quickly flattened crop.

The final design looked fine from the hills and was apparently just what the film crew needed from the air. They were very happy with it. So was I, for what it was meant to be.

I should note that the movie which is being made is going to promote crop circles as being real and paranormal and the human hypothesis isn't part of the movie - so I am told. So there you go, basically I made the formation to help out the film crew with their promotion of something good for the whole of the crop circles world. They needed that design because it was in the script. The crop circle was only a representation of the original - not a direct perfect copy... and all you can do is pick holes, unfairly, in what I was trying to do.

The East Field wasn't desecrated at all... Tim was paid.. the movie will promote crop circles in the way you'll probably be in favour of... so where is the harm in it. You sound like you own the East Field or have some strong belief that it should not be used in this way. Why? Its a field - like many others. What is the difference. I've known many **man made** circles appear in the East Field before and people have gone into orbit over them. However because mine was known man made - you follow the sheep and say words to the effect of "thats crap". How predictable.

Also, I didn't get paid. So, please rethink your points of view and check your facts before writing such stuff on newsgroups, because it wastes my time having to put these things right. After all you claim to be a Phd, so you should know at least something about checking your sources.

Anyhow... that aside - when I do come to make a formation which is meant to be an absolute perfect replica of one which has already appeared, I'll be sure to let you know. Or next time, please feel free to ask.

The pressure that I would be under to get it 100% right would be too great for me to want to attempt this anyhow, because if I made one mistake... well you know the answer to that one. Also even if it was 100% accurate, researchers would say it was utter crap and nothing like the original. So I could never win.

I have always said, to those who have come to my lectures, that I am NOT the best circlemaker out there. There are others who can far exceed the technical and complexity of crop circle execution, of myself. However where I have chosen to differ from those, who are experts at technical correctness, is to not focus myself on total accuracy but aesthetics and overall pictorial form. I believe circles should be an expression of feeling and more abstract because of that. Hard line, geometry is not totally my thing. I am into more free flowing and even feminine design ideas. Anyhow I digress. Still, I've done many geometric circles, saying that, because they are sometimes what I feel like doing.

So I will end by saying, please don't look upon the Longwood Warren replica as meaning too much. I wouldn't give researchers the opportunity to discredit my work in this way. I will post formation designs to the Total Human Solutions website before hand as proof of authorship and then come out with the revelation that I created a particular circle AFTER researchers have credited it as "non-man-made". This is the only way to stop dirty tricks from researchers.

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