http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/business/11272176.htm
TOKYO - More than a million people and restaurants have signed a petition urging the government to drop a ban on U.S. beef imports prompted by mad cow disease, organizers said Wednesday.

See also: http://www.wakachan.org/os/res/3374.html

Hmm, this is a tough question to answer. I love to eat beef but I'm afraid of BSE. The US insists that their beef is safe to eat, but my media says some whistle-blower from America reported to his department that he was suspicious of some beef being infected with mad cow disease though American statesmen silenced him(Sorry I didn't find any informative webpage on him as a source. If there's any, though, I guess it's all written in Japanese, because he's supposedly silenced in the US). In Japan, I heard all beef is inspected whether it is under 20 months old or not. Most Japanese would feel releaved if America followed suit.

I've just found one:http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1874/

>>4 So that's where all this dementia is coming from. :/

>Will anyone in the mainstream media ever put this together with the mysterious “cattle mutilations” involving “black helicopters”, going back as far as the 70’s, indicating that the government has been aware of, and done covert testing for, this disease far longer than is being said? Given the governmental parrot status of the press today, as opposed to it’s once fierce reputation as the guardian of the peoples right to know, I somehow doubt it.

lol

Prion 9 from Outer Space, film at 11.

What the hell are Cattle Mutilations anyway? What the fuck is that about? We just say it's BS because we can't explain it?

Is it people mutilating their own cows for publicity?

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_281.html <- This is a helpful and/or funny treatment of the topic.

I noticed that people are very oblivious to non-human stories.
For example, a few years back there was a crop circle that appeared not far from where I live. The TV spoke about it once, for a minute or so. In the regular newspapers there wasn't even one line written about it. Only a rag paper showed a few pictures, and that was it. The dude from the national center for UFO research didn't even bother to move his ass over to inspect it, and dismissed as a prank offhand.
The general consensus seems to be "we don't care, they are more important, human things to worry about."

Huh? Crop circles were all the rage for a while back there. I don't think anyone is hiding in oblivion about it. It just ceased to be interesting. Circles, circles, circles. It's the same damn thing. Nobody even mentions it, goes on and on. Same with cattle mutilations.

What is that about? Could there be a cult? Why doesn't anyone investigate these things? if it's some big hoax, why can't someone come forward and tell us it's all about it, and give the prankster's e-mail address? Just humor us, come on.

Something big is going on and nobody's telling us. Or maybe that's what they want us to think?

Crop circles are easily explained - just look at them. Doesn't that look like the most awesomely fun thing to make?

>Crop circles are easily explained

Not.

• they are created almost instantly when two blobs of light hover over them, according to witnesses and videos. Or "overnight", according to farmers. "This morning, it was there." Fake crop circles take a long time to lay out and flatten.
• the way the plants are bended is impossible to reproduce. The stem is not damaged, just bent. Fake ones squish and break the stems.
• there is always some residual magnetism in the area. Fake crop circles don't have that.
• crops grow better later on in the area where the crop circle happened.
• some of the geometric designs are incredibly complex mathematically. Pranksters use much simpler designs.

Interestingly, when newspapers and "scientists" get wind of a crop circle and decide reluctantly to talk about it, they always refer to the known crop circle pranks and omit all useful details.

You're such a nut, Sling.

Another thing, is that crop circles are completely not fun anymore. Would you still pull a prank if nobody was interested save a few nutjobs? The people doing it are either mentally ill or don't know that it's not interesting anymore.

>>14

I think you are taking some pretty questionable claims at face value there.

> some of the geometric designs are incredibly complex mathematically. Pranksters use much simpler designs.

I don't think you understand the motivations of those who'd make them. Of course you'd try to make as complex and impressive a design as possible.

>>15
ad hominem
adj.

Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason: Debaters should avoid ad hominem arguments that question their opponents' motives.

>>17
The key word here is "overnight".

>>19

Have you watched any documentaries where people make crop circles? It doesn't take much time with the right tools.

There was a documentary where kids tried to duplicate a crop circle, right down to the magnetism and the iron bits in the soil. They spent a lot of money doing it, and while they were able to make the stems bend correctly,(with the magnetron from an industrial microwave) they could not spread the iron bits out correctly, nor could they find any way to duplicate the magnetism. And they were only able to make a simple circle. Plus, they were constantly having problems powering the magnetron. While I watched this, I thoght why would someone go to all the trouble to do something as subtle as use iron filings? Wouldn' they expend the effort doing something more noticable?

It was a college project that these kids were doing... Try searching a database for stuff like that. It was on the Discovery channel.

>>20
But do the fakes have the magnetism? Are the stems bended or broken? Does it look roughly done?

I have looked at the pictures of avowed man-made crop circles and they always look crappy, with stupid text/images.
www.lucypringle.co.uk/photos/2004/jun.html -> Hello Kitty
www.lucypringle.co.uk/photos/2002/uk2002bb.html -> H(istory Channel) and "TITS"(!)

Notice that the unclaimed ones span over 10 years and are consistent in design. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circles the phenomena was virtually inexistent before the late 1970s.

And the biggest question, a better point than "Magnetism! OMG!!!" Is why go to all the trouble? Why not spend the effort with something more noticable?

Please. Pfh. It's just the Arilou checking in to make sure we haven't killed ourselves yet.

>>24 lol
Naaah, crop circles are messages written in geometry language from one ET race to the other. They are mostly political tracts from the "We should not interfere unless asked to" Galactic Federation with the basic message of "Hey Greys, get the fuck off this planet!".
:P

No, dumbass. It's pedro in his badass ride bumpin' down the milky way tagging the back alleys with his sig.

And greys? They aren't doing any experiements. They just like scaring the crap out of people that nobody will ever beleive. Like, imagine if you had an air plane flying over an amazon village? You'd swoop down and scare the crap out of them and call it a good time, no?

I've never heard this "magnetism" claim from anyone but the UFO people, and I don't really trust them to be able to use any instrument that could detect this properly. If you have some trustworthy study that shows proof of anomalous magnetism around crop circles, I'll take it seriously, but until then I'm just going to dismiss that.

And http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circles#Hoaxed_circles is pretty much what I've been saying. Just because some people make sloppy crop circles doesn't mean the others are done by supernatural forces. It might just mean they're done by the more skilled people.

>>18

I wasn't arguing, therefore I did not commit the logical fallacy of which you quoted the definition there.

You're still a nut, though.

>>27

> by supernatural forces.

Supernatural, supernatural... what a strong word. I believe that everything can be explained scientifically.
As for crop circles, I'm far from an expert on the subject. What I wrote in >>14 is the result of an afternoon of googling and reading on the subject a few years back. And looking at the current Wiki entry, my conclusions on the subject are still the same now. The scientific approach is NOT to dismiss a whole area of research because of a couple of pranksters here and there. The scientific approach is to record things as they happened without prejudice. >>28 is a good example of a prejudiced mind.

Well, when it's well known that there are many pranksters out there, and there is no readily apparent other explanations, it pretty much follows that all circles are most likely made by the pranksters.

I think it's pretty telling that crop circle patterns are getting more and more elaborate with time. This pretty much rules out any natural phenomenom, and strongly indicates competition between the people who make them.

I seem to remember some show on the topic of crop circles. Apparently there is a scientific explanation for them; something dealing with storms, magnetism from lightning, and stuff like that.

>>31

No, that would just be more kookery, of a slightly different kind.

For Sling: http://www.lucypringle.co.uk/photos/2005/uk2005ay.html

Cute. :)

Maybe the Space Invader design was copied from a space craft that had abducted the creator of Space Invader to perform devious experiments on him. Hmmm. More research is needed to determine the truth.

>>35 :)
Have a look at http://www.cropcircleresearch.com/articles/arecibo.html

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200601200341.html
what's important? What should have been done?

I thought this thread was about beef, not crop circles

Crop circles are made by cows that have Mad Cow Disease.

With a little imagination one can find a connection between beef and crop circles... Let's see:

• those prions are incredibly resistant. Maybe they came from outer space, piggybacking on a spaceship.

:)

Sling you are one wild and crazy guy

Well thank you.