Strange Days Indeed

Once, when I was working on an article about UFOs, I sent a letter to Jacques Vallee regarding any comments he wished to make concerning his current thoughts on the subject. A few weeks later, I received a photocopy of a newspaper article entitled "Kooks, Nuts and Weirdos" with a handwritten note that this is what he thought.

Maybe I was missing something, but I kind of got the impression that he didn't feel like talking about it. I have long admired much of his writing (and still highly recommend most of his books as essential reading), but there was definitely an attitude. At the time, I figured he was looking to drop the whole subject.

Then again, maybe not. Over at the BoingBoing.net web site, Vallee has posted several interesting pieces on the subject of crop circles. They are both a quick read but very concise and sort of thought provoking. Kind of. Actually, the theory that crop circles might be the result of some super secret microwave weapon has been kicked around over the years. Not a bad theory. So far, impossible to prove in any way. Doesn't help that the only obvious use (thus far) of such a mysterious weapon is to spend every summer zapping the English countryside just to jack up the locals. By the way, the complex and extremely well developed artistic quality of many of these circles seem beyond the skills of the U.S. Army. So it must be a Navy project.

But what is most interesting about Vallee's work is the reactions he is getting in the comments posted at BoingBoing. Basically, many of the comments seem confused by most of the statements Vallee makes concerning the known qualities of non-man made crop circles. A lot of people have very strong opinions about the subject backed up by no information what so ever. So it would seem that many of the known facts listed in the piece by Vallee is a major surprise to a lot of readers.

So maybe Vallee has actually done a public service. He quickly lays out the main proven facts before moving into his theory. It has been known for quite a few years that at least some amount of crop circles are produced by some type of high energy process and, most likely, does not have a human origin. Sure, there are also a lot of them that are produced by people who have embraced the concept as an art form. Some of them even do some mighty pretty work. But some are simply not handmade, if you know what I mean.

Where I do split from Vallee is with the secret microwave weapon theory. OK, granted that the U.S. military has some really weird project going on and, most likely, got some weapons stashed away that are pretty far out (e.g. the laser cannon). But blasting at farm fields for no rational reason just doesn't seem to make any sense. Besides, we have lots of secret bases and test zones all over the globe just for that purpose.

I am also curious as to why Vallee seems to ignore the research that has been done in attempting to decode crop circles. No, I don't mean the New Age trace induced stuff. I'm talking about the work that was being pursued by Gerald Hawkins before his death a few years ago. Best known for his decoding of Stonehenge back in 1963, Hawkins became increasingly convinced that some of the crop circles were a form of code closely related to both math and music.

Maybe he was on to something, or maybe not. He died before he completed the work. But his theories were extremely interesting and his approach would seemingly be of interest to someone like Vallee. Then again, maybe not.

Seems that Vallee is more focused on a bunch of G.I. Joes whizzing around in their saucer-shaped jets blasting microwaves at the cows.