9999

The believers say that many, if not most, of the world's crop circles are indeed hoaxed. But that there are a certain number of them that could not have been, because of specific attributes. The skeptics say that all crop circles, without exception, are man-made. Hoaxers with boards on ropes walk around, flattening plants, to create the designs. The believers point out that, first of all, in an "authentic" crop circle, the plants are not broken towards the bottom the way that they are when boards are used to flatten crops. They are bent and fused over, with blown-out "nodes" that show exactly the same characteristics as if heated by microwave radiation. The skeptics are a bit challenged to come up with a reply on this, but in 2002 a group from MIT (1) flattened a design and (2) microwaved the area afterwards to produce some "blown nodes." Skeptics see this as a complete response to the "nodes" challenge. The MIT group's results fell woefully short, in the opposing view: their sprayed iron filings appeared in an unsatisfactory pattern, the nodes were not elongated, the team had to use night-vision headsets, portable microwave emitters, and other equipment out of the reach of hoaxers, etc.

The believers respond by pointing out that such plants are killed in the process, while in an "authentic" circle, the plants continue to grow, even those specifically flattened. Believers also point out that there are many surprising phenomena associated with "authentic" circles, such as:

1. A magnetic profile mimics the actual design of the crop circle. 2. Traces of metallic, magnetic material are found in the soil, and sometimes implanted in the plant cells. 3. The swirl symmetry is smooth and there are usually few rotations of the spirals in the flattening (implying huge 'boards' used to flatten the plants). 4. Often the floor of the circle features an interweaving of the plants. 5. The circles are extremely large and complex, considering that they have to be created in a night.

Skeptics don't generally dispute the above points. They set about trying to demonstrate how humans might have produced the microwaved nodes and metallic deposits. The above five points are not essentially controversial, in terms of whether they occur or not. .............. As you might have surmised by now, I personally don't find it plausible that college students with boards are going out and producing the best of these circles in four hours of darkness, and then spraying the soil with magnetic shavings. Many of these circles would require huge teams of "flatteners" working with cranes and lights and so forth, and this would disturb the neighbors who are typically located fairly proximate to the circles. Also, for a group of college students :- ) to produce spiral circles, they need to plot a number of points around the circumference and then survey the area. Early on, it required only 3- or 4-point geometry to produce the simple circles, but since then the stakes have been raised. Some of the circles require 30-point geometry to design (!), and many are larger than football fields. Many of the designs show a smoothness of symmetry, and complexity of geometry, that can't be done in a few hours with surveying equipment and/or compass tethers. . === So, Who Gets the Blame? === If you're satisified by the idea that amateur hoaxers were able to produce 100% of these circles, you have no cognitive dissonance here. ........... Personally, I (jemanji) do not believe that intelligent life exists in the Milky Way outside of earth. This is not because I'm biased against the idea of aliens. It is because I find Fermi's Paradox completely convincing. However, if there were one UFO argument that I would find credible, it would be the crop-circle argument. Reports of dancing lights, 8 meters above the ground, creating these circles, could feasibly be attributed to civilizations a million years more advanced than ours. In Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End," he put forth the idea that when aliens do decide to integrate into our societies, they will do so very carefully, in slow stages, "warning" us first, so as to give us the chance to get used to them. Carl Sagan's "Contact" echoes this theme. Again, this doesn't do it for me, because Enrico Fermi proved convincingly that if intelligent life were extant in the Milky Way, it would have colonized the galaxy long, long ago. .................... I would not totally rule out the notion of spiritual beings intervening in our society, but do not believe that they would use electromagnetism to create circles. :- ) .................... The idea that high-technology governmental devices create these is farfetched -- but for me, it's less farfetched than any of the alternatives. When you have ruled out the impossible, Mr. Spock, then whatever is left -- however improbable -- must be true. Well, maybe not. ................... For me, crop circles represent an entertaining cognitive dissonance: they can't be happening, and yet they are. For me, crop circles are the number-one example of cognitive dissonance on the planet. I have no idea how they occur. They're impossible. Cheers, jemanji ................ image: http://www.futurehi.net/images/cropcircle.jpg

When I was a kid, kosher wine pretty much meant the standard non-Pesach corn syrupy-sweet Manischewitz. In California, friends celebrating Passover (which requires four glasses of wine to be consumed during the course of the seder) introduced me to the wide variety of excellent, and non-sulfide containing, kosher wines. I discovered not only excellent Israeli kosher wines, but California kosher wines from Herzog Cellars and others. California wineries produce a wide variety of white and red wines (traditionally, seders usually involve red wines, but Californians may be less orthodox in that respect).

I wondered if Washington produced kosher wines, and set about to find out. But, I hear you ask, what does it mean for a wine to be kosher?

In order for a wine produced outside of Israel (where the rules are much stricter) to be kosher all the production of the wine after the grapes are picked must involve handling only by sabbath-keeping Jews under the direction of a rabbi or Kashrut trained supervisor.

No work, at all, may be done on the sabbath. That means from sunset to sunset, Friday to Saturday.

Any barrels, or storage tanks or wine-making equipment must be kosher. There must be no contamination at all from non-kosher food products. No departure however minor is acceptable. This makes strict vegetarians very happy.

The exception to these rules is meshuval wine, that is, wine that is been pasteurized, or brought to boiling and cooled. Modern winemakers use flash pasteurization, bringing the wine to the boiling point within seconds and then "flash" cooling it down. Experts say this method doesn't adversely affect the wine at all.

I should point out that kosher for Passover involves a separate set of requirements, because of the necessity for purity. You can read more about kosher wine production here, here, and here.

Unfortunately, I have only been able to locate one kosher wine producing winery in Washington: Pomum Cellars winery in Woodinville. You can see a video review of two of their kosher wines, Pomum Cellars' 2005 Shya Red and Pomom Cellars' 2005 Syra. If you're still curios about kosher wine, I recommend the Kosher Wine Review, which includes lists by country of production as well as a list of meshuval wines (particularly useful in terms of catering, since the wine is still deemed kosher even if served by non Jews). Tree of Life Judaicia and Books in Seattle sells kosher wine, but none from Washington. I note that online purveyor Kosher Wine Online seems to offer kosher wine from every conceivable location except the Pacific Northwest, but I'm hoping . . .

Thanks, Kelly. (For your comments in the precursor to this article.) ............ For those who were confused by the original article, here's another way of looking at it ... Baseball analysts will see Hideki Matsui come to MLB and take his first 500 AB's, and they'll assume that is a "fair sample," as opposed to his first April which we should be careful on because "it's a small sample." Right now the discussion seems to be on Chris Shelton's platoon splits and whether we have enough of a "sample." ............. For reasons explained in the original article, and by Kelly (who is a research scientist in chemistry, IIRC), the whole mode of reasoning is way off track. This isn't a quibble. You have to know the difference between (1) a "sample" -- which is representative of a data universe and can sometimes be used to predict the future -- and (2) first returns from an evolving process, which are NOT representative and cannot be used to predict ANYthing. Chris Shelton's baseball skills are evolving. No research scientist would think of calling any of Shelton's past results a "sample" of his past-present-and-future performance. And to do so misdirects us from the critical point that Shelton's baseball skills are a moving target -- with all of the impossible-to-capture variables that Kelly alluded to. .............. There is also the fact that non-scientists throw around the term "sample size" as if to imply that they have a command of experimental design and control, when in fact they are not literate in the field. But that's a minor annoyance. I'm talking about predictions that are totally bogus, and that are being totally accepted by the Seattle audiences on a massive scale. Am not trying to be a Grandma Grundy, and am not trying to create confrontation. But this one's important. We would be much better baseball analysts if we would stay away from the term "sample size" and all of the arguments that we base on the term. .............. I don't expect that Chris Shelton is going to run a reverse platoon split for a very simple reason: I can't think of a single decent RH major league hitter who ever did. If you can find me a RH duck-billed platypus who, over the course of 10 years, hit .220/.290/.350 against LHP and .300/.380/.500 against RH, that's great.  What would that prove, anyway?  That only 99.6% of righthand hitters have to work harder against RHP?  I'll still take the 99.6% with respect to predicting Shelton's future. I mean, why WOULD a right-hand hitter be inherently worse against LH pitches that are easier to see and easier to reach? For a VERY short time, he might be relatively unused to LH'ers he hasn't seen, but how long would that last -- one season? Didn't Chris Shelton ever see any LH bloop curves in the minors? Oh, yeah, he did. Minorleaguesplits.com on Shelton:

vs LHP: 230 PA, 300/413/574 vs RHP: 825 PA, 297/387/459

The minors data are not a "sample" either; this is a collection of observations / evidence, and not conclusive evidence. But what would be considered a "sample" is the set of 9,000 :- ) right-hand ML hitters who have run normal platoon splits in the past, and Shelton's minors performances can be said to be "consistent with" these legitimate leaguewide "samples." Shelton's early reverse-platoon splits in the majors are interesting. The fact that his OPS is (lightly) -100 vs LHP, across a half-season's 313 PA's, isn't anything that I wouldn't expect just from random fluctuation alone (correct me if you disagree, Kelly or Matt, LOL.) It does suggest to me (not scientifically; just intuitively) that ML lefthand pitchers gave Shelton some slight adjustment problems, in his first couple of trips around the league, which are (logically) about to disappear. ........... Shelton's dropoff against LHP's is pretty light, and it didn't occur in many AB's. It's nothing to worry about. As a #10 hitter, the guy's a pretty exciting add. Let's hope he gets those 9 dings in 13 games for us :- ) Cheers, jemanji ................... http://www.psi-software.com/Images/Car_Assembly_Line.bmp