Crop Circles & Space Lasers

'Mysterious' crop circle showed up in a field outside Weilheim, Germany this week. The news reports are all ga-ga about all the tourists who have come to see the great mystery. The only mystery to me is why someone would put that much effort into making one. It's a cool enough design, but it's kind of hard to appreciate these things unless you are up in the air where you can get a clear view.  I suppose they are temporary art, kind of like sand castles, and I like sand castles. Crop circles aren't my cup of tea, but I guess they are okay.
    It could be a secret government program to see how long it takes someone to notice something like this. I mean, it's out in the middle of a field, no one is going to notice it unless they walk or fly across it, and nobody is going to be walking across it, you would be trampling on the crop and the farmer is liable to come after you with a shotgun. Then again, I've never heard of a farmer getting upset about the damage to the crop that these circles cause. Maybe it's because it's the most interesting thing that has happened there in the last thousand years.
    What caught my eye, though, is the giant radio antennas right next door. Do you think there is some connection? Maybe the aliens are making road signs to identify this location, or maybe the SETI crowd is trying to attract some attention. Big, permanent installations like that should be visible on a satellite view of the earth, so I go looking and eventually found them. I also found some info that suggests they are part of the new European Data Relay System.

    This system is kind of slick. They have a ground station in Germany and a geosynchronous satellite overhead that they communicate with using normal radio waves. This satellite can communicate with other satellites that are in lower orbits via a laser. This allows them to collect data from satellites over half of the world using this one ground station.
    The Airbus video babbles on about how this system can be used for humanitarian relief efforts in times of crisis, but we all know it's really there to control the drones that are being sent to kill you.

Via Graham Hancock.