1 {scene: Martian saucer base. One Martian is climbing into a saucer while the other two stand in front of it.}
1 Martian 1: So what's the plan? Cattle mutilations? Abductions?
2 Martian 2: Crop circles.
3 Martian 1: Oh man! We seriously need to invent a better way to do those...
4 Martian 1: ... than going to universities and hiring science geeks to make them with ropes and boards.

Crop circles are now known to have been deliberately perpetrated hoaxes created by university students with no equipment other than a wooden board tied to a loop of rope, so that a person can trample down the growing grain by holding the board underfoot.

Despite the admissions and demonstrations of circle-making by some of the hoaxers, some people still claim that at least some crop circles cannot possibly be the product of any agency short of exraterrestrial intelligences.

The human mind's propensity to believe anything is remarkable.

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2014-02-18 Rerun commentary: I saw a cool game scenario on Steve Jackson Games's twitter feed the other day: "The UFO-kidnapped heroes are asked by aliens to investigate why one of their own has been stealing cows for years."

This is a good twitter feed for gaming ideas, since they post a gaming #hook every day.