Subject: Re: Croxteth, Liverpool, UK Earth Light
From: "sean_b_palmer" <sean@...>
Date: 07 Apr 2006 21:05
On Fri Apr 7, 2006 10:55 am, David Clarke wrote: > It's difficult to draw any definitive conclusions with respect > to sightings that simply involve a light or lights seen on one > occasion in a particular place, but never repeated. I agree, but I still find them interesting from two points of view, the first being merely that from my experience in computer science I've come to believe that almost all information is useful and should always be archived. Storage space is so cheap these days, and losing information is expensive. Of course, if I keep thinking along those lines I'll probably end up like Charles Babbage, who was notably eccentric in his love of collecting data: Babbage once counted all the broken panes of glass of a factory, publishing in 1857 a "Table of the Relative Frequency of the Causes of Breakage of Plate Glass Windows": 14 of 464 were caused by "drunken men, women or boys". - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage The second point is that I tend to feel I owe it to the people who submitted reports to me to at least look through them and give them my best judgement on what they want to know. 99% of the time I can't do anything, and I just have to say "thanks". But the reports that I get are usually always interesting to read even if just to look at the sincerity and rhetoric involved. A lot of the time people seem to be just wanting confirmation that they're not crazy! Having said all that, I usually don't have time to respond to the majority of correspondents. > I've tended to ignore this type of report and concentrate on > [a]) those cases where lights have been seen repeatedly over > a lengthy period of time in one specific area, i.e. Longdendale, > Hessdalen, or b) lights have been seen repeatedly in one place > for a specific period of time, i.e. Burton Dassett hills. Speaking of Burton Dassett, have there been many sightings there since the '20s? I realise it may be hard to gauge quantitatively, but I notice that the Leamington, Warwick, Kenilworth & District Morning News (via Devereux, 1989, p.82) reported that the light had "been seen over the Burton Hills in damp weather for over ninety years"--that being said in 1924. > Unfortunately, there hasn't been anything noteworthy in the last > ten years in the UK which has fallen into categories a) or b) Perhaps we need to do some cloud seeding, inject oil into our fault lines, re-flood our fens and marshes, put spots on the sun, build some masts and towers, &c. :-) (Or move to Hessdalen.) -- Sean B. Palmer, mysterylights.com Homepage: http://inamidst.com/sbp/