I said there was evidance that we were living in a construct!

remember the cold fusion thing a few years ago?

Statistical impossibility is as dangerous to assume as the importance of statistics themselves, and I have heard many complain about the latter. Humans are very good in detecting visual likenesses (even when there is no reason to). We've seen faces on mars, supernovae in shapes of eyes, faces and other 'constructs'. The likeness is uncanny, but so is our ability to overreact to it. a) The number is by no means perfect: it is gappy. The only thing it is nigh perfect in, is its effect on the human mind to fill in those gaps. b) You can see the swirl pumping bits into the eye in a rather convincing pattern. Whatever is happening fits in snugly in the complex system of things we are keen to call nature, without having to jump to conclusions about it - at least, that's what it looks like to me.

If humans created a storm, they would probably not be so silly as to press their stamp on it in this fashion. Besides, man hardly is able to control anything yet, so I'm ruling out B-movie Sci-Fi plots wherein not only people control the general effect of the weather, but they do it in so much detail as to hide pointless easter-eggs in their produce - Think about the immense calculations that would be required to produce a single straight line convincingly, for instance. If something else created the storm, it would probably have used a language of symbols befitting its created world, not some arbitrary human sign. Why bother if you know the only meaning you're going to convey is something that the observers will come up with themselves?

If it pops up again with a '3' or something within the next thousand years or so, I'm willing to agree that something else than 'freak chance' might be going on. For now, I'm not going to grab my 'theeleaves' and 'wicca board', but just sit back and relax. Isn't there an island somewhere shaped exactly like Winston Churchill? ;]

Yet on the other hand, I've also heard it said "it is impossible to convince a skeptic of anything".  Any level of evidence will be wanting, and any amount of proof will be insufficient.  The skeptic's self-assuredness of their being reasonable in all matters is an insurmountable obstacle, yet they will deny at any time that they are dealing in absolutes.  This constant hedging and fidgeting, moving of goal posts, and perpetual mutability assures that the skeptic will only believe and accept that which is already preconceived in their minds, the level of proof required to disprove their thinking always exceeding the amount of evidence available to the contrary.

Comparing other "fringe" phenomena with this specific event, in my opinion, is just an attempt at discrediting the event in question.

You're also leaving out the fact that doppler radar feeds are filtered, the same way earthquake data is filtered.  Only radar echos of a certain threshold are plotted on these models.  There's a lot of weaker radar data that gets left out because the raw data contains a lot of noise.  I don't see the lack of "perfection" here as reason to dismiss the radar data.  The fact that the number retains its overall shape over several frames should not be ignored either.

I think quite the opposite is true.  Ever hear the phrase, "If you've got it, flaunt it"?  What a better way to exhibit your superiority over the populace in general than to do something completely absurd that nobody can do anything at all about, and in plain sight?  After all, who would believe it?  People are conditioned to distrust their eyes when they witness things that don't fit in with the mundane world around them.  After all, we all know that fairies and goblins aren't real, so if you see one it must be in your head... right?

That's a very dangerous blanket assumption.  I should not have to elaborate as to why.

Think about the complexity of the computer equipment required to create meteorologic weather models.  Now square that computational power, and you have what the military has.  Besides that, it could be something as simple as somebody flying a hurricane hunter airplane with cloud-seeding material on a predetermined flight path.  The resultant clouds would show up on radar easily, or are we to dismiss skywriting airplanes as requiring too complex a flight plan as well?

That's assuming a specific intent on the part of whoever created such a thing, provided something or someone did in the first place.  That's like saying "God wouldn't write obscure prophecies or parables, he'd write the universe's secrets so that everyone cound understand them".  The mistake there is in telling God what to do.  In this instance, you're making the mistake of dictating to the power how it must behave, and defining its constraints, intents, and results.  First, if someone did intend a "message", who says it would be for their own benefit?  If an experiment was undertaken to gauge the reaction of a species, what a better way than to create an anomaly with something obviously recognizeable to the species in question?  I can see numerous avenues of research that could utilize just such an activity.  Then there's also the possibility of a "flyby grafiti artist".  Who says some space travelers don't have a sense of humor?  Your argument here has served the effect to do the following:  1)  Create a condition upon the anomaly to dictate intent, and 2)  To set up an arbitrary condition with which to categorically dismiss the possibility through absurdity.

Now I'll admit this may be your sense of humor talking, but I can't just dismiss the fact that it looks like your intent is to make a mockery out of the entire thing.  Is it really that disturbing that you choose to not deal with it, and dismiss it, as opposed to exploring the possibilitiy that something more interesting may be going on?

This is something I probably will never understand is why anyone would want to live in such a dull, uninteresting world, where nothing exciting or unusual, or interesting ever happens, where the fantastic is mocked, where the incredible is limited to the world of children's imaginations.  You have finally answered one question for me though.  I can now understand why the godless don't believe in an afterlife.  Why would anyone want to live forever in such a dull and boring place?  I'd prefer oblivion to that myself.  Thank God I know better.

*sigh*  All I want is for people to look beyond the mundane and see what could be.  I'm not saying what anything is or isn't.[/color]

That's all I'd ever ask for.
I know you take the contrary position quite often, however I wasn't initially putting forth any argument for or against any specific possibility.  I was only showing what the potentials were, and which ones would be more unnerving in comparison to others, and pointing out how unlikely it was that the event was completely random in nature.  I fully accept the possibility that somebody in the control room might have been having fun with the software that day.  If anything, I consider this the most likely explanation.  You actually took the initiative in your response to this one, or at the very least you attempted anticipation.  I simply took the contrary position to what you were stating in response.[/color]