I captured some still images (see below) from one of my video tapes taken today just before 1PM Pacific (Thursday 4/3/03- on Fox News' war coverage of Baghdad) The stills from the camcorder picture taken of my TV set I am including, show a virtually "perfect" shaped "Rod" that flew across the picture, left to upper right.

As you can see, the so-called "rod" is a very interesting sinusoidal pattern recording several cycles of signal that I suspect are an optical/video effect created when a close, out-of-focus and highly illuminated insect flies in front of the TV camera lens, which is focused at infinity. The defocused "blob" becomes altered by this process, the result being a shape that is related to the light wavelength and video sampling rate and the speed of travel. Beautiful effect. This is, in fact, a BETTER rendering of a "rod" than any of the ones I've seen on various websites (at least to judge from the VHS tape, if not the JPEGs).

I don't care if people think this is a "creature" even though I am not persuaded myself -- *I* think it is a fantastically beautiful, weird, and fascinating optical/video artifact.

--Steve W.

For more on the Rods phenomenon check out Jose Escamilla's website.