Winter's Last Gasp (A Ramble)

Oh, How I Loves Me Some Pareidolia!

Spring is almost officially here but in the Northeast, "Old Man Winter* is rallying. Temperatures in the North Atlantic states tumbled tonight, though today was nice enough to get to the car wash. I de-trashed and vacuumed, rode through the robotic tunnel and then came home to clean my dash, steering wheel, console and doors with auto-wipes. I'm no longer embarrassed to have a passenger. Yay!

It's cold tonight, though. I actually threw a pull-over on top of my shirt. Temperatures in the Delaware Valley are expected to drop into the 30's, but warming by tomorrow afternoon into the 50's. And we're supposed to reach 70 by midweek! I can't complain. We've had a very mild winter, here. The only major snow accumulation was Halloween weekend, unlike last year when three major storms walloped us in December and January. I also noticed my SAD wasn't as severe this year. I don't know whether to attribute that to the mild weather, the extra vitamin D3 or a combination of both

It's certainly been wet. We've had lots of rain, though a wet winter and spring usually mean a lush summer and a glorious fall. I ordered some exotic lilies today and will be out looking for butterfly bushes and other flowers, soon. It will be nice to have some color in the yard, this year. I've given up on tomatoes; squirrels are evil bastards.

Tonight, by the way, is the actual start of DST. I thought after last weekend's gaffe, I should mention it. If you live somewhere that does practice DSL, turn your clocks ahead one hour before you go to bed, unless you have one of those clocks that automatically resets itself, like my personal alarm clock.
Tomorrow afternoon I'm seeing John Carter with D & maybe a few other friends (another Yay!) and then having dinner and drinks with the director of Hairspray. You know I'll be posting a review of the movie, at least. I suspect the dinner conversation will be the kind that polite people don't share, even though I already know that both of us are going to agree entirely with what the other one has to say.

Well, I'm off to try and start the third act of that damned screenplay. I finally had an idea. I think. We'll see. OK -  I'm done rambling for tonight.

More, anon.
Prospero

*Who knew Old Man Winter was really Samuel L. Jackson?

Why We Have Mythology

Photo via Bits and Pieces (I think)

I do hope that the image on your right is real and not 'shopped. It's rather amazing, if it's real (and why wouldn't it be?). 

As I've discussed on more than one occasion, the effect is known as pareidolia. Our eyes and brains have been genetically pre-programmed to recognize patterns, particularly own mother's faces. And we continue to recognize faces, even when we aren't actually looking at a face. I posted this picture on Facebook and sweet, crazy Mia immediately commented: "I see Jesus! It's Jesus!"

 

But imagine being a primitive version of yourself, living 8 to 10 thousand years ago. You have no knowledge of science and the natural world seems a very magical place (which it is, but in a very different sense). You're out with some of your buddies, gathering wood for a fire to cook tonight's mastodon when you come upon the face of what must obviously and undoubtedly be the snow god, himself. You may pause to marvel, but you can bet your hairy caveman ass you'll be bowing and backing away in fear and reverence. Is it any wonder that mythology is filled with Green men; fairies; elves; satyrs; centaurs; naiads and dragons? Happy Place has a great post of 'The Most Absurd Objects Jesus Has Ever Appeared On" that more fully illustrates one of the more common themes in pareidolia.

The truth is, religion is like magic. And magic is only what science doesn't understand, yet. There are no fairies; elves; centaurs or dragons. The snow on that tree just happened to lay/melt in a pattern that resembles a face; a pattern we are genetically predisposed to recognize. The magic is in the physics that caused the snow to lay/melt or whatever in that pattern and the biology that allows to see a face in a random pattern. Our brains are wired to to try and make sense out of visual patterns. We can't help but see things that aren't really there.

Speaking of invisible (the only segue that makes any sense at all), here's a Forgotten Gem from my childhood:

When you're 8, the only thing scarier than a monster you can't see is a monster brain that you can.

More, anon.
Prospero

Creepy Face Is Creepy

Our old friend Pareidolia is back, with a twisted vengeance. To many people, bugs are creepy enough as it is (though I only really have a problem with houseflies, because they eat feces). Add a creepy, one-eyed, mustachioed cowboy hidden in the folds of their insectoid anatomy, and many folks just lose their sh*t. Like my poor sister did. "I won't sleep for a week," she emailed me in response to my sending her this picture.

The folks at Icanhascheezburger (LOLCats) have an entire blog devoted to this topic, called Happy Chair is Happy. Of course, most of the images there are of inanimate objects, which most rational adults can look at with humor and move on. But when an image such as the one above belongs to a living thing, people tend to freak out a little. Of course, the freak-outs tend to be a little more extreme when the images are perceived to be of a religious or "holy" nature.

I love that so many people can be fooled by these images. We are conditioned from birth to recognize certain things, especially our own mothers' faces. Is it really surprising we should continue to do so throughout the rest of our lives? But knowing the difference between reality and coincidence is what separates the fools from the rationalists. Am I saying that there is a difference between the guy who sees Jesus on a toasted English muffin and the guy who admits that the random pattern of toaster marks might resemble the face of Jesus (as if anyone who didn't live 2011 years ago in Jerusalem would know the difference, anyway)? Yes. Yes, I am.

And while it may be fun and exciting to see Mother Teresa's face in the folds of a cinnamon bun, it's no more important (or miraculous) than recognizing Godzilla in a cloud off the coast of New England or a cowboy on the shoulder of a grasshopper.

More, anon.

Prospero

A Friend of Bill's?

Ah, our old friend Pareidolia makes a return with this completely secular image of Shakespeare in a dried blob of toothpaste. Hmm... come to think of it, it kind of looks like Darwin, too. Or my Uncle Cecil after a two-week bender. Or any old fart with a beard.

My favorite instances of pareidolia always seem to involve religious images - The Virgin Mary in a cheese sandwich or Jesus in a dog's butt. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, it's all part of a perfectly natural phenomenon that's been hard-wired into our brains, mostly as a form of self-preservation. Our memories are mostly images. Think back on a particularly wonderful event in your life. You may be remembering bits of conversation, the smell of a wonderful meal or the laughter you shared with a good friend. But I'll bet that most of what you're remembering are images of that experience. Most of us (the blind excluded) experience life visually. It's only natural that our brains should organize our thoughts in the same way. So, when we see something - anything - our brains try to interpret it visually, as well. Thus, a cloud becomes a bunny with fangs or a swirl in a knot of wood becomes the face of Chairman Mao. These occurrences are no more the work of God than they are the work of the Tooth Fairy. They are merely synaptic responses to visual stimuli. Sorry if I burst any bubbles, kids, but it's true.

So, the next time you see Jesus in a moldy piece of Swiss cheese, think about this:

More, very anon.
Prospero

WTF?!?!?

Some days I struggle to come up with something to write about. Other days, things fall right into my lap in a a perfect alignment of topic. Today was such a day. And so today's perfect alignment topic has to be: WTF?!?!?

Above is a picture of a special high-protein pizza made in a pizza shop in Okinawa. Look closely. Hmm... crust, tomato, spiders, cheese, basil... whoa... WTF?!?!? SPIDERS?!?!? (Wait... give me a few seconds to get that "I-just-walked-into-a-web" feeling off my skin... BRB). There, that's better. According to JapanProbe, the shop also makes a beetle pizza. WTF?!?!?

Okay... so I've recovered from a rather revolting subject there, right? Well, not quite. I don't know from what language the Asian characters are in this video, but what's being shot sure looks like something out a Japanese monster flick:

Seriously... WTF?!?!? I'm sure it's probably some sort of rare, exotic beetle or something. Certainly nothing to be alarmed about. Certainly nothing alien.

And speaking of alien creatures, the video below has been going around. I tried to embed it when I first saw it, but couldn't. A new version must have been put on YouTube since. It claims to be a sighting of a new species, but is clearly the work of Special Effects Artists for some Japanese movie or TV show.

WTF?!?!? That was cool.! I can't wait to see it in context. Anyone know what it's actually from? Next:

From The Museum of Hoaxes comes this exquisitely timely tale about a family in Brazil who found the miraculous face of Michael Jackson on the bottom of their greasy roasting pan. WTF?!?!? I've blogged about the phenomena of pareidolia before. It fascinates me, because I've always loved looking up at the clouds to see what beasties floated above our heads. It just kills me that people take this so seriously. I mean, come on. Really? Michael Jackson just happened to appear in your unwashed cookware? Puh-lease! I'd be more likely to believe an image of Farrah in a jar of hair gel (like how I snuck a half-naked Joe Namath in there?). Anyway, the clever folks at TMOH are referring to this image as "Jackodolia."

And last, but not least, a WTF?!?!? trailer for the upcoming South African Sci-Fi movie District 9. It gets it's WTF?!?!? rating not for weirdness, but for awesomeness, as in: "WTF!? This could be a really cool movie!" Enjoy:

WTF?!?!? did you do today?

More, anon.

Prospero

WTF?!?!? Update: More insanely silly Jackodolia here.

Pareidolia Strikes Again

Ah, pareidolia! Like persistence of vision, the phenomena that allows us to perceive movement while viewing a rapid series of still images (that would be movies, folks), pareidolia allows us to perceive common images in mundane objects. Scientists think this may very well be hard-wired into our brains; akin to the same sort of thing that allows infants to recognize their mother's faces. Well, the British newspaper The Daily Mail has posted new images from the Mars Rover which many have come to interpret as an "alien skull." See for yourselves:

I don't know... looks like a rock to me. Maybe if you squint hard and use your imaginations.

I watched part of a documentary on the Discovery channel the other day, which said that Hitler was working on creating "flying saucers" because the allies were bombing German runways into extinction and he wanted to develop vertical lift aircraft which didn't require runways. The program seemed to imply that the rash of UFO sightings (starting with the 1946 incident at Roswell and continuing to today), were the result of US Military tests, led by defected Nazi scientists who went on to develop aircraft for the U.S. Of course, this just made me think of my post on the film Iron Sky, in which Nazi's who've spent the last 70 years on the Moon, return to Earth in another attempt to take over the world.

Fun, fun, fun. I love this kind of stuff.

And how about you, dear readers? Have you ever seen a UFO? Been abducted? Been probed? Do you have weird metal implants in the back of your neck? Has a "Grey" spoken to you using only his (its) mind? Does Christopher Walken visit you at night?

Your comments are always welcome. Just know that comments to this post won't be moderated until I get back from vacation on May 11th.

More, anon.

Prospero