Pareidolia poll

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Two things I find absurd are people who see Jesus in random patterns, and internet polls that try to impose patterns in noise. Here’s something that does both: a moth was found with speckles that are supposed to look like Jesus.

“His hair right here and you can see the mustache and the beard and there’s a little slit right there that looks like His mouth and when he would move the mouth would open so it looked like he was trying to talk to you.”

Kirk Harper spotted the moth on an RV trailer Monday, and right away could tell it was unique.

“I immediately thought it looked like Jesus and that was what was so cool cause you’ve seen His face in grilled cheese sandwiches and windows and things but on a moth’s back…we thought that was pretty neat.”

Just to top off the silliness, the story comes with a poll to ask if you see a face. Yeah, I do — it’s Charles Manson.

Crossing the line

Once upon a time, Charles Darwin crossed the equator in the Beagle, and he received the traditional hazing:

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We have crossed the Equator. I have undergone the disagreeable sensation operation of being shaved. About 9 oclock this morning we poor “griffins” two and thirty in number, were put altogether on the lower deck. The hatchways were battened down, so we were in the dark and very hot. Presently four of Neptunes constables came to us, and one by one led us up on deck. I was the first and escaped easily: I nevertheless found this watery ordeal sufficiently disagreeable. Before coming up, the constable blindfolded me and thus lead along, buckets of water were thundered all around; I was then placed on a plank, which could be easily tilted up into a large bath of water. They then lathered my face and mouth with pitch and paint, and scraped some of it off with a piece of roughened iron hoop, a signal being given I was tilted head over heels into the water, where two men received me and ducked me. At last, glad enough, I escaped, most of the others were treated much worse, dirty mixtures being put in their mouths and rubbed on their faces. The whole ship was a shower bath: and water was flying about in every direction: of course not one person, even the Captain, got clear of being wet through.

On our cruise to the Galápagos, we also got a much, much milder version of the hazing, a night with King Neptune, who chose a queen (Susan Hurst in this case), and then made a few of us do very silly things. The movie below has pirates with charming Ecuadorian accents, King Neptune, and absurd rituals, but the real highlight of this video, though, is getting to see Phil Plait do the mating dance of the blue-footed booby (about 6’30” in).

For extortion purposes, I do have a higher resolution copy of this video. Maybe it should make an appearance at the next TAM…mwahahahahaha!

To the clever dicks who think they are annoying me

One of the chores I got done this afternoon, after a much needed nap, was to go through the mail that accumulated during our long absence. Part of that job is sorting out the pile of magazines that I did not subscribe to, but that some people out there think they can sign me up for and annoy me — but which, since I did not authorize any payment, and which are usually sent to me under some sloppy permutation of my name, I simply never pay for, and eventually the publisher gets tired of sending me without recompense and the subscription fades away.

It’s a weird mix: lots of conservative political rags which get tossed into the recycling bin with barely a glance, and the rest is a mishmash of odd stuff that the sender seems to think says something about me. Out magazine I sort of understand — they want to imply that I’m gay, which they think I’d take as an insult because they do — but the yummy cover photo of Neil Patrick Harris and the nice interview inside just made me think there would be some perks to being gay. American Rider, though, is a strange choice. Am I supposed to be a leather-wearing Harley rider, too? It’s a very Tom of Finland combination, but sorry, ultimately uninteresting to me. Body+Soul is a better choice for something that would irritate, but it’s so dang silly that I can only laugh.

So I hate to say it since I am getting a giggle out of these random piles of glossy paper in my mailbox, but could you please stop wasting your time? The only people being hurt by this action are the mail carriers who have enough of a burden to haul every day, and possibly the publishers who might lose a little money on the printing (but might gain a little more ad revenue from the temporary addition to their subscriber rolls).

And planet Earth. Think of the Earth, man.

Some things that might appeal to your pharyngular gland

Who knew that water droplets suspended in the air could could refract light and produce a rainbow? It can’t be. Why, it must be…a government conspiracy! This never happened before!

You might also enjoy this collection of real church signs. My favorite is “A 4 inch tongue can bring a 6 foot man to his knees.” Sometimes, there is truth in these aphorisms.

It’s 42 minutes after 7

Approximately 563 minutes ago, I noticed this peculiar analysis of language use on Pharyngula that suggested that we use the phrase “N minutes”, where N is 5 or 10, with a slightly greater frequency than the web population as a whole. This made me self-conscious for a whole 18 minutes, so I thought I’d better sleep on it for about 480 minutes before taking 4 minutes to make a short post about it. Go on and read the Language Log — it’s short and will probably take you only 2 minutes to skim through it.

Now I’m thinking, because I’m an evil and devious sort, that since this is already a low frequency event where we use that phrase, we can easily muck with people’s heads while demonstrating an observer effect. From now on, everyone try to remember that whenever you reference a short estimated interval of time, and you are about to use one of the common multiples of 5, add one to it. We don’t have to do it every time, nor does everyone have to participate, but by adding a little verbal tic on top of a tic we can skew this analysis.

The experiment began 11 minutes ago. Keep it up.

Funny, it doesn’t look like April First

Would you believe the NY Times published an op-ed today…calling for closer monitoring of UFOs? I think it’s intended seriously. It begins by suggesting that it — our neglect of will-o’-the-wisps and reflections of Venus — is a security loophole that terrorists might exploit, and then it gives several anecdotal accounts of unlikely events, such as this one:

On Dec. 26, 1980, for instance, several witnesses at two American Air Force bases in England reported seeing a U.F.O. land. An examination of the site turned up indentations in the ground and a level of radiation in the area that was significantly higher than ordinary. More witnesses at the same base reported the U.F.O. again on subsequent nights. The deputy base commander reported that the aircraft aimed light beams into the most highly sensitive area of the base — a clear security breach.

Apparently, we should be concerned that Al-Qaeda is piloting nuclear-powered flying saucers to fly through our defenses and peek into hangars.