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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
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August 29th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Looks like a barn owl to me.
http://www.joanembery.com/Graphics/wildlifeambgraphics/Barn_Owl_4099a_full.jpg
August 29th, 2007 at 11:08 am
You are winding us up with this one, surely (“Don’t call me Shirley”.)
If Christ were to appear in a fence I believe He’d make it a lot more obvious than this monstrosity.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Why does Jesus have his hands-free phone microphone in the ‘UP’ position?
August 29th, 2007 at 11:12 am
“Worst. Pareidolia. Evah.â€
That title never gets old, because it seems each new one that pops up really is worse than the last. But what’s even worse than that is this stuff shows up on the news all the time! Even if it looks just as pathetic as this one…
I really should have saved that sandwich I made one time where the mustard formed the shape of Jay Leno’s head. It was spooky, but I ate it anyway. I imagine if I were part of the West family, I might have seen something different in my sandwich and gone hungry that night just to preserve it’s holiness.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Osama bin Laden maybe, but Jebus, how do you see Jesus in that knot. Since when did Jesus have a white beard.
I think my dad’s sighting of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is much clearer.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Looks more like some cartoon drawing of some no-name white-bearded brown-haired guy to me…
Why not make your own pareidolia toast with a face: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/cnctoast
or with the FSM:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/fsmtoast
Would that be a phryganeidolia, then? (toast=phryganiá in Greek, if Altavista was right)
August 29th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Is Jesus snorkeling?
August 29th, 2007 at 11:44 am
It looks like Jesus as depicted on an old 8-bit NES system. What was that game… Bible Stories?
August 29th, 2007 at 11:48 am
I think this may be an early woodcut of Genndy Tartakovsky’s new dendrochronological cartoon –”Jesus on the Cross-section: Rings for Truth”.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:53 am
cimddwc,
From an entomological perspective, I think phryganeidolia would be seeing an image of a caddisfly of the family Phryganeidae. It could still be on toast, though.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Love it. Thanks for pointing this out!
BTW, I told my high school theology classes to read your blog. For the science…, and the common sense.
August 29th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
It looks like Cro-Magnon Jesus. Check out that unibrow.
CroMag-Jesus: I’m here to save you!
Other CroMag: grunt? (takes bite out of Mastodon roast)
CroMag-Jesus: Oops! Got here too early.
August 29th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
With one long eye like that it’s clearly a cylon.
Rob
August 29th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Actually it reminds me of an 8-bit Jesus sprite from a video game.
Or maybe it’s a Machall Jesus.
August 29th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Jesus as painted by Picasso maybe.
August 29th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
And here I was thinking that it was a stormtrooper.
August 29th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Ben Kenobi was my first thought.
August 29th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
“Cat People” (1942) directed by Jacques Tourneur, produced (on a shoestring) by Val Lewton is a marvelously atmospheric film that contains what has to be the most far-flung (non) or (invisible) Pareidolia ever. It occurs in a scene where Jane Randolph is walking home alone at night and feels like a cat is watching her, at one point, just before she is suddenly startled by the bus she’s waiting to catch, (Tourneur is such a master of editing,) she looks up into a starkly lighted tree. Many viewers swear they see a leopard in that tree in the shadows looking back at her. But actually, Tourneur, through careful lighting, sound, subtle camera movements, and the mood of all the scenes leading up to it, has saved the studio even more money, for there actually is nothing there; just a tree at night!
August 29th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
A popular magazine in the UK called Viz has dictionary of swearing phrases called the Profanisaurus. In it, it has a “low resolution fox” which is a woman who looks georgous from a distance but ain’t such a looker up close.
Low Resolution Jesus.
This overlaps a fair bit with The Dread Polack’s observation, so all credit to him/her first.
August 29th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I can’t tell. It’s either Atari 2600 Jesus, or Lego Jesus.
It’s kind of a shame, seeing all the religious hacks screwing up a perfectly good pastime. I engage in willfull pareidolia regularly. Shapes in clouds, faces in doors or stucco, patterns in floor tiles. I love the picture of the Lenin shower curtain, and I once grew a tomato that was the spitting image of Richard Nixon, scowl, jowls and all. Somehow, after years of cloud gazing and the like, I still haven’t gone insane and started praying to any of them…
I have once experienced a visitation from Jsus in pareidolia form, in the bathroom of my first apartment. Neither myself nor my roommate were too interested in housework, and after a few months, a rust and poop skid mark started developing in the bottom of the toilet bowl. After a few weeks more of build-up. several parts of the stain flushed away at once, leaving a stark silhouette of the face of Jesus. Brown hair, white spots where eyes would be, long face, moustache and beard. At that point I vowed not to clean the toilet again until the Lord had departed. The joke lasted a while, and I had the chance to disgust several friends. Then one day, a long drunken urination washed the lord away. I can’t say that I was devastated by the loss of the vision, but the bathroom was always a little duller, if cleaner, after He’d gone…
August 29th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Looks like a snowtrooper from “The Empire Strikes Back”
August 29th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Oh it looks just LIKE Jesus -
In a SouthPark Canadian sort of way…
Kisses,
August 29th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
I feel justified in exclaiming “Christ on a Stick!”
Seriously, I have to wonder how people who carry such delusions can make it through a day in the real world. No concept of reality.
August 29th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
jesus is a cycolps? knock on wood, lol
August 29th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
I submit, for your speculation, that it is, in fact …. me.
http://www.moli.com/p/media_album/v2fmWv4KzP08vVhZyCr3LuMw../media/v2ZkvWlhBDe-ENuudzExGQsh2lmqS0eY7ihUHSt92r2KosIve2G7eJhw../MTQ0ODE,
I have never pasted a link here – I hope that works. If not, well – I will try something else
August 29th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Doesn’t anyone else see it?
It’s Boba Fett
August 29th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Sure is knot. It’s Captain Caaaaaavemaaaaannnnn! (Sorry, Flintstones refrence) I own the movie Scooby Doo and the Loch Ness Monster on DVD and watch it a lot. There’s one scene where Mystery Inc. goes out on the Loch in a boat and it changes to an underwater view of sandy bottom, seaweed and two stones with cracks. The cracks on one stone look like an evil Tiki face. I swear!
I recently went to watch a local minor league baseball team play. I’m not into baseball, but there were Grucci fireworks afterwards, so it was worth it. Minor league though they are, they have a mascot and stadium. The day before, it had rained, and the roof of the stadium was tilted inward to catch balls, so there were puddles on the concourse. While walking to my seat, I saw one puddle that looked like a face with a big nose. Maybe it means that Hoagy roots for that team. I hope not.
August 29th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
(next Star Wars reference…)
My initial thought was of that bait creature that Chewbacca goes to investigate (eat?) in Return of the Jedi just before the whole crew gets trapped in the snare in the Ewok forest.
August 29th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Oh my god, they killed Kenny.
Assuming that Jesus was a real person, how come these people think they know how he looked like?
August 29th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Looks like Jesus beat up a highway patrolman, stole his mustache, and made it his new eyebrow.
August 29th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
There is something about these sightings of Jesus in tree rings, closet doors, photos of clouds, pieces of french toast, stained pairs of underwear, what have you, that I find extremely funny. When you consider what a real Jesus would have looked like, given the era and part of the world he lived in, these images look nothing like what you would expect. The funny thing is that they actually DO look a lot like Charles Manson.
August 29th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Looks more like a character from Doctor Who (classic era). Whom, though, I can’t tell.
Either that, or the Terminator.
August 29th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Swedish chef peeking out from under a blanket?
August 29th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Let me take a stab at this…
OK, so Christians believe that God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. The second one there: omnipresent. God is everywhere. Why should it come as a surprise that Jesus is in the wood, if Jesus = God = everywhere? Me thinks Christians (and really, any religious nut, regardless of denomination) are handicapped at formulaic thought.
Thought what really tickles me about most of these impressions of the divine in mundane articles is that it seems like it’s always a reflection of “white Jesus” and we archaeologists are rather convinced that Jesus certainly wasn’t a pasty Scotch-Irish-German mix with a mangy hippy beard. OK, well, he probably had some form of mangy hippy beard.
I personally think Terrance McKenna got a closer look at God with his DMT ‘machine elves’ than any of these ridiculous sightings. And McKenna was a space-cadet for the ages.
August 29th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
I’m with the Cylon Snorkling mullet head from a bad 1980′s Atari game.
jbs
August 29th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
One of the best Simpsons lines is when Homer is talking to God. After a while, God says: “I have to appear in a tortilla in Mexico.”
August 29th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Well, I was going to make some dinner but after reading Neil’s post, I think I’ll pass
Actually, I was thinking it looked like Saruman the Wizard…Better tell Gandalf he’s still lurking around.
August 29th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
First thing I thought was “Pac Man eating a sweet”..
August 29th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Some time ago, I took a few pix of some cumulus clouds and when I downloaded the pix to my machine, I noticed that the clouds sorta looked like the patriarchial dipiction of Gawd. I must’ve deleted them because I can’t find them now. Oh well, would’ve been cool to send the pix to someone who would’nt be talkin’ miracles and such. My pix were much better than Knot Jesus! BA, Keep posting the pareidolia articles. I love ‘em.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
ya, like lego jesus would lower himself to appearing on a wood-cut. lincoln log jesus would do that……but not lego jesus
August 29th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Ok I can see Boba Fett but I can’t see Jesus. Sorry, lady.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
I smoke pot pretty regularly and even at my most wasted, I wouldn’t say that was Jesus.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Wow, Neil, that was a disgusting entry. And yet, I’m still laughing my arse off over it!
August 29th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Isn’t this coming from the man who converted to communist after he saw Lenin in his shower curtain?
August 30th, 2007 at 12:45 am
Personally, it looks more like a nun to me. A nun wearing one of those welding face shields. And an antenna. An alien cyborg nun, maybe.
August 30th, 2007 at 1:19 am
Where’s the rest of him?
Don’t tell me he was beheaded, not crucified!
August 30th, 2007 at 1:30 am
OK I don’t even see a face. And by the way your link title is funny, even if it will send you to hell
August 30th, 2007 at 1:40 am
Tim G: beat me to it. It’s clear as day.
August 30th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Actually, there have been worse remakes.
The Last Starfighter was remade as an off-Broadway musical.
August 30th, 2007 at 2:16 am
No, no, no its obviously the Bearded Lady!
August 30th, 2007 at 2:22 am
Actually, Jesus was black – and his brother too …
(‘Dogma’ now thers a good comic movie for y’all.)
Incidentally, on asemi-totally barely-related matter you know who I’d like to see as the next Pope : a disabled lesbian satanist with Tourettes syndrome that’s who!
(& why not? She’d make as much sense as any of the previous incumbents, almost certainly do as much good & far less harm and be a lot more entertaining into the bargain!)
August 30th, 2007 at 4:43 am
Oh geeze. That one doesn’t even look like anything.
August 30th, 2007 at 5:22 am
I think it looks like a squirrel. The lighter brown at the top is the tip of his tail, the little dark spot in the really light brown is his paws as he’s munching on something.
August 30th, 2007 at 5:41 am
I see Cleopatra hidden in there
August 30th, 2007 at 10:06 am
LOL. People of faith are stupid!!!1!11
August 30th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Looks like Jason, from the Friday the 13th movies.
August 30th, 2007 at 10:50 am
My first thought was a Fremen in a stillsuit.
August 30th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Looks like Kenny Loggins to me, but that was surely the Virgin Mary in the Sausage McMuffin ad.
August 30th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Looks like a woman with long hair to me… in fact, looks kind of like my ex wife, if she had reeeally bushy eyebrows…
August 30th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
It is soooo obviously an Anglerfish jesus.
http://marinediscovery.arizona.edu/lessonsF00/tube_worms/anglercc.html
August 31st, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Ok, I’m changing my opinion. It is soooo obviously an Anglerfish jebus, I don’t know why I didn’t see it before! (Thanks for straightening me out there, psychman).
jbs
September 7th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Surely any white male with long brown hair MUST be the son of god. It is a one to one correspondence. In fact my good friend was the son of god as well.
October 19th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Nobody mentioned the tiny babe next to Jesus’ left eye and O.J. right below her. There is also another Jesus just below the tiny nose of the big Jesus, complete with two eyes, nose mouth and beard.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
[...] get it wrong and you see a face in a cloud or a stone or a mountain or some burnt toast [ed. note: Or a block of wood] then you might be frightened a little bit, but it’s no real cost to you,” Slice said. [...]