A couple of pareidolisms for you today.
One is this cartoon from the very oddly named blog Greasy Belches. It’s funny and to the point. Awesome.
The other is the Virgin Mary, who apparently is a hippie! Why else would she appear in a lava lamp? That should make James Dobson’s head explode. A good thing, too. This picture was sent to me by BABloggee Sean Specht, who was himself visited unto by the groovy Mary. Gnarly.
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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 has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
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June 26th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Heads up. The comic that you are featuring is originally from the online web comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC.) There are actually a couple more on the site – mixed in with a mountain of archived comics – that have a similar theme. Some that are even funnier.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Yup. Just to reiterate. That comic is from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/
Actually, that is one of the few comics that he is selling on a t-shirt.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
First:
Second: no hard feelings Phil, I sent you one last night and just wanna make sure it didn’t get stuck in a spam filter or something (not expecting you to necessarily put it up, just this post reminded me. the timing is more ironic than anything). Your choice what to do with it.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Phil… if you’re going to recycle old puns (even good ones), please establish a decent retention period… say minimum 9 months?
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/03/23/cheeses-of-nazareth/
June 26th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
It was the first time I’d seen it, if it’s any comfort :O)
June 26th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Another SMBC comic you might like: The truth about atheists.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
That lava lamp picture is upside down.
Which means the Virgin Mary is upside down.
Which means she’s an Anti-Virgin Mary.
SATAN!
June 26th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
yeah, in the subject of pareidolisms (though some may find this a bit over the top, so be warned):
http://images28.fotosik.pl/237/54d870fa23a5bdf7.jpg
June 26th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
By far my favorite SMBC comic, on a similar theme.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1019
June 26th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
The blog author even says “So, this morning I was out in the net and found this cartoon.” Admittedly the author should’ve given more details as to where they got it and given a link – give credit where credit is due, don’t they teach about bibliographies and plagiarism in K-12 schools? – but still, it says right there it’s not his. Sorry BA, but you dropped the ball on this one. ^_^
June 26th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
@ The Centipede
Anti-Virgin Mary doesn’t mean Satan… just means she gets around.
Either that or it was a bat.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
SMBC is awesome!
June 26th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
BA wrote impart:
“That should make James Dobson’s head explode.”
Speaking of which…I find it fascinating that the media treats this man’s word as authoritative…and yet his views are just as extreme as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and just as lacking in evidence. Perhaps skin color is clouding media judgement.
Back to your regular scheduled thread topic.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
That upside-down lava lamp formation looks more like some sort of plug.
Butt I don’t want to say what kind.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Well, I want to apologize to all for not giving credit where credit is due. I found the cartoon on another site not related to SMBC. The way it was presented, it seemed to be out in public domain. I try to make all my comments mine, and will take extra care to give credit on any pictures or quotes from now on. And in response to “zandperl,” yeah, I learned about stealing stuff from others somewhere between K-12. Again, sorry to publish someone else’s work without credit. Don’t lay it on BA, he said where he got it from.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
“BA wrote impart:
“That should make James Dobson’s head explode.”
Speaking of which…I find it fascinating that the media treats this man’s word as authoritative…and yet his views are just as extreme as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and just as lacking in evidence. Perhaps skin color is clouding media judgement.”
To think my dad has often used his views to teach his family.
Thankfully, I do believe I’d escaped what may be considered “doom”.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
From one of my favourite movies with thanks to imdb.com:
Spectator I: I think it was “Blessed are the cheesemakers”.
Mrs. Gregory: Aha, what’s so special about the cheesemakers?
Gregory: Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
This is one of my favorite SMBC cartoons (dealing with the recent “alien video” that popped up in the news):
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1192#comic
June 27th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Pop: Ah, someone else’s error engendered yours which engendered the BA’s. Makes sense. But FWIW even when things are public domain you’re still supposed to quote where you got them from – for example all NASA images (except logos and astronaut faces) are public domain, but you still have to say which mission it’s from, or which astronomers did the image reduction, etc.
June 27th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Daniel:
So, if you’re saying she gets around, well, that means she is a woman of loose morals and ill repute and thus an agent of…
SATAN!
June 27th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Some of you may have missed the subtle irony in this comic. His face is on a grilled cheese sandwich which a hungry person isn’t going to have. So not only is the message absurd, it isn’t even being delivered to the intended audience.
It’s funny on multiple levels!
June 28th, 2008 at 6:28 am
The Virgin Mary is LAVA!
(That’s a shout-out to any other LOLCat fans.)