Sigh.
I have only one comment (especially if you’ve seen my earlier posts on stuff like this): why would God have such terrible penmanship?
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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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December 10th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Holy s**t! It’s a…a…a…?
December 10th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Divine intervention? Yeah.. god just wants to brand cows.. right.
I think people tend to confuse coincidence with miracles too much.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:44 am
I think it looks like Thor’s hammer. All praise mighty Thor!
December 10th, 2009 at 10:46 am
why would God have such terrible penmanship?
Proof that Geezer God is on a bender.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Well you know, God never went to school. And anyway, he probably didn’t have his mind fully on the job. Trying to paint cow’s heads while running the entire universe has got to be worse than driving while using a cell phone.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Looks more like that symbol Prince was using a few years back.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Markings like that are nothing special. I grew up on a farm and lots of the calves had markings like that.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:52 am
I bet the steak from that cow would taste heavenly.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Oh, bull. They better moove on to other things. Git along now. Then again, they may have too much at steak.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:52 am
She knows a little about genetics and breeding guys. Why can’t we just accept that this is, in fact, the second coming? You better believe or Jesus Cow is going to be very very indifferent toward you.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:55 am
@Joe
Don’t you mean the second cowming?
December 10th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Ah! The sacred symbol of a fashion model bearing cake. If these two things are unworthy of devotion, then I don’t know what is.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:00 am
mmmmm….heavenly….
“they’ll make sure their divine calf doesn’t get eaten”.
WTF!?!
December 10th, 2009 at 11:04 am
I’m seeing something else entirely:
http://www.gallerym.com/work.cfm?ID=201
December 10th, 2009 at 11:04 am
How mooving. Now I’m a beefliever.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Is Jesus Cow kosher?
December 10th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Wasn’t there some problem over worshipping a calf in the bible.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:16 am
“When I grow up, I’m going to Bovine University!”
–Ralph Wiggum
December 10th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Mooving right along.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Don’t udderestimate the power of the Almighty! Ye should heifer more faith!
December 10th, 2009 at 11:21 am
“oh my gosh, a miracle! god himself is speaking through this miraculous sign on this calf….
let’s sell it!”
Somehow, I doubt they’re all that honest about believing that this is a miracle.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:21 am
I see broth…
December 10th, 2009 at 11:21 am
9. Todd W.
You’re really milking those puns, aren’t you.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:21 am
So his poo would holy BS.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Looks like a diving swan .. beautiful
December 10th, 2009 at 11:26 am
“Bovine Intervention”
December 10th, 2009 at 11:27 am
I see a ballerina – after all, ’tis the season of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Definitely a sign from God. Someone needs to carve a likeness of this calf. Preferably in gold.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:32 am
@Aerimus
Just some thoughts for people to ruminate. Cud be worse.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:32 am
A post like this is just fodder for bad jokes.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:34 am
@Davidlpf
Know any good one then?
December 10th, 2009 at 11:35 am
That cow is evil. Evil I say!! It has a dagger, (you know, like those used in satanic ritual sacrifice. duh!), on its head.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:38 am
I note the cow is named Mooses.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:41 am
@Michel
I will not steer you wrong, no I don’t.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:45 am
It’s not a cross, its an Ankh!
December 10th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Well, you know, they have to milk it for all it’s worth.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Egyptian Ankh? Nope. That’s far-fetched and lacks the loop on the Ankh symbol. Random genetics of mammal hair coloration? Well to many that’s even more far-fetched because its not exciting enough so I’ll settle for the very mundane, conservative explanation that its the Krel hieroglyph for Monsters from the ID created on the cow’s hair by the mere thought of the owner while watching Forbidden Planet!
December 10th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Have you ever tried to write on a wiggling cow fetus in a crowded uterus? I’d like to see how well you do!
December 10th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I think it looks more like an ankh. It’s a sign from the ancient *Egyptian* gods.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:59 am
That’s close to looking like the bone from a t-bone steak.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Stephen (#8):
Not to mention the periodelia in all those Porterhouse steaks.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
It looks like a hash pipe.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Weezer video to watch.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
That’s supposed to be a cross?! I think it looks remarkably like a child ballerina with a very puffy tutu and very long legs…
December 10th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Hmmm. A while back there was a cow born with a Mickey Mouse-shaped outline. Is that more or less divine than this “X marks the spot” sort of thing?
December 10th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
This is the very definition of pareidolia, ’cause that is not a cross. It isn’t even close. Only our pattern-seeking (pattern-addicted?) brains would make that into a cross. As for poor penmanship – given the multiplicity of writing systems on this planet, it’s probably close to *something* – quick, where’s an epigrapher when you really need one?
December 10th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
It looks like Greebo’s pistol. Maybe it’s god reminding Lucas that Han DID shoot first.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I think that the “I’m in breeding business, I know a thing or two about reproduction and genetics, and…” worths the pain in the brain, it’s hill
bil…arious!December 10th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
The male farm owner seemed to have a nice sense of humor about it, the woman… well…
December 10th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
As much as this makes me facepalm at the stupidity of others (Gotta love those accents though), at least this cow won the genetic lottery so to speak and won’t get eaten.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
What *is* that guy’s accent? I grew up in Connecticut and now go to school here. That is *not* a Connecticut accent. As soon as you think you have it down, he just says something else that completely surprises you.
Also, she’s probably right that that is unlikely to happen in a million other cows. She just forgot that there’s way more than a million cows in the world at any given time.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
hahahaha “i know a thing or two about reproduction and genetics…”
yeah. you know that they’re words. that seems to be the extent of your expertise.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Not the first time God sends messages via cow. But usually he’s talking to Muslims.
Cow speaks the name “Allah”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okazbOSMKSQ
Cow with “Allah” on it: http://www.factjo.com/images/fact_image/ayat/18.jpg
Cow with both “Allah” and “Mohammad” on it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7575675/4120796869/
…and you wouldn’t believe how many results you get when you do a Google search for “Allah” and “Goat.”
In fact, Allah’s name can be seen in almost as many places as Jesus, including a fish, an orange, a plant, stars, clouds, etc (no grilled cheese so far): http://www.factjo.com/Manbar_En/MemberDetails.aspx?id=29
December 10th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
If I see one more moron finding a crooked cross or Jesus’ warped face in a rusty old doorknob I’m going to punch myself in the face until I don’t care anymore. Argh!
December 10th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
And here I grew up thinking Charlotte’s Web was a naive, implausible children’s story. The Chick-fil-A cows should take a lesson. Appearing sentient and painting pleading signs has nothing on pareidolia.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I saw this in my feed reader and came here to make the same comment GregW already did!
Still doesn’t beat “Jesus on a Cheeto”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prince_logo.svg
http://www.manolith.com/2009/05/18/cheesus-jesus-likeness-found-in-cheetos-bag/
December 10th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Looking for a graphic that would most closely resemble the ‘pattern’ on the calf, I came up with this:
J/P=?
December 10th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
And once again, I called the content of the post by reading the title in my feed reader.
December 10th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
oh looks, its dinner
December 10th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I don’t see a cross. I see a ballerina, en pointe, holding a birthday cake.
December 10th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Isn’t there something in Christian dogma against worshiping calves?
December 10th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
The woman basically says that it’s a one in a million chance for a cow to have a cross on it’s head. Considering how many million cows their are in the world, why is she so surprised that one of them has something very vaguely cross-like on it?
December 10th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Cute cow. Silly people.
December 10th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
As my eldest daughter pointed out, in 1974, “The only GOOD cow, is a hamburger.”
She had to pass the cows on our half mile long driveway to get home from school. It wasn’t that the cows were aggressive, they just took up a lot of room and dumped a lot of poop on the driveway.
Gary 7
December 10th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I knew right away this was a post about pareidolia, and looking at the cow i was confused. I was like am I supposed to see Jesus or something, and then they mentioned the cross… That’s just such a ridiculous stretch its not even funny. The other stuff poseted usually you can sort of make out something but this? really?!
December 10th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
@Adam Solomon: I think its a Maine accent, if I had to guess.
All I see is a wicked cute little cow.
December 10th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
If you can’t see the cross, you’re just not looking at the world through a Christian veal.
Too much of a stretch?
December 10th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Stop making fun of my great grandfather!
(Because mockery does not recognize theological borders.)
December 10th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Two things: It looks like a splayed out rubber chicken, not a cross
And if it is real (yeah, right) Maybe God’s trying to tell us to become Hindus? I mean, cows are sacred to them right? Maybe it’s a crossover thing going on, or God’s finally gotten over the golden calf incedent
But yeah, this is so much of a stretch it’s not funny, I can’t even see that as being a cross via pareidolia.
December 10th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
It does look like Thor’s hammer! And it was reported on Thor’s Day!
December 10th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
The terrible penmanship is how they know it’s God. If it were a neat, precise cross, people would know immediately that it was a hoax. But a sloppy, barely-there cross? Miracle!
If you assume that God works through mysterious, unseen, tiny manipulations — in this case, tweaking the expression of the cow’s genes — then it almost makes sense.
December 10th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Actually, can you imagine how tough these Christian sign-seers would have it if the Romans had executed Jesus by strangulation? Would that cow have been marked with the holy symbol of the blue tongue and bulging eyeballs?
‘Cause you’ve got to admit, as a simple graphic design, the cross is pretty dang nifty.
December 10th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
I dunno. It looks kind of like a chupacabra to me. Good thing it’s a cow, not a goat.
And don’t tell me no one knows what a chupacabra looks like – I read a very scholarly article about it recently while I was buying tomato paste in ShopRite.
December 10th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
The irony I see is that the white mark above and between the eyes is a sign of recessive genes selected to help domestication. The mere fact that the “cross” is there is proof of evolution.
December 10th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
71. kuhnigget Says:
Actually, can you imagine how tough these Christian sign-seers would have it if the Romans had executed Jesus by strangulation? Would that cow have been marked with the holy symbol of the blue tongue and bulging eyeballs?
IIRC (can’t find a YouTube of it quickly enough), George Carlin had a ‘what if Jesus died of bee stings?’ bit.
J/P=?
December 10th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
@J/P=?:
Oh, how I miss George Carlin.
December 10th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
I see a ballerina in a tutu! Nutcracker anyone?
December 10th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
How come all the cute ones are so very dumb?
December 11th, 2009 at 1:13 am
Cross?What cross?
My first thought wen I saw that was Marilyn Monroe.Come on,the uplifted skirt is clearly visible.
December 11th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Absolutely ridiculous. I bet there’s other cows with the same marking. There’s probably evil ones with it upside down, too.
To be honest it bears some resemblance to the Legacy badges (a flaming torch) you can buy in Australia, and besides the fact it has 4 points on it, there’s very little similarity to a christian cross.
December 11th, 2009 at 3:16 am
It’s obviously a paint gun turned so that the barrel is pointing down. I don’t see how people can see a cross when it’s so obviously not.
December 11th, 2009 at 3:52 am
Oh I give up!
December 11th, 2009 at 5:28 am
Jesus has returned! Unfortunately, he’s in the body of a goat and unable to deliver his message to the world. Oh well.
December 11th, 2009 at 6:46 am
As far as that cow goes, like others have said, it doesn’t even look like a cross. Now get back to me when a cow has a distinct Star of David marking. That would be difficult to do.
@kuhnigget,
I always wondered what the rational was for worshiping the device that an ancient enemy of yours used to kill your “god” (even if said god didn’t really die but will return someday) and used to kill your religion’s followers. Wouldn’t you regard that symbol as evil and not holy?!!
@Keegan,
About the evolutionary lottery thing, I wonder if there would be some evolutionary pressure to develop symbols like this. Cows with vague cross-like shapes get to live and breed more. This leads to more cross-cows. Of course, then cross-cows become more commonplace so farmers only care about cows with very distinct cross shapes. So those cows get to breed more and cows wind up having more distinct cross shapes. Do this enough and you could probably get some pretty good cow-art going. Of course, it’d take generations and generations of breeding.
Of course, the opposite could happen. Cross-cows could be set aside as special and thus not allowed to breed as much. This would, of course, lead to less and less cross-cows being born.
December 11th, 2009 at 7:02 am
The communication skills are even worse than the penmanship. Why would God bother leaving all these sign without explaining why or what they mean? Should we sacrifice this calf? Should we give it a good life? Did Jesus sacrifice himself on the cross for calves so that we should all become vegetarians?
Here’s another sign from God, the divine garden spiders:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_garden_spider
December 11th, 2009 at 7:42 am
Anyone else see Marilyn Monroe with her skirt around her waist?
December 11th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Hallelujha, it’s a divine Rorschach test.
December 11th, 2009 at 8:05 am
Well, it’s not a cross, but I now have a mark on MY forehead… it’s in the pattern of my keyboard as I slammed my head onto my desk.
Funny, isn’t it, how the further along we go, the more desperate religious believers get to ‘prove’ their faith?
December 11th, 2009 at 8:19 am
*sigh* I wish people would stop trying to get their 15 min of fame at the expense of God or whatever their beliefs are…..
December 11th, 2009 at 11:25 am
71. kuhnigget Says: “can you imagine how tough these Christian sign-seers would have it if the Romans had executed Jesus by strangulation? Would that cow have been marked with the holy symbol of the blue tongue and bulging eyeballs? ”
Heinlein worked this idea into his book “Farnam’s Freehold” There, a guy and his family (COWering in their bomb shelter) are blasted a couple of millennia into the future by a direct hit from a Czar-bomb sized warhead. Since western and Asian civilizations had blasted themselves into oblivion, Africa was once again the source of human ascendancy and they had rebuilt civilization socially to about the mid-19th century but with mid-20th century technology. The dominant race was black and the slaves were white. The dominant religion had a prophet who had been executed (martyred, sacrificed…take your pick) by hanging. The symbol of the religion was a gallows.
- Jack
December 11th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
This raises the question about what is a divine symbol. If jeezzzuuss had been killed in an electric chair in modern times, would we be looking about for cattle with images of Ol’ Sparky on ‘em?
December 13th, 2009 at 10:13 am
This is awesome, someone else also sees the erotic ballerina, en point, holding a birthday cake. Can we create a religion now?