Blogs / Bad Astronomy

In Rochester, Minnesota, the Buddha is laughing.

Or screaming in pain. Hard to say. That’s because local Buddhists are flocking to see a wasp nest shaped like, well, Buddha. As you can see, and as usual for these sorts of things, if you squint you can kinda sorta see it looks a little bit like Buddha. Maybe. I see the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man, but that’s just me.

The article is pretty funny; they talked to an entomologist (good for them!) who described the wasp nest, and the way wasps make nests, and they even went so far as to say:

The Buddha-shaped formation could actually be made of four different nests formed over the last two to four years, said Robert Jeanne, an entomology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“If you want to read miracles into that, that’s your privilege, but I wouldn’t be inclined to do that,” he said.

But the author of the article makes a big point of how sacred bees are to Buddhists:

Beehives appear to have a special significance in Cambodian Buddhism: Honey collecting is a common activity in Cambodia, where Buddhist temples feature honeycomb-shaped towers.

There are other quotes about bees as well. And that’s all well and good, but, y’see, wasps aren’t bees. They’re two completely different things. Paper wasps, for example, don’t even make honey. So that whole part of the article is totally ridiculous. Even the picture caption calls it a beehive.

But my favorite part is the following quote from a monk named Moeun Thun:

The Buddha wasn’t trying to send a message with the nests, but the insects were trying to communicate a Buddhist message, Thun said.

“Bees can do this kind of miracle, so humans can also do miracles,” he said. “Everywhere in this world, we humans need to follow in the bees’ path to make peace and serenity.”

Well, given that these were not bees, but wasps, which are highly aggressive, I might disagree with the monk. Also, wasps paralyze their prey with their sting, and then plant them next to a previously-laid egg. When the larva hatches, its food is waiting for it in the form of the paralyzed — but not dead — prey, which then gets eaten alive.

If Thun is right, I’ll never look at a Buddha statue the same way again.

Tip o’ the benzocaine lotion tube cap to BABloggee John W. Weiss.

Well, you knew this had to happen eventually.

I have to think it’s fake. I wouldn’t pay $20 for it, but I bet someone will. There are no bids as I write this…

… but I have to say. The toast? It’s Wonder Bread. Too funny.

Tip o’ the strawberry jelly jar lid to BABloggee Brian Hodges.

There’s a post title I bet you never expected to see! But it’s accurate. Pareidolia is the psychological term for seeing faces in random patterns; a trait we have evolved over millions of years. But what about reverse pareidolia? Where you don’t see faces that really are there? You might think it’s prosopagnosia, but in this case it’s a joke. But a cool one.

Over at the Bread and Honey blog, they have a really cool article about a frozen broccoli box that has little smiling faces Photoshopped into the broccoli:

Coincidence? Subliminal advertising? Neither! In a followup post, Bread and Honey found out it’s a tribute the company makes to people who work there. I think that’s terrific, funny, and pretty cool. Frozen, even. But head on over there to see more of the facial trickery they did. It’s all pretty nifty. And it’s good for you.

Tip o’ the stalk to BA Blog regular Cory Albrecht.

So this guy thinks that his "unusual" amaranth planet looks like the Indian elephant god Ganesh:

Now, maybe it’s just me, but to me it looks like a plain old elephant. But then, I don’t worship Ganesh. Lots of people do, though, and so of course this means the guy is getting lots of visitors, and he thinks it has cured his illnesses. How miraculous that this pachydermic plant happened to grow in the garden of a believer!

… or is it? Amaranths grow into all sorts of odd shapes. It didn’t take me long on Flickr to find one like this:

If you worship Cthulhu, you’re in luck! Though, if you worship Cthulhu, you’re probably never in luck.

When I lived in Northern California, amaranths like this were everywhere, including right outside my building. They would constantly crack me up. Why? Because I suspect they were trying to tell me something:

And as a final snark, let me add something: the name of this particular variety of amaranth? It’s called Elephant Head.

Images from Santa Rosa’s Crescent Moon Farm and pixelviz’s Flickr set. Tip o’ the turban to Hemant Mehta.

It never ends.

How "spooky" is this?

The story, "reported" by The Sun, says that a woman took this picture at an aquarium in Hull, East Yorkshire, using a phone cam, and that she only noticed the face when she got home.

Now, we all know how much I love pareidolia, the psychological ability for humans to see faces in random patterns. But look at that one! We see hair, eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, even ears, and they’re all in the right place! So is this pareidolia?

Update: ScottH, in the comments below, shows pretty conclusively that this is a fake, a Photoshop. My conclusions about it being a reflection in the next paragraph are, evidently, in error.

It would be easy to say that maybe the woman who took the picture is putting us all on, that this is a hoax. But honestly, isn’t it a little bit likely that there was someone else at the aquarium that day, maybe standing behind her, whose face was reflected in the glass? Note that the face is looking up. What’s the most obvious thing in the overall picture? A shark swimming… and note too that we see its belly, meaning anyone standing there would be looking up at the shark. It’s blue because the water is blue; a white face reflected in the glass would have the blue glow of the water diffused through it. Etc. etc. A reflection explains every single aspect of this story.

… except for the breathless headline and uncritical reporting. The first paragraph of the tabloid article says,

IT’S just what you’d expect to see in a snap from an aquarium. A shark, blue water — and a disembodied HUMAN HEAD.

"Disembodied?" O RLY? How did the writer come to that conclusion? The picture cuts off right where the neck would be, so saying this is disembodied is a stretch to say the least.

This is really obviously just a reflection of another aquarium-goer. And as dumb as this is, I am spending time on it to remind you, my dear BABloggees, that this is what counts for news in many papers. The Sun is a notoriously bad paper, akin to the Weekly World News or The Star: gossip, photoshop, and dumbosities. But this kind of stuff is reported in the mainstream media as well — remember the gas station ghost (which turned out to be an insect illuminated by IR LEDs and rendered blue by the IR capabilities of the camera)? Or any of the dozens of Virgin Mary/Jesus/Allah sightings?

As long as this stuff is reported uncritically, we all have our average credulity magnified, and our ability as a group to think critically decreased.

Tip o’ the severed head to Echobucket.

Shades of the smiling grape! A woman in Texas found the Virgin Mary in a grape. I’ll admit, the grape does bear a resemblance to the general iconic version of the VM.

The good news is that the woman, a Baptist, makes fun of people who see religious figures in stains and such:

“I thought this stuff just happened to Catholics?” she said. “Mom and I had a laugh about it at first, seeing as how we’re Baptists and all and we generally don’t expect to see holy people popping up in our foodstuffs.”

“I haven’t made a shrine to it, nor prayed to it, nor done much of anything except e-mail the picture to a few friends and roll it around in the bowl in the fridge,” Ginn said.

Heh. Well, God bless her heart.

But I have to admit getting more of a laugh out of this than usual, due to the ad placement on the story’s page. There’s a Lane Bryant ad right next to the grape picture, and the layout… well, judge for yourself:

I’m not positive, but I doubt that’s the sort of image Lane Bryant — or the Church, for that matter — wants to convey.

The Onion really went over the edge on this one: Evolutionists Flock To Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain.

Of course, this is totally silly. Clearly it’s not Darwin, it’s Randi!

Bonus: at the bottom of the Onion web page was a link to an article with one of their best headlines ever.

Bonus 2: Randi talks DragonCon on his podcast, The Amazing Show.