The other day while at the gym, the TV was showing CNN. I couldn’t see the screen clearly, but the segment was about unusual clouds in New York… and how some people saw Michael Jackson’s face in them. At the time I thought the segment was serious, but in fact it was Jeanne Moos doing her gag schtick, as you can see on You Tube:
If you’re wondering about the actual MJ shot, here you go:
That’s a screen grab from the video. I suppose it looks a bit like Jackson, though, like most examples of faces in the clouds, it looks more like Lou Ferrigno. Or maybe a zombie. Take your pick.
Incidentally, the clouds in question here are called mammatus, and are actually quite common here in Colorado, and I’ve taken a lot of pictures of them, like the one shown here. I remember the first time I ever saw mammatus clouds; I was in Maryland and the remnants of a hurricane had swept through. The clouds were like little bulbs hanging down, and I had never seen anything like it before… so I’m not surprised that people freaked out a little.
But I wonder, just how many people really did think this was a sign of some sort?
Now c’mon, that’s pretty good. It looks a whole lot more like Michael Jackson than pretty much any Jesus sighting. The key is to know who it is supposed to be before you are told, and that’s clearly the Moonwalking man. My Lenin is IMO better, and yet to be beaten, but still. Hooooo hoo! Bauw!
Astronomers — even skeptical ones with a sense of humor and an eye for pareidolia — can miss things. In this case, I can hardly believe I somehow dropped the pigskin on this one.
The thing is, I was so drawn to the dunes that I missed something that, in retrospect, makes moi a bit of a fool. Look to the middle right; see that raised dome? Yeah? Well, look a little closer:
See it? Maybe this comparison will help vous.
It’s so obvious! And what makes it worse is as soon as I saw it I knew why it was there… all you have to do is look at this image of the Martian surface taken by the Viking 1 orbiter back in the 1970s…
It’s all clear to me now. It’s not easy being red.
Sigh. Pareidolia is certainly subjective, of course, but as a wise swine once said, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
Tip o’ the hand puppet to BABloggee Ken Arthur for notifying me of my oversight. Tip o’ the heat shield as well to the Tampa Bay Skeptics for the Kermit pic.
Maybe it’s just me, but if I were omnipotent and omnipresent, I don’t think I’d fool around making my visage appear in a jar of yeast extract spread.
But that’s just me.
Not everyone agrees with me (as usual). For example, here is evidence that Jesus has appeared in the lid of a jar of Marmite. For those not in the know, Marmite is a toxic substance some people put on toast or bread. They claim it’s edible, but their judgment is suspect.
Besides, it’s clearly not Jesus anyway. I know who it really is:
People tend to see religious icons in random patterns, but when it comes to pareidolia we sometimes have to set our sights lower. Like, say, with the patron saint of quality footwear.
I’m fascinated by clouds. Most astronomers I know are interested in meteorology — in much the same way sky divers are interested in gravity — but in my case it’s more than that. I love interesting clouds, ones with unusual shapes, coloring, patterns. Mrs. BA is sick of me grabbing her and saying, "Look at that one!" all the time, if that gives you a clue of how often I do this.
Yesterday we had an odd cloud formation over my house; a layer with puffy cells in it that looked convective (that is, due to hot air rising and cool air sinking), and the lines between the darker puffs were bright, giving the whole thing the look and feel of a medical X-ray. I posted the image on Twitter and got lots of comments…
…but the one from BATweep Ted_Rex was special, because he mentioned the Cloud Appreciation Society. It’s a website devoted to weirdos like me who like clouds. It has incredible pictures of clouds, and they’re archived in categories like cloud taxonomy (nimbus, stratus, and so on) as well as ones that look like other things… my favorite that I saw was the one shown here, which is astonishing.
There are places to talk about clouds and upload your own pictures. All in all, it’s a fine way to spend a little time… so you should save it away. For a sunny day.
All this apparently started when a hotelier, who has since moved, claimed statues of the Virgin Mother had been crying honey and bleeding oil and perfumes.
Yeah, caveat emptor, right? But at what point can you blame the believer for being foolish, versus the scam artist (perhaps a true believer as well) who started this? If people don’t know enough to know they don’t know enough, then it’s hard to assign blame to them. The fault lies in the system, which sometimes actively fights against reality and truth getting to the masses.
I hear stories like this all the time, and usually they don’t amount to much individually except as as silly story. But taken as a sum, they do in fact inflict damage: people believe in fantasies which can hurt them physically, financially, and emotionally. It destroys their ability to think critically. And then we get people like Jenny McCarthy, or the parents who used homeopathy and killed their child, or the proven fraud Peter Popoff making a comeback and bilking people out of millions of dollars.
That’s the harm.
So I will continue to point out nonsense like seeing Jesus in baked goods, and I will continue to poke fun at them and at other things which may at first seem harmless. Because, at some point, this stuff isn’t harmless any more.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
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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