Pareidolia - that's the word

There's a technical term for the kind of mistaken identity story we're covering here. I can never remember what it is, but I can always google "jesus toast" and there it is again: Pareidolia. Think of it as the paranormal, but with idols. We're wired to find certain patterns, especially faces and animal shapes, in the choatic world around us. So we'll see faces on toast and silhouettes on shower curtains, when they aren't really there -- it all seems so normal. We're familiar with slips of the tongue. These are "slips of our idols/icons."

Our take is to stay on the light side, and document our own cases where our eyes have triggered a spurious recognition response. Those moments have an odd little jolt to them. A "look at that!" feeling. Still very natural. Pareidolia is the basis of the famous Rorschach test; given a series of blobs, people are epected to see something. Yet it does have a vaguely mystical feel when it happens.

Here's a funny case from the Bad Astronomy website, talking about a naked girl "seen" in Dick Cheney's sunglasses while out fishing. The comments are very illuminating, showing how quickly people will attack each other's beliefs, and how meanly they will defend them. All starting from a case of something that was never there!

This started as a simple blog post. It spun off a long, serious article about the topic, which I hope to find a home for. I'll be sure to link it up if it ever sees print. Meanwhile, enjoy the imaginary naked lady.