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More pareidolia

Explore how pareidolia never sleeps, revealing faces in random patterns like the Virgin Mary and even a grilled cheese sandwich.

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Pareidolia never sleeps. That's the psych term for seeing patterns (usually faces) in random patterns. Like, say, the "face" on Mars, or Lenin in a shower curtain, or, of course, the mother of all faces: the Virgin Mary in a stain on an underpass. People tend to see what they wish to see, so of course any vaguely longish oval with a smear around it looks like Jesus. Scale is not important; you can see Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich, or in a bank window (scroll down that page to see it). Some people see Jesus in the Eagle Nebula, which is hard to beat for scale. Still for terrestrial terms, this new one ain't so bad.

It's brought to you courtesy of Google maps, it's two miles wide and four long, and it's in Peru. I'll admit, it does look like a face, but unless Jesus bears an uncanny resemblance to Gandalf (or perhaps Confucius), I'm guessing that some people are seeing a wee bit too much into this. Of course, when you see something like this:

... maybe Gandalf isn't such a bad guy to have around.

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