Flashing turns pretty girls ugly [SFW]
posted by christopher.taylor on Jul 8, 2011 - 74 comments

Few phenomena have the power to confound as many different types of people as pareidolia. It doesn't discriminate by culture or religion. It causes Christians to see Jesus and Mary, Muslims to see the names of Allah and the Prophet, Jews to see the Star of David, Hindus to see the monkey-god Hanuman, and Buddhists to see — you guessed it — the Buddha. Even atheists who haven't devoted themselves to skepticism have puzzled long and hard over the famous face, and more recently, Bigfoot, on Mars. Now video has surfaced on YouTube of pseudoscientist and perennial attention-seeker Richard Heene (yes, Balloon Boy's dad) seeing things on the red planet too. If you'd prefer the filler edited out, the remix is highly entertaining. [more inside]
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis on Aug 11, 2010 - 20 comments

The Thatcher Illusion (using Madonna) , the original, Bush
posted by srboisvert on Mar 21, 2004 - 25 comments

sandlot science ... optical illusions and visual oddities... hundreds of exhibits and interactive demonstrations.
posted by crunchland on Nov 3, 2003 - 4 comments

You think it's moving but it's not.
posted by xmutex on Jul 24, 2003 - 85 comments

A professor of vision science at MIT understands that life isn't just black and white, even though we often see it that way. This amazing illusion proves it, and these slick, fast-loading, Flash demonstrations of lightness perception show how it's done. (My favorite is the "Koffka Ring".) White paper here, for deeper background.
posted by taz on Sep 27, 2002 - 29 comments