Re: Could it be...?
Seeing things which are not there has a name, its called pareidolia and it is one reason why artists and us scientists are trained to SEE what is actually there and to constantly question our visual biases.
I used to hang out on sci.archaeology on Usenet and we had a kook called Bob who had pareidolia real bad. Bob was convinced that aliens had left us messages in the rocks and he saw letters and numbers in rocks from all over.
Then one day he posted a picture of a Scottish standing stone of great antiquity and started going on about seeing things just left of the yellow blob. My klaxons went off big time, yellow? in Scottish granite? Then I realised, NO stone surface in Scotland which has stood out in the weather for longer than a decade or so does NOT show a stony surface. It will be absolutely covered in algae, lichens and mosses. That yellow patch was certainly a lichen, there were cream patches, more lichens etc. etc. Bob was seeing alien signals in the growth patterns of life. Bingo, I had him.
This house was built in 1965 and we have low concrete block walls with concrete capstones. Unless you are anal and employ someone to sandblast them clean they get covered in algae, lichens and then mosses. Mine are.
This is why geologists carry hammers to crack open stones so they can get a clean, virgin surface to study.
I realised this when a child. I grew up in Dunedin, NZ and behind the city is a long 300m high ridge and on the top is a rock outcrop. Sitting under it one day I noticed that all the surfaces exposed to daylight were darker than those under overhangs. Looking closer I could see black algae just under the surface.
it seems this sort of self education was not given to poor Bob in America.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
