The Fishing is Pretty Slow on Mars

"fishing is pretty slow"

There is an interesting mental trick people play on themselves when, if looking at a cloud or the grain in a piece of wood, we will suddenly, almost miraculously, see a pattern we recognize.

Usually we see a human face or figure. We have all experienced it at one time or another.

To psychologists, this effect is known as pareidolia.

The famous ink-blot test (the Rorschach) uses pareidolia as a way to get a feel for a person’s inner thoughts.

Having said all of that; take a look at this picture from NASA. It was taken by one of the Martian Rovers. I first read about it on Yahoo News. It sure looks like someone sitting on a rock fishing.

Here is another famous Mars picture from NASA - The Mars Face.

Since the advent of EBay we’ve heard about some great examples of pareidolia usually involving the faces of Jesus or the Virgin Mary appearing on a piece of toast or a bagel.

 My friend Rick recently shingled his house with cedar and handled hundreds of beautifully grained little slabs of wood. He kept the best examples of shingles with images in the grain and called them “knot art but something else”.

Mentioning bagels reminded me of an old bluegrass player who visited New York to play. After biting into the first bagel he’d ever seen he said, “That’s the worst darned doughnut I ever did taste”