Wednesday 3 December 2008

Australians See
Smiley Face
in
Night
Sky


Eddie Campbell too.
Australians are getting a big hello from the heavens as Venus, Jupiter and a waxing crescent moon combine to create a celestial smiley face.
Unfortunately, because North Americans are on the other side of the equator, they'll view the phenomenon another way — as a sad face with downcast mouth.
The best time to see the friendly phenomenon is about 20 to 30 minutes after sunset in both hemispheres, report the News Corporation's Australian newspapers.


(my photos. Lights at bottom are the lamps along our street. Better pictures at the link, but I wanted you to know I was paying attention.)
meanwhile: Happy Face on Mars Exposed: "Spotting things that don't exist -on Mars or in clouds- is called pareidolia. A study last year found that humans are particularly susceptible to seeing human faces where there are none, because our knowledge of the human face is so ingrained in our brains."

Best Pareidolia Ever
Have you seen Jesus today?

********
in other news:
'Olympic Village' sex turns toads into athletes
Professor Rick Shine from the University of Sydney studies the pesky creatures and believes the toads are evolving to become faster.
When introduced to Queensland in 1935 in a bid to kill the cane beetle, toads generally travelled at a rate of about 10 kilometres each year, Professor Shine said.
"Now that movement has increased to about 50 or 60 kilometres per year, and those at the front of this invasion have become marathon runners in a sense," he said.
The gene mutation that drives certain toads to venture from their local area has been caused by constant selective breeding between the speediest of each generation.
"Within the first generation, the quickest toads - the athletes - were on the western front and they bred with each other... we call this the Olympic Village effect," he said.
However their new legs and need for speed end up being their downfall.
"A vet in Darwin noticed spinal arthritis and it looks to be the result of toads having pushed the envelope as far as they possibly can," Professor Shine said.

***********
This chap is having trouble separating his reality from his fiction:
Cartooning and story telling are difficult things in themselves, nonetheless trying to write something funny on top of that. Author Eddie Campbell confesses in his short graphic novel The Fate of the Artist the desperate lengths he went through just to be witty in his comics: “I found myself listening to catch ideas from the conversations of my friends and then I became a harpy, a moloch, a vampire. Anxious. Haggard. Greedy. Let a piquant phrase fall from their lips and I was after it like a hound.” Campbell professes that his life is much easier since he stepped out of the comic business just a few years ago. Art drains the honest artist. Or perhaps it is the act of being honest which is so exhausting.

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3 Comments:

Blogger spacedlaw said...

Pareidolia! Nice word. Perfect for Word of the Day.

3 December 2008 at 01:46:00 GMT-5  
Blogger Yoga Gal said...

Thanks for the photos , the fog was too thick for me to view such a sight in my part of the world.

4 December 2008 at 00:25:00 GMT-5  
Blogger Kelly Kilmer said...

San Diego/United States wasn't too happy:
http://lostluggage.typepad.com/the_land_of_lost_luggage/2008/12/culture-digested.html?cid=141348450#comments

4 December 2008 at 00:58:00 GMT-5  

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