I’ll Show You How God Falls Asleep on the Job

One of the most famous examples of pareidolia ever.  (1976)

RIP, Percival Lowell, you would have hated the Viking (and Mariner) missions:

Cydonia was first imaged in detail by the Viking 1 and Viking 2 orbiters. Eighteen images of the Cydonia region were taken by the orbiters... 

In one of the images taken by Viking 1 on July 25, 1976, a two-kilometre-long (1.2 mi) Cydonian mesa, situated at 40.75° north latitude and 9.46° west longitude, had the appearance of a humanoid face. When the image was originally acquired, Viking chief scientist Gerald Soffen dismissed the "Face on Mars" in image 035A72 as a "trick of light and shadow"... 

After analysis of the higher-resolution Mars Global Surveyor data NASA stated that "a detailed analysis of multiple images of this feature reveals a natural looking Martian hill whose illusory face-like appearance depends on the viewing angle and angle of illumination". Similar optical illusions can be found in the geology of Earth; examples include the Old Man of the Mountain, the Romanian Sphinx, Giewont, the Pedra da Gávea, the Old Man of Hoy, Stac Levenish, Sleeping Ute, and the Badlands Guardian.

Also RIP, Old Man of the Mountain.

<exits singing, I've just seen a face, I can't forget the time or place...>

Turn the track up

I don't think this shit is loud enough.

Ipomoea alba

Moonflowers:

It was the moonflowers that surprised us.

Early summer we noticed the soft gray foliage.

She asked for seedpods every year but I never saw them in her garden.

Never knew what she did with them.

Exotic and tropical, not like her other flowers.

I expected her to throw them in the pasture maybe,

a gift to the coyotes. Huge, platterlike white flowers

shining in the night to soften their plaintive howling.

A sound I love; a reminder, even on the darkest night,

that manicured lawns don't surround me.

Midsummer they shot up, filled the small place by the back door,

sprawled over sidewalks, refused to be ignored.

Gaudy and awkward by day,

by night they were huge, soft, luminous.

Only this year, this year of her death

did they break free of their huge, prickly husks

and brighten the darkness she left.

Karma Larsen.

Everyone here is a work of art

Material Girl's still got it.

Ceci n'est pas un poème

René Magritte:

Released silhouettes

flow incessantly like water,

flow between mountains

swiftly like a kaleidoscope.

The solitude of  the North Pole

bustles with human silhouettes.

Endless transmission of  ABC.

On the shredded shore

a silk hat burns

like a mirror trick,

like a human echo

burns a silk hat endlessly.

Then the flames

were received like ABC.

On the night of a beautiful lunar eclipse

the silhouettes smiled.

Shuzo Takiguchi.

#throwbackthursday

I still use this antique Ericka got me as a coffee mug.  (2017)

She's got style, she's got grace, she's a winner

I, uh...sometimes sing the next line as "chicken dinner."

Peace and Trust Can Win the Day

Immigrant Song:

All birds—even those that do not fly

—have wings

 

A constant confession

Admission of omission

 

This is your punctuated equilibrium

And everything in between

Slow it down

 

The moment of extinction

The death of the last individual of a species

(Let’s put it aside for now)

Stay with it

 

This is our gene flow

How do you like our genetic drift

A riff, a rift, a raft…

Too rough for the second half

 

Take us under, take us downhill

Paint pangenesis all over your dancing body

The new party god

Keep the beat going, don’t stop, you can’t stop

 

Crick & Watson

Evo-devo

This is your mother’s local phenomenon

 

If this is racial hygiene

Why do I feel so dirty?

 

Microcosmic soul

It’s an involutionary wonderland

This living matter

A modern synthesis

4.6 billion years of biology

Can’t stop the ideology

Graduate from meet/mate

To fitness landscape of sexual selection

 

From land over sea

It’s a hard lyric

The impression of a key in a bar of soap

A transitional fossil

 

Keep camping

Plant the flag

Bury the burial mound

Put the pop in popular

And the sigh in science

Sun Yung Shin.