Eight Minutes Old

As promised in my review of the MAGNUM’S first exhibition, this is my review of the William Eggleston exhibition “Democratic Camera – Photographs and Video, 1961 - 2008” in the „Haus der Kunst“ in Munich. I’ll focus on the photographs.

The show is curated by Elisabeth Sussmann and Thomas Waski. It was previously on display at the Whitney museum of American Art in New York, which organized the show in association with the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany.

The exhibition in Munich spreads through several halls on the first floor of the building. Starting with early works in black and white it shows the influence Henry Cartier-Bresson had on Eggleston, especially through his book “The decisive moment”.
Egglestons pictures quickly change to color. Using the dye-transfer process that then was offered by Kodak, he was able to produce vibrant colors. Quite a contrast to black and white, but I like that. He really has an eye for colors, tones and how to arrange them in the frame. But his photos are not posed, they are found and exhibit an snapshot-like style. Still, there is more to them. They interact with what is outside of the frame and hint at a story that the viewer makes up in his mind, often involving a feeling of insecure ness and impending danger or violence, thing for example of the boy in a glowing red sweater besides a road in front of a dark sky (plate 80).
There are many different types of pictures in this show, not only the truncated details or people most often associated with Eggleston’s work, but also landscapes. I didn’t find the latter as impressive as the former, but there are some exceptions, like plate 75: A field full of yellow and lavender flowers on a hill, spread to the horizon where the picture ends in a strip of blue sky. There is more to this one than simple flower photography: A fence runs through the field and all but the foreground is blurred due to a shallow depth of field, the colors are extreme, but not implausible.

Today, the vibrant colors produced by the expensive (up to 1000 dollars a print at that time) are fading. Not the colors themselves, the prints are of high quality and I assume the light is dim because of conservation concerns. But their perception fades, as today everybody can get a high saturation by playing around in photoshop. If it were not for Eggleston’s unique style, they would not stand out among today’s flickr-flood for many. As the dye-transfer process was discontinued by Kodak in the 1990s, even Eggleston had to change the printing process.

The building of the “Haus der Kunst” itself (see the photo), erected by the Nazis and inaugurated with an exhibition on “Degenerate Art”, does have a repulsive atmosphere to me. Also, the light was not perfect for a photo exhibition, too dim for my taste. Having been there on a Saturday afternoon, there were lots of visitors and sometimes I had the feeling of being pushed to move on to the next panel, not physically though. But the rooms are big and so the only spots where it really became cramped were in front of some of the more famous pictures.

The catalog is comparably expensive with 49 Euros (or 65 Dollars at the Whitney Museum of American Art), but is worth the money. What you get are not only the more than 200 pictures on display, It also features extensive texts (in English) about Eggelstons photographic career and influences (“I can’t fly, but I can make experiments” by Thomas Weski), an essay about his video works from the 1970s (“The Boat to Canton” by Elisabeth Sussman), and several texts more. Finally, there is an biography over 9 pages including some private black and white photos showing William Eggleston (written by Adam Welch), a list of past exhibitions and a bibliography. The print quality is very well, but again, the book is heavy so be prepared to carry it around with you.
Interestingly, for some of the photos no date of creation could be found. One example is the untitled picture of plate 55 showing two bottles of Ketchup and a pepper caster standing on a counter  in front of a red and white wall with a big window with a poster of a burger. It is from the Los Alamos series, which was produces in the years 1965-1968 and 1972-1974. The attentive observer can find a similar scenery only 45 pages later in plate 81. There a long haired woman is seen in profile, her hands resting on said counter and holding a dollar-bill. The wall if the snack bar to the left is the same as before and most importantly: one can see the ketchup bottles (and even the pepper shaker) blurred in the background. But this picture has a date: 1971 and is from another series: “10.D.70.V2”. I would be the two photos ware taken mere minutes from each other.

All in all, the show is worth a visit, as this is one of the few chances to see so many of Eggleston’s pictures in one place. It is still running until Mai 17 in Munich, Germany, at the “Haus der Kunst” (Prinzregentenstrasse 1, 80538 München), open from 10-22 every day. Admission: 9 Euro or 6 Euro for students and so on (only with some verification like an student ID). More information can be found on the (somewhat badly designed) homepage of the Haus der Kunst and  at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

There will be several shows in the United States in the next month/years, too:
- Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC: June 20 – September 20, 2009
- Art Institute of Chicago, February 20 –May 16, 2010
- Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, October 28, 2010 – January 23, 2011

Tags: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Democratic Camera, Dye Transfer, Eggleston, Haus der Kunst, Henry Cartier-Bresson, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, MAGNUM Photo, New York, Washington, whitney museum of american art, William Eggleston, Catalog, Color Photography, Exhibition, Film Photography, Germany, Munich, Museum, Photo Exhibition, Photography, Tourism, USA

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t understand these over-religious guys. The “Liberty Counsel” (lc.org, I won’t link to them) has made up a “Naughty and Nice List” for Christian Christmas shoppers. There they can check if the company where they intend to buy is Nice or Naughty: “Nice” means that the shop says “Christmas” somewhere. To end up on “Naughty” all the shop has to do is not mention “Christmas” but only something like “Happy Holidays”. Of cause, we all have to avoid the Naughty ones!

Pretty simple, right? Say Christmas and you are one of the good guys. But why? Do Christians forget that there is Christmas to come when shops don’t tell them constantly? Doesn’t holiday come from “Holy Day”?

Some examples: Gap is bad, Disney is, too (”No mention of Christmas”). Amazon is good because they sell “Christmas Trees”. How stupid can it become? Oh, very much stupid: they even accept so called “Reports” of Naughty shops, like the following:

Honey Baked Ham – Report: “HOLIDAY was written everywhere!! Nothing about CHRISTMAS. I asked and was told the usual ‘we don’t want to offend anyone.’”

Even though one should be careful with these comparisons, the behavior nevertheless reminds me of what the Nazis did in Germany, putting up sign saying: “Don’t buy from the Jews” and similar stuff. In fact, the “Liberty Counsel” could say the same, as Jews don’t celebrate Christmas.

Tags: Christians, Christmas, Holidays, Jesus, List, Religion, USA

Ten years ago, the first module of the International Space Station (ISS) was lifted into orbit. In December 1998, this first module “Zarya”, build by Russia, was connected to the US “Unity” node.

For this birthday-time, “The Big Pictures” has collected 32 photos of the Space Station. These include spectacular exterior views shot from Space Shuttles, showing the station grow in the course of time. Even more interesting are the interior photos, like numbers 13, 17, 19, 21. So far away* from home, nobody feels obliges to clean up the mess ;-).

For the photographers amongst you: skip number 7 if you are easily jealous. Also, the telephoto lens is virtually weightless up there.

*: Actually, they are not that FAR away: The station has an orbit with an altitude of about 350 kilometers above earth. That’s a little more than the distance between Berlin and Hamburg or London and Manchester. Washington and New York are further apart! But then, the ISS travels around earth almost 16 times per day.

Tags: Earth, ISS, Photography, Pictures, Russia, Science, Space Station, Spacecraft, Space, USA

As said before, I was in Cologne, passively enjoying photography art. What follows is a description where I went and what I liked and dislikes. But note: I’m no ordinary photo critic (and I’m very happy about that), just an ordinary photography lover.

Visual Gallery (Hall 1 of the Cologne Fair)

The way to the exhibition is strange, at least. The Visual Gallery is situated in Hall 1 of the fair and is said to be for free. Of cause it can be accessed from the fair itself, but that means one has to pay admission (about 28 Euro). We did not want to go to Photokina, so after arriving at the train station of Köln Deutz, we looked for a direct way to Hall 1. If you are attentive you can find a sign some way off (left) the main route to entrance south. Following it, we arrived at the car park for exhibitors. A friendly security guard told us that we are on the right track, so we followed some more signs scattered over the parking lot. Our zigg-zagg course between cars and bushes finally led us to an exit from the parking lot on the other side (this is definitely not easy terrain if you have a baby buggy with you, as the cars stand tight.). We catched a glimpse of another sign, leading us to a red carped. This we interpreted as a good sign, until we saw a small sign reading: Exhibitor Entrance. There was no other possible entry despite of the meter high and wide doors in front of us, in the surrounding. The place was virtually empty. We asked a lone women who was delivering some stuff for the fair for a nearby visitors entrance. She didn’t kow of any, but told us that we might want to try the freight elevator, but that we should not mention it was her idea. We did so and rang the bell near the elevator. It was opened by a man, we entered. There was enough room to put a car into. We were lifted to the exhibition hall without problems, but I felt insecure for some time. It was like sneaking into the fair, but I assume this is the intended entry for non Photokina visitor to the Visual Gallery. Very bizarre if you ask me, but I suppose they might want to make it hard to enter without paying for the whole Photokina.

When you dare to enter the Visual Gallery, you find yourself in a huge hall with bad light (so windows) and first see the Academy meets Photokina area, where art colleges show works by their students. I suppose they wanted to present themselves, too, but there wasn’t that much information available. Some booklets for each would have been nice.

While strolling be prepared to be shoot. Shoot a lot. Almost everybody there has a camera ready and about the half of them loves to stick them in your face and fire. The worst situation I came to was when I looked at a booth of some art colleges. They all had the same square shape with three walls. I was inside when suddenly a women with a huge SLR showed up behind me, blocking my only escape route, lifting her camera and taking a shot of the room. I tried to squeeze past her but I didn’t manage. So avoid these Subject Traps. (On the other hand they would be handy for inexperienced street photographers. Build three walls in a public space, wait for people to go inside and take pictures of them when they can not flee.)

How is the quality of the photographs? I will not mention everything, for an overview visit the Visual Gallery Website.
The pictures were extremely mixed. There are several more consistent exhibitions which I liked a lot. As there is a retrospective of Thomas Hoepker’s work. 50 years of photography by the artist are shown in many, many pictures. This shows transitions in his work, from early black and white photos in Germany after the war, the DDR and even street photography in the US to more recent color photographs. Possibly the most famous of his recent pictures is presented including media reactions: The smoke of the twin towers of the world trade center in the background and five young people in front, sitting in the sunshine, talking and not watching the scenery behind them.
For the more historically oriented, the part „The mirror with a memory“ shows old photos from the American Civil War. It is amazing to see the quality of those, even though they were restored, at least partially. The pictures are very detailed (they used large photography plates those days) and in some pictures one can find hints at the long exposure times needed. A baby’s head is blurred as it moved while all other grown up people stood still for the camera.
Some consistent parts weren’t that extraordinary. Portraits of artists done by Dennis Hopper in the 1960th are nice, but not that special. Maybe here the name was of major interest.

But then, many parts are extremely diverse, like the „Canon Profifoto Förderpreis“ or the already mentioned booths of the art academies. They show too many different artists with too few pictures each.
I absolutely disliked the „Schöne Neue Welt / Brave New World“ exhibition. The pictures were very diverse, but shared common aspects so over-rated in modern photo art: Large, huge prints with large format, strong, brilliant and glowing colors. Most pictures try to be awe-inspiring and extreme, but seeing dozens of those made me wonder: in what way are they supposed to be special when every picture try to be special? An the worst aspect of modern photography was abound of cause: digital manipulation and even full digital creation of pictures. The exhibition is said to call on the visitor to intensively think about the relation between the Real and the Hyperreal. What shall hyperreal be? The pictures were mostly hyper-unreal, so what’s the matter? Maybe I miss some important aspect, but as I see it, modern photo art is a colorful, dazzling bubble. One generated in a computer to make sure it does not burst too early.

All in all, there are to many pictures. Do not try to see them all, focus on what you like. Especially with all those flashy in-your-face large format prints your eyes become tires fast and the pictures blur to a uniform madness. At least take a break in between and close your eyes. Or look at more black and white prints. A final word on the Visual Gallery visitors: I’ve never seen so many people showing off with little Leica cameras in one place.
We left Hall 1 the same way we came: With the freight elevator.

You can visit the Visual Gallery at photokina 2008 at the Cologne Fair until Sunday, September the 28th. Do I recommend it? Yes. There might be several exhibitions I disliked, but there are so many different, virtually everybody should find something he or she likes. And it is for free, you can ride a freight elevator and enjoy photography!

Bilderschauen Spichern-Höfe

While I was not disappointed by the Visual Gallery, I also was not fully convinced by it. I did not expect something better when visiting the „Bilderschauen Spichern-Höfe“ afterwards, as there were only four exhibiting artists yesterday* in contrast to dozens at the photokina. But I was amazed when I saw what is presented there.
The four exhibitions there all focus on ordinary peoples lives, but all are different. What combines them is the fact that they are not like the previously mentioned large format pictures, they are not studio-arrangements and do not compete for attention and effect.
My personal top three are:

• Chris Keulen: Hot Splinters of Glass – Le Tour d’Afrique

The Dutch photographer, after shooting the typical subjects of violence, poverty and diseases in Africa, went on to follow a cycle race through Burkina Faso. The pictures he made over the course of several years of the „Tour du Faso“, both b/w and color, show a seldom seen Africa, combining landscape-, sport- and people-photography in a unique way.

• Andre Lützen: Before Elvis there was nothing

A trip through the United States of America. The Catalog alludes to Robert Franks’ „The Americans“, but the color photographs also remind me of William Eggleston. The pictures document a lonely mood, found in details, moony people and nightly scene lit by neon lights.

• Juan Manuel Diaz Burgos: La Habana-vision interior

My absolute favourite. The Spanish photographer shot black and white pictures in Cuba, giving insights in half-private areas in Havana with expressive black and white film photography. He masters the interplay of light and shadows, a balance between outside and inside, both of the buildings and rooms he shoots people in, but also a balance between the private view of an accepted guest and the more distant visitor, but never a voyeur. The pictures combine several planes of action, foreground and background and hit the proverbial „Moment“. In this aspect it’s a kind of street photography off the street, in the backyards, staircases and apartments of Havanna.
Owing to the light conditions, I suppose has used fast films, resulting in a nice and pronounced grain structure in the pictures. This shows that one can still show grainy pictures in exhibition. There is still hope :-).

To conclude, the Exhibitions in the Bilderschauen Spichern-Höfe are absolutely recommendable. They are for free, too. I enjoyed them a lot more than the Visual Gallery, which was somewhat crammed with pictures and people. And in the Bilderschauen there is natural light, the premises are more art-compatible and offer confined spaces for the different exhibitions. If I had to decide between the Bilderschauen and the Visual Gallery, I would prefer the former. But if you can, visit both.

The Bilderschauen Spichern-Höfe are also opened until Sunday, September the 28th. Each day from 12:00 to 22:00.

As I read the Catalog to the 19. Internationale Photoszene Köln I stumble across this piece of information: The Entry to the Visual Gallery at Cologne Fair is at the northern Side of the Building. Strange that it was not visible from the inside…

* Today was another Vernissage, from tomorrow on there will be another exhibition by Albrecht Fuchs and Johannes Wohnseifer. They were busily installing their exhibition when we were there yesterday.

Tags: Artists, Art, black and white, Cologne, Cuba, Exhibition, Photography, photokina, Street Photography, USA

Finally I’m finished :-):
In total I’ve listed 100 cases of Christian religious pareidolia, in which either Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary have been seen. I will now analyse them in detail to see whether my vague theory mentioned earlier is supported by the data.

Long-Time developments and ratios

The rise and fall of Jesus’ Mother

Ok, I have to admit I do several things wrong in the figure. I shouldn’t combine the data points with a line graph and I should not include the 2008 numbers because the year isn’t over yet. And furthermore I should give error bars so one can judge the uncertainties. But let’s accept this for the moment.
First look at the overall percentages. Of the 100 events in the sample, 67 involve Jesus and 37 the Virgin Mary, in some cases both were seen. So Jesus is seen twice as often. Is this the case every year or are there trends in the data? Looking at the figure, one can see that there indeed is a trend visible: until this year Virgin Mary sightings increased and Jesus sightings decreased a bit. To make the numbers more comparable, let’s look at the rounded percentages of Jesus and Mary appearing each year are (they sum up to over 100% because sometimes both are seen at once):

Clearly sights of Virgin Mary had increased in the last years but the number drops strongly in 2008. As the year isn’t over yet, it is not sure if the trend will continue. But it seems as if we will have a Jesus dominated year again. I don’t have an explanation for this at hand, maybe it is just a statistical effect. (Please comment if you have one!)

Month dependency

Is Jesus a seasonal worker?

Another idea is that the frequency of sightings might be modulated depending on the time in the year. One would expect a maximum at the end of the year due to Christmas and maybe another at Easter, but the latter will be smoothed out because the date changes from year to year. The most current data from 2008 has to be excluded from the analysis because the year is not jet finished and further sightings will be reported in August, September, October, November and December. I might want do re-do the analysis in January next year.
For the years 2004 to 2007, in total 63 sightings are reported. I will not differentiate between Jesus and Mary because that would cause too few data points. When expecting a uniform distribution over the year and only statistical errors, the expected number of sightings is 5.25 per month with an statistical standard error of the square root of this. So within one sigma of about 2.3, 3 to 7.5 sightings are expected per month, quite a margin. Most month are well inside this, only July (0 sightings), August (12 sightings) and November (9 sightings) show deviations. I wouldn’t expect them to be very significant, the one sigma error only says that, expecting a normally distributed population, the probability to be within one sigma is approximately 68%. So 32% are outside. Out of 12 values we thus would expect about four to be outside, three are fine too. Furthermore the zero sightings in July will be made up with the nine in 2008 when including this year’s data. Nevertheless there seems to be a increase towards the end of the year, I’m curious how this will evolve in the next month.
The increase in the middle of the year, August, is quite significant (over 99 %). It might have to do with the media not having other things to talk about or maybe there is too much sun making peoples brains malfunction more often. I’m not aware of any as important Christian dates at that time than Christmas or Easter. But when one combines July, where no sightings are reported for the time span in question, and August, the numbers are within the expected average again. I think this is some kind of an artefact in the data.

Material and Texture dependence

Why can’t they simply eat Jesus?

The data do not show any strong trends for Jesus or the Virgin Mary to appear on different materials, with one exception: Only Jesus is seen in imaging like x-rays or ultrasound (7 times). In general, pareidolia perceptions are most frequent in food (29), then in wood (18), followed by dirt (11), light (10), on walls and in rock (8 each). Hearty, salty foods like potato chips or cheese toast are preferred.

The original theory was that Jesus is found more frequently in fluffy things and the Virgin Mary in flowing structures. This is well confirmed by the data as the following table shows. Appearances where the texture could not be determined because of bad pictures, no pictures at all or because I could not decide were excluded. These made up 14 pareidolia perceptions.

This clearly shows that Jesus is seen in fluffy structures three times as often as in flowing ones. The ratio is almost inverted for Virgin Mary, who is seen in over two out of three occasions in flowing textures. This backs my expectation that the usual pictures have something to do with the places where they are found. Virgin Mary usually having a head scarf or veil is found most often in flowing, fluid-like and soft textures that have less but bigger, more connected areas. Jesus in contrast, possibly owing to his beard and hair, is mostly seen in structures with rough surfaces, consisting of many different small areas.

Origin

Where does Jesus live today?

Investigating where the sightings occurred reveals that most are from the US. Only 16 are from other countries, four of those are from the UK (all Jesus, not surprisingly as there are many protestants), two from Australia and one each from Columbia, Germany, the Philippines, New Zeeland, Switzerland, Canada, Romania, Mexico, Ghana and Moldavia. There is a strong selection effect in the data as I only looked on English sites and news pages but I still think the US are especially ‘gifted’ concerning religious pareidolia.
Within the United States the distribution is also very strongly centred. Many states only have one or two sightings: Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nebraska, Maine, Wisconsin, Columbia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Kansan, Georgia, Missouri, Michigan, Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Connecticut and Virginia. I found tree each for Ohio, Arizona, Illinois and Pennsylvania. The top three states are far away from these values, they are:

• Place three: California with 13 total sightings
• Place two: Texas with 15 total sightings
• And the ‘Winner’: Florida with 16 sightings

Why are these three the top-states for pareidolia? Maybe it is because of an point mentioned earlier: They get to much sun in the south. Additionally, the number of inhabitants has to be taken into account. Simply compare the map above with this one.
Looking at the distribution of Jesus and Virgin Mary ‘appearances’ in these three states one can see a clear trend (double-counting sightings in which both are seen at once):

• California: Jesus 4, Virgin Mary 9
• Texas: Jesus 9, Virgin Mary 6
• Florida: Jesus 13, Virgin Mary 5

Texas shows a more or less average distribution, but California is clearly biased towards the Virgin Mary and Florida towards seeing Jesus. This is not unexpected as Julia from ForeignLight pointed out to me. In California there are more Catholics (the state has the largest Roman Catholic population of all states in the US) that have a connection to the Virgin Mary and in Florida there are more Protestants (40% of the population in contrast to 26% Catholics according to Wikipedia) that worship Jesus. Population in Texas is rather mixed, it has many Evangelical Protestants but also Roman Catholics. The numbers, according to Wikipedia, are: Protestants 32.5%, Catholics: 21% (Thus the ratio actually is exactly the Jesus to Virgin Mary ratio). I think it is an excellent and exciting result that these trends are also seen in the small data set analysed. It’s amazing to see the analogy.

What can we learn from this?

So how can I make money out of this crap?

As promised I now tell you where to look to find Jesus’ / Virgin Mary’s face. I think the most promising place is the classic one: Food (like a cheese toast). I’ll tell you why.

Often the pareidolia are found in food, especially baked, fried or toasted. I think one reason is that people have to eat frequently and while doing so they have the time to look. The Christians also have a special relation to bread (and fish, so Jesus seen in a fish stick is a classic).
Furthermore, in contrast to fixed objects like walls, you can change the perspective when looking at, say, a piece of toast. For Jesus or Mary to be seen in the structure of a wall they have to stand upright. The toast, in contrast, can be seen from different sides, you can rotate it and it has two different sides to look at! A toast also is a rather small area, so you are not distracted and the figure you want to see can be small. If you look at a wall the appearance has to be big so a passer by can see it. And most people eat more than one toast. Maybe there even is more toast out there than there are walls.
The light conditions outside change in the course of one day and from season to season, so if Jesus or Mary or any other face appear somewhere, that appearance might be gone an hour later. The light conditions while eating are simpler I think.
And the best: If you find a especially convincing depiction of a religious figure in, say, a slab of toast, it is easy to sell. You will have troubles to turn a public wall in an underpass into money and your might not want to sell your pet (which would not be possible via eBay either), so settle for the simple. Ok, it might not bee the most extravagant one, but referring to the Christians connection to bread it is convincing and it will be hard to come up with a reason why seeing Mary in a spot of mildew is flattering. And why should Jesus show up on only one toast?

I’d like to finish with pointing you to a more humorous approach of toast-appearances.

Tags: Cheese Toast, Cheesus, Christians, Faith, Food, God, Jesus, List, Perception, Religion, Sceptic, Special Events Weeks, Study, USA, Virgin Mary Cheese, Virgin Mary

Today it’s only a short one, I’ve lots of work to do. But there are some very nice pictures of the preparation of a Space Shuttle launch by NASA on The Big Picture. That launch is not only interesting for space enthusiasts in general, but also for astronomers, becaues the mission involves the probably last overhaul of the Hubble space telescope before it will stop working in two years.

Furthermore it is one of the last ten shuttle flights, unless the plans in the US are changed to avoid depending on Russia for manned space flights for the following years.

Personally, I like number 4, because it shows how awe-inspiring the whole shuttle project is and because it gives me a glimpse at how the different parts of this huge machinery are transported. But there are other fascinating pictures, like that of the engine being installed. And the people working on the shuttle it are in focus, too.

Tags: Astronauts, Astronomy, NASA, Spacecraft, Space, Telescope, USA

UPDATE: I’m sorry, but some of the links are broken, probably because the news sites don’t keep their articles online forever.

Ok, as said before I collected pareidolia, false images our brains make up from patterns that have nothing to do with them. My idea is to analyse Christian reports of Jesus or the Virgin Mary seen on anything. My first result: These sightings are more frequent than I thought. It wasn’t that difficult to find these reports, actually I stopped after I found one hundred (100!) because I became bored and did not see any ending. The vast majority of them is from between 2003 and today. I list them in the table below and give you an analysis in my next post on the topic.

The ‘appearances’ of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary are sorted chronologically, the dates are given to the month, further detail I deem unnecessary. They are dated according to when the sightings were reported by the media, the original findings might be older. For example, the classic 2004 Virgin Mary Cheese Toast is said to have been reported ten years after it was made! As I can not check these claims I settle for the dates the articles were published. These might vary by a few days from source to source.

I collect these from the web, especially good sources were Bad Astronomy, the Angry Astronomer and StupidEvilBastard. Furthermore Wikipedia lists plenty of religious pareidolia. And then there is a collection on yoism. For Virgin Mary specific sightings, see VirginMaryAgain.

I try to include links to news articles or other sources as most of these ‘appearances’ are hard to believe and to meet your curiousness. It is hard to believe people are so ludicrous to see something in a dirty pan, reflected light, a potato chip or a t-shirt put to the laundry.
I sort the ‘sightings’ in categories.

• First, the region where they were found. Either the county, like Germany or the UK or, in case of the world record holder in religious Christian pareidolia, the United States of America, the state, be it Texas, Missouri or someplace else.
• Second, the material the object resembling (or, more correctly, resembling if you have a particular vision) Jesus or Mary is made of. That could be toast, ice, rock. Wood and bark are separated, I consider Wood to be cut so the figure is seen in the annual rings or branch knots and bark, on the outside of a tree, has a different texture and is more prone to light-and-shadow appearances.
• I also combine similar materials in categories. These are Food (e.g. toast, pancakes or seafood), Wood (anything associated with trees), Dirt and some more.
• Finally, I mention the general texture of the object or appearance and differentiate only between fluffy (not necessarily soft, but spotty) and flowing (soft, blurred or connected to fluid structures). Fluffy would be something like toast, rock or anything with a rough surface or made up of many small areas of different colour or brightness. Flowing in contrast is made by fluids (e.g. salt stains) or otherwise consists of larger, more connected or smooth areas, like those found sometimes wood and possibly dirt, depending on the actual appearance.

I will now list all religious perceptions I found in the quick search, including a small number of faked ones I like because there will always be someone who believes in them. This collection is by no means exhausting and probably biased towards the US because there are more media to mention them. I might add more when they are reported, but for the time being I have enough of them. I’ll present the analysis later next week, I hope.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s 4th of July and Europes renegate colonists in the United States celebrate their Independence Day. So I dug out this photo for them.

The picture was shot in Koblenz, Germany. Near the ‘Deutsches Eck’ (German corner) where the river Moselle joins the Rhine. I’m no big fan of the US in particular, as I am no fan of any country in general. But the flag was flying and the sun lit it from the back, making it glow slightly. The trees might be disturbing, but I like the sky, the soft shades of gray that give some structure to the background but still emphasize the flag.

Tags: black and white, Canon EOS 50E, Flag, Fourth of July, Fuji Neopan Acros 100, German Corner, Independence Day, Moselle, Rhine, Sky, USA

At ESA you can find a very cool sound file: the radio emission that takes place during the aurora (polar lights) is converted into a signal you can listen to.

The graph that accompanies it gives amplitude versus frequency, but unfortunately the exact frequencies are nowhere given. I would have liked to get some more information on how they converted the radio signal to sound. It is a common misunderstanding to think radio astronomers are listening the universe. They are not, they are only receiving similar frequencies (or wave length) like earth bound radio stations. It is a pity that the ESA text states in the first part that “In reality, they are the sounds that accompany the aurora”. There simply are no sounds in space because sound waves need some medium, like air, to travel in. But still, the sound they made out of the aurora signal is amazing.

And as I have written about the European astronaut application deadline previously, I think it is fair to mention the one by NASA, for it’s New NASA Astronaut Class. As I understand it, you will either need a degree and experience in math, science or engineering, and/or experience as a jet pilot. They are also looking for people with educational skills, so if you have experience in teaching this seems to be a bonus.

The deadline is July 1, there is more information and a link for the online application in the NASA press release.

Tags: Astronauts, Astronomy, Aurora, ESA, Europe, NASA, Polar Lights, Press Release, Radio Astronomy, Sounds, Universe, USA