Wednesday 30 March 2011

House face.

There is a Thing called pareidolia, which everyone has. It's not a disability. The human brain is programmed to look for human faces and to hear human voices. That's because if you're out in the woods in your bearskin G-string and with your mega-baseball bat (both made by, curiously enough, Ugg), you need to be able to spot the other tribe before they spot you.

So when you stare at the fuzz on an untuned TV you see things. When you listen to white noise you hear voices. When you lie back and watch the clouds or look at a random pattern in the grain of wood, you'll see faces. That's pareidolia. Your brain is trying to find faces and human sounds and in the woods with the other tribes, a false positive is much, much safer than a false negative. It's safer for the brain to find something that might be human but isn't, than to ignore something that might be an enemy and is.

On a totally different tack, it must be hard to come up with enough news to fill a 24-hour rolling stream but there's scraping the barrel and then there's lifting the barrel and scraping beneath it right down to bedrock.

This surpasses bedrock and can only be described as journalistic magma.

I said pareidolia wasn't a disability. Perhaps, for certain journalists at least, it has developed into one.

How the hell did they decide a house in Swansea looked like Hitler? Well, the census form from that house is likely to be very interesting indeed. Mr. Dai Hilter, I presume? Anyone live with you?

'Oh, ja, mein lodger, Mr. Dai Gobbles and his boyo pal innit Mr. Dai Meingoolies. Ve are born in Vales, ja? Oh sure, whateffa, lovely boy, innit mon? Zeig Heil - ach, scheisse.'

Alternatively, there might have been a rally in Nazi Germany where some wag piped up 'Oi, Hitler, your face looks like a corner house in Swansea!' Now that would have been newsworthy.

Oh, and top comment on that story has to be 'Tile Hitler!'

6 comments:

Chuckles said...

Gneiss, if you like that sort of thing.

So monsieur Pythons' 'North Minehead by-election' was a documentary then, it's been going on right under our noses all this time.

George Speller said...

Nope. Looks like a house t5o me.

Anonymous said...

My neighbour also looks like Hitler - well, if you imagine him with hair, a moustache and three inches shorter. :))

Jay

Anonymous said...

It's not a news story, obviously, but it is funny! :)

Prodicus said...

A sub has been sacked for not holding this story over to 1.4.2011.

Pogo said...

Don't mention ze wall..

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