Cry me a river

  • Thread starter Thread starter mrk
  • Start date Start date

mrk

mrk

mrk

Man of Honour
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
106,177
Location
South Coast
*** Can someone please fix the title? no idea what happened there :(***



Normally faces on toast, Jesus figures on dog butts (!), faces on Mars, faces on crisps (Potato Chips as them there Americans call them) don't bother me but for some reason this picture bothers me, it is too damn freaky :S

At first glimpse it looks like any other glacier you might find in the freezing Arctic wastes of Norway.

But on closer inspection an eerie face is depicted in the melting ice wall that appears to be crying a river of tears.

The forlorn-looking 'Mother Nature' figure appeared to locals during a thaw, with the melting ice and snow falling towards the sea below.

The striking image of the Austfonna ice cap, located on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago, would seem certain to be heavily used by environmentalists protesting against climate change.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...l-warming-threatens-planet.html#ixzz0Q3VZn7SV
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
It's interesting because the human brain likes to see patterns where there are none. The brain is very fond of trying to make a face out of shapes, because this is the primary way we recognise people.
 
howiepoohs said:
It's interesting because the human brain likes to see patterns where there are none. The brain is very fond of trying to make a face out of shapes, because this is the primary way we recognise people.
Click to expand...

This.

You can see a face in practicaly anything with 3 or more holes in it, does that make it a face? no, it makes people stupid.

I'm just waiting for a group of bible bashing hippies to come and shout about it being Jesus crying because of Global Warming
 
Fenris said:
This.

You can see a face in practicaly anything with 3 or more holes in it, does that make it a face? no, it makes people stupid.
Click to expand...

Not stupid, but it does highlight quite nicely how the human visual system works.

Think I have posted this before somewhere, but we almost certainly use a single forward pass "gate" type system to process images. Theres no real way we could do it so quickly otherwise all told the brains "speed" is actually quite low, much lower than electrons through copper for example. We see something, and it forms a pattern, the more we see it, the "easier" that patterns pathway becomes to traverse through our neurons (over simplification) to the point where that path becomes more likely than others.

We see human faces more than anything else, and from a very early age too, so anything that conforms to the general pattern of a face, two parallel holes with another object in the centre and below and then a wider object below that, our brain allows through the "face" filter. Imagination (whatever that is!) and other elements of the visual processing system then fill in the rest. Our wider knowledge tells us that it isnt a face, its a cliff or a piece of toast etc.

For religious types, the face they see the most is the traditional representation of Jesus, hence they see Jesus in the most unlikely of places!

Very interesting stuff and makes for a very useful model with which to develop computerised image processing systems.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom