Our Lady of the Underpass

The latest version of iPhoto includes a feature that automatically scans your photo library and recognizes faces in your photographs. If you tag a friend in multiple photographs, the next time you load a picture in with that friend in it, iPhoto will recognize that face and will tag it for you (which is helpful for all of those who like to export photos straight from iPhoto to facebook). But it also will recognize faces even if they aren't friend that you've already tagged, it will just pop up as 'unknown face'. Today, a story appeared on Gizmodo about a photo of cookie dough that was loaded into iPhoto and had a face recognized in the chocolate chips.

It isn't hard to see why iPhoto recognized a face. While the two chocolate chips on top make it look kind of like a teddy bear, it just goes to show that all you really need is 4 dots in order to make a face. If you look at almost any abstract collection of values—a crumpled piece of paper, the individual piece of yarn in a rug, potholes on a street—you can find a face somewhere in there. I remember when I was a little kid I used to get scared at night looking down at my covers because I became convinced that there were faces looking back at me. All of this is perfectly normal. Faces are a major part of our everyday lives. We look at peoples faces all day long and rely on their intricacies to understand the feelings and attitudes of the people we interact with. Where it becomes abnormal is when people start seeing a face and become convinced it is either Jesus or the Virgin Mary.

In 2005, some locals discovered something that would eventually be called "Our Lady of the Underpass". It is basically a water stain on a concrete highway underpass that forms a vague image of a human (click on the picture to see a larger version). If you look closely (like, really closely, you can kind of see how it could look like a person, but pretty much any person. Lets just say that I have a feeling that if I loaded this photo into iPhoto, I wouldn't even get an 'Unknown Face' tag. The idea that this looks like a specific human being, especially a human being whose image has been handed down through paintings and whose image is probably more determined by the models posing for those paintings than the actual historical human being, is laughable. It was the latest ludicrous religious pareidolia, second only to the virgin mary grilled cheese in absurdity. And as you can see in the picture (taken by yours truly), people actually flock to this water stain, leaving flowers and statues as though this concrete flaw is somehow going to get them closer to God. It is sad. It seems to me to be perfect microcosm of religion itself: a search for a sign from a higher power so desperate that people are willing to ignore the futility of praying to something that just isn't there (but then, I guess that is what 'faith' is all about). And for all of those who think Atheists live a sad and empty life...lets just say that the next time I see a face in my cookie dough, I'll skip the prayer service.