Do You See What I See? Pareidolia

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

We love our pareidolia moments. The human brain is continuously at work interpreting the world around us, judging incoming information and stimuli on a range of choices and a spectrum of notions, ranging from food or not-food? to friend or foe? to Do I know you? Look at those clouds. Do you see what I see?

Artists have taken advantage of this for centuries. Were I to draw a circle, put two dots toward the top side, a short vertical line under these, and a horizontal half-circle under that, most people would say that I had sketched a smiley human face, even though hardly any human being that any of us knows looks like that. Some neuroscientists say that our brains are hard-wired to look for faces and to quickly identify friend or foe, even with only a part of a face visible. Those ancient humans who survived because of this skill survived to pass that skill on, genetically. Those with superior facial recognition skills today have their ancient ancestors to thank.
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Today in History: June 30

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Macmillan Publishers ordered a first printing of 10,000 copies of Gone with the Wind, which was published 80 years ago today. Ten thousand copies was a large number for a 1000-page novel bearing a high cover price ($3 in the Great Depression) and written by a first-time novelist, Margaret Mitchell. Within two months, Macmillan needed to order a second and a third printing, and by the end of the year 100,000 copies were in peoples’ homes.

Gone with the Wind was an instant bestseller, and it was a rarity among bestsellers: one that most of those who purchased it that year actually took the time to read.

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London’s Tower Bridge, one of that city’s iconic structures, was opened by HRH The Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII), and his wife, The Princess of Wales (Alexandra of Denmark). (Pictured above.)
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My Little Town

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

One of the unique things that is somehow common to many people (we are all alike in our uniqueness) is a stated belief that our hometown is no place special. We are taught to be humble, so anyplace that our humble selves hail from must be thought of as not all that special, either.

This often masks a fierce inner secret belief that one’s hometown is in fact the best place to be from and (insert name of a higher power one believes in here), please help those who chose to be born somewhere else, especially those unlucky ones born in the nearest next neighboring town. Those people are the unluckiest of all, perhaps because they were born so near to our town’s obvious greatness but they were not, which renders all the more dramatic their failure at their life’s first and easiest task: pick the right place to be born.
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