Bizarre Cloud Formation Western Anatolia (Turkey)

[luc]

Really stunning pictures!

That's a new one! Check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

This stood out for me:

Carl Sagan hypothesized that as a survival technique, human beings are "hard-wired" from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces from a distance and in poor visibility but can also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces.[12] The evolutionary advantages of being able to discern friend from foe with split-second accuracy are numerous; people who accidentally identify an enemy as a friend could face deadly consequences. [13]

Makes sense, I think. Although it surely doesn't help against the "mask of sanity".

Combined with apophenia (identifying meaningful patterns in meaningless randomness) and hierophany (a manifestation of the sacred), pareidolia may have helped early societies organize chaos and make the world intelligible.

Maybe the reason why societies could "organize chaos" and "make the world intelligible" was that the world doesn't consist just of "meaningless randomness", after all?

 

[Xico]

Wow that's a creepy looking cloud, looks like a mouth socking the living life out of the human beings...

 

[Cleo]

Pretty incredible looking cloud formation...thanks for sharing.