On water stains...

Has my hometown gone crazy? For about the last 2 weeks, hundreds of Chicagoans have gathered at the Fullerton underpass beneath the Kennedy Expressway to pray before a water stain. A water stain that true believers insist resembles the Virgin Mary. It has been dubbed by some in the media as Our Lady of the Underpass.

I think it looks like a pretty typical water stain. There's a crack in the wall. Water seeps through and flows down the face of the wall, spreading out slightly as it does so. And coincidentally, this typical form is pretty similar to the outline of Our Lady of Guadalupe. There's an interesting quirk about the way our brains are wired that makes it possible for someone to look at a water stain and recognize a human form in it. We humans are pretty darn good at recognizing patterns. So good, in fact, we find patterns where none exist; when we look at the moon, we see a face in its pattern of craters. And it doesn't even look all that much like a face. The phenomenon is known as pareidolia.