Magic Eye

Have you ever looked at those magic eye optical illusion puzzles. They are pretty neat. You have a picture that is really just a jumble of patters that repeat on a piece of paper and you are supposed to focus on the middle of the paper with it close to your nose, then, as you pull the paper away, you are supposed to keep your eyes from refocusing and in the double vision, on the patterns in the picture, you will see a three dimensional object floating before you. It's quite cool when it works, which for me is only about a third of the time.

Now, can you imagine being the clever guy who thought of that and then trying to explain to someone what you have. How many people do you think looked at his (or her) paper for hours on end and finally said, "This is bull-shit!"


"Now you say this is three dimensional?"
"Yes, there is a 3-D bunch of bananas."
"All I see is this tree and monkey pattern over and over again."
"Well, you have to kind of look past the page."
"You mean it's on the next page?"
"No, it's on that page."
"I don't see any bananas."
"You have to sort of cross your eyes and blurr your vision."
"Well then I won't be able to see anything."
"No, not at first. But after you stare at the page for a while a bunch of bananas will pop out."
"It's gonna pop out at me? Is this a pop-up book?"
"No, I don't mean really pop out. It's a figure of speach. The bananas will seem to pop out."
"So then I stare at this page until I imagine a bunch of bananas?"
"Well, no. They are really there, in the picture."
"Where?"
"On the page, but you can't see them."
"You can't see them? Are they invisible?"
"Sort of."
"Then how can people see them?"
"By looking at the page for a long time."
"So, there is a bunch of bananas on this page that has no bunch of bananas..."
"Yes."
"And you can't see the bananas to look at them, but the only way to see them is to look at the page?"
"Exactly."
"And you want me to publish a whole book of these things?"