Something to think about: what would be a concise definition of the set of possible images which sufficiently devout/superstitious people will consider "Jesus-like", or for that matter, Virgin Mary-like? Could one devise an algorithm for evaluating the Jesus-ness of blobs of colour?
only in america!
I've been thinking. The obvious hoax would be to flog a heap of fresh faeces (photoshopped to the likeness of jc) on ebay. More subtle, though, might be to insinuate a miracle appearance of JC in Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom. That would see the zealots racing to get that film on DVD and have an "out of body" experience when viewing it.
I was thinking more in terms of computer art. If there was an algorithm to find the "Jesus quotient" of an image, i.e., the likelihood that a True Believer will see it to be the likeness of Jesus, one could do all sorts of fun things with it. Write scripts to trawl Google image search/LiveJournal/Yahoo News/other sources of images for images with a high enough JQ, or use rendering techniques, randomness and genetic algorithms to generate algorithmic Jesii, or more.
It's simple. ALL ambiguous blobs of color and shape are the virgin mary or jesus trying to show you that they are real.
OK?
That link doesn't work anymore. I guess the M&M was pulled.
This is turning into a giant Rohrschacht test of the American population. Rohrschacht meets Ebay. Not just psychotics, even "normal" people will happily succumb to the productive energy of the self-fulfilling cycle of expectation and "fortuitious", nay, miraculous discovery. Last hope: a nation suffering from ergotism. Hear ye, great believers: thou shalt not cease the reversal of modern freedoms at the medieval stage. Go forth and embrace the troglodyte way of life and thou shalt be rewarded with divine bliss.