Gestalt Effect, iPods, and Breasts

Gestalt Effect: Defined on wikipedia as the "form-forming capability of our senses."

This explains why a 3 year old can recgognize the iPod Store:

This morning I asked him, "How did you know the iPod Store was an iPod store? Did you see the iPods in it?"

He said, "No! It looks like an iPod!"

OK, this is from the son of one Alex Pang of the Institute For the Future, probably exposed to more iPOds than other 3 year olds might be (thread via metacool).

Grown men automatically exercise these same form-forming abilities in the presense of certain stimuli, a response we can't consciously help. In the case of defectiveyeti, this mammilan response descends upon him at an office pediatric dentistry (and read the comments too, very funny):

"You have no idea how exhausting it is to concentrate on whatever you're saying about my son's dental coverage while 85% of my mental resources have been diverted to my eyeballs to prevent them from drifting southward; you have no idea what a drag it is that, in order to go from looking from your face to looking at the paper in front of me, I have to detour all the way around your chest -- feigning a glance at a wall clock en route -- or move my head so quickly that I risk whiplash.

"Don't get me wrong: I loves me some cleavage. In a bar, at a party, on the beach. But at the pediatric dentist? Come on. That's practically entrapment."

So, um. Thats what breasts and iPods have in common. We see them everywhere. Yep, that's it.