The Owls Are Not What They Seem

Back in school (way, way, back), we used to get weekly "Science Magazines" which had a few articles on modern science, which everyone ignored, and a few brainteaser problems, which was all anyone paid attention to. (Unless you were using the magazine to hide an issue of Playboy, but I digress.)

One of the popular things in the brainteaser category was along the lines of this:

Stare at the picture below for thirty seconds (that's two choruses of the Jeopardy theme) and then look at a blank wall:

Click here for a bigger version.

You'll see a green "Hello, Agent Cooper" right? Why? Because after images appear in complementary colors.

Here's a site that carries this behavior of your eye to an extreme:

http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

I can see the effect, but every time I twitch just a bit the whole thing resets and I have to start over again.