or a haunted doll <| sep |> Well he is correct . <| sep |> Big ass balls for such a small guy <| sep |> What do you want them to scrap elsewhere to pay for repairing the building ? <| sep |> Basically , you ' re looking at everything beyond the rising air through a really crappy lens that distorts everything in tiny ways and changes from moment to moment . Like all transparent things , air bends light passing through it as the light enters and leaves it at an angle . Moving from air at one density to air at another has the same effect . Hot air like that coming off the top of a radiator or a hot road rises and makes the air density turbulent and uneven . So say you ' re looking at something your cat ' s nose , maybe and the light gets bent . Some of the light that reaches you , originally started out in a slightly different direction passing you to your right , say . Along the line it got turned a little to IT ' S right , and hit your eye . So , from your viewpoint , the path it actually came along looks something like a dogleg catleg ? to the left . But your eye and brain can work out the final direction it came from , but have no way of telling that the light it was bent along the way effectively , you just draw a straight line back along whatever final direction it came from , and say over THERE . And there is wrong it looks as though the light came from slightly further right than it actually did . Multiply that up over lots of different densities caused by the heat ripples in the air , and the image you see is all there , but bent very slightly all over the place , in lots of different ways . Add in the fact that the hot air isn ' t rising remotely smoothly , so the distortion changes from moment to moment . And THAT ' s the shimmering you see . Or if you ' re thinking of , say , the shadows that sunlight shining through hot air can make on a wall same effect the air ' s getting bent all over the place . Some parts of the wall end up with more , some with less , so you get lighter and darker zones . And as the air moves , so do the zones .