Marmalade Daydreams

So, that last one was a little heavy. Here's something (a little) lighter. Wait, first go look at these beautiful bacterial fractals (as pictured to the right). I'll wait.

Wasn't that cool? Anyway, I awoke early in the predawn a couple of mornings ago from a very cool dream in which my father taught me how to create ephemeral sculptures of magical ash that would take solid form for a few glowing seconds before they crumpled to the floor and vanished. The exhileration of completing my first attempt, a three-dimensional spiral which looped and whorled and filled the room, was enough to wake me from my slumber and fill me with awe.


Wide awake in a witching hour, I opened my computer to continue an tutorial on General Semantics (much more interesting than it sounds -- check it out when you get ten minutes free), and when I clicked to advance to the next screen, I was a bit surprised to see a big spiral (this was probably about 90 seconds after I'd woken up from the dream). I looked away from the computer, and right there was a single hair, curled up in perfect spiral. Pretty cool, huh?

Synchronicity or apophenia? You decide. But on the apophenic tip, check out Wikipedia's awesome list of religious pareidolia (e.g. the "grilled cheese Jesus"). By clicking on the footnotes, you can go to the primary source and see the "pizza pan Virgin" or Jesus in a dog's tuchus. It's all pretty amazing, for both the accuracy and the inanity of some of the apparations. I think that this dental x-ray one is pretty weird, myself.