Zooming in on the beach

Earlier, I posted on Powers of Ten. I’ve long been fascinated by the way numerous relatively similar things can aggregate into macro patterns such as the crisscross that you can see in the photo to the right.  IMG 3358Naturally occurring pattern like this abound on the beach.

How is it that sand dunes can naturally form out of random sand grains and random wind? Just because it’s difficult to explain doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, of course.

The warm-up act of this post consists of three photos I recently took on a beach. First you see the “sand,” then you focus in to see the individual grains of sand.  Every one of those grains is different, even though they each look the same from a distance.   They are a lot like people in that regard.IMG 33171

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The above photos are mere warm up act for this wonderful, mind-stretching display of smallness and largeness.  I realize that I featured this display in an earlier post, but it is that well done.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

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