It is no longer certain just when the late year holiday season begins. Some suggest that Halloween is the turning point, followed by Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Christmas, and, of course, New Year’s and there are many other celebrations during this period as well. One thing that is abundantly clear is that it is a season of great economic significance. Some retailers admit that over half of their profits come from this time of the year. In 2014, a firm that monitors 50 major retailers estimated that on Super Saturday weekend, consumers in the U.S. spent $42 billion!!! And, of course, that’s only part of the picture which makes it even more tempting to ask: What’s wrong with this picture? Since this is a festive season, I’ll save my rant for a more austere occasion, such as, National Imitate A Lemming Day.

So, this year, we should spend our money wisely and, at the end of this essay, I will make you a special offer, one which is FREE (depending, of course, on your conscience).

Very likely you already know of the Rorschach “inkblot” test which was invented in 1921 and which enjoyed a considerable reputation as a diagnostic tool by psychologists and psychiatrists for many decades. Skeptics dismissed it as “subjective”, “arbitrarily interpretive”, and “unscientific”. What I am going to present here is a new improved version which pays little attention to the classical form of the test and since it’s new, it must, of course, be regarded as “improved”.

I will present a series of 12 images and present 4 choices as descriptions of the image and then you select which you think are the right answers. Clearly, we, as microscopists, won’t be involved with psychological nonsense; the task is to identify the phenomenologically eidetic transcendental correlative associate with the ontologically dominant Hier-fuer-mich-Sein, in other words, try to figure out what kind of weird associations an eccentric mind like mine might make. Then have your friends take the test and tell them about their strange neuroses which you can make as creative as your friends’ temperaments will allow.

Is this:

A) A black hole

B) A sun spot

C) A bacterial colony growing on a tomato

D) None of the above

Is this:

A) A maze for dust mites

B) A sponge for removing calluses

C) A seed from a Ceratocaryum

D) None of the above

Is this:

A) A section of a leaf from a Passion Flower

B) A section from a dyed silk scarf

C) A watercolor by Georges Braque

D) None of the above

Is this:

A) A section of a watchband by Cartier

B) An ancient sun motif on an Aztec gold ring

C) A minute spider web on the surface of a twig

D) None of the above

Is this:

A) Four pairs of strawberry beetles converging

B) An early oil painting by Kandinsky

C) A closeup of the top of a French pastry

D) None of the above

Is this:

A) Heterocentrotus mamillatus

B) Heterocentrotus mamillatus

C) Heterocentrotus mamillatus

D) None of the above

Is this:

A) Georg Grosz’s painting of the Angel of Death

B) A figure in the set paintings for Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring

C) A tipsy Wagnerian soprano

D) None of the above

Is this:

A) A Piet Mondrian painting

B) A Madras head scarf

C) A fiendish jigsaw puzzle

D) None of the above

Is this:

A) A tiled floor in the Taj Mahal

B) A closeup of the hub of a tiny toy car

C) A decorated Danish cookie

D) None of the above

Is this:

A) An aerial view of tents from a desert caravan

B) Melting sugar candies

C) A bit of bryozoan shell mixed with Ascorbic acid

D) None of the above

Is this:

A) An Nubian war shield

B) An East Indian drinks coaster

C) The flower of a rare Asian cactus

D) None of the above

Is this:

A) Five quartz crystals lying in a vug

B) The core of a micro-motor

C) A micro-laser system

D) None of the above

Scoring:

If you picked “A” as an answer to any of the questions, then you get 1 point for that question.

If you picked “B” as an answer to any of the questions, then you get 2 points for that question.

If you picked “C” as an answer to any of the questions, then you get 3 points with the exception of question number 10. If you picked “C” here, you get 100 points.

The answer to the other 11 questions is “D”. You get 4 points for each “D”.

The total score is your I.Q. If you chose “C” for question 10 and “D” for the other 11, then your I.Q. is 144 which is at the genius level. If you didn’t get the correct answer for question 10, then your I.Q. varies from a very chilly room temperature down to the point where if it were one point lower, you would be capable of photosynthesis.

Now, remember, at the beginning, I said I would make you an offer in the spirit of giving to celebrate this festive season. If there is an image which you particularly like and wish to print for your own non-commercial use, i.e., to put it on the wall of your computer room, your bedroom, or your office, you hereby have my permission to do so. I would add just one non-binding proviso–that you consider making a modest contribution to MICSCAPE as a way of expressing your appreciation to David Walker and Mol Smith for this exceptional enterprise that continues after 20 years to educate and entertain.

If you wish to print and display 2, 3, or all 12 images, then let your conscience dictate the size of your donation. To donate just go to the top extreme right of the MICSCAPE page and click on “Donate”.

Oh, what’s that you say? You want to know what the images really are. Well, that will cost extra. Just kidding. Here’s a list:

1) The eye of God. Actually it’s an image of Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) using polarized light.

2) This is a macro-photograph of a piece of brain coral.

3) Citric acid under polarized light.

4) This like #10) involved the introduction of a tiny piece of bryozoan shell onto a slide containing a drop of Ascorbic acid.

5) This is a bit of computer graphic magic on a single “strawberry” mollusk shell

6) This is indeed a sea urchin but not of the genus Heterocentrotus.

7) Ascorbic acid mixed with the antibiotic Cephalexin using polarized light

8) For this one, I once again introduced a tiny bit of bryozoan shell into Ascorbic acid and then took the resulting polarized image and used the computer graphic function of “creative warp” in PhotoImpact to produce this result.

9) This is a macro-photograph closeup of a portion of the test of a sea urchin of the genus Coelopleurus.

10) See number 4 above.

11) Ascorbic acid, once again. The disk shape occurs quite frequently.

12) A macro-photograph closeup of the teeth of a small sea urchin.

I hope you got a bit of enjoyment out of this bit of whimsy. Enjoy the holiday season and be kind to yourself and others.

All comments to the author Richard Howey are welcomed.

Editor's note: Visit Richard Howey's new website at http://rhowey.googlepages.com/home where he plans to share aspects of his wide interests.

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