squares do not occur in nature: pointied things do (teeth, mountain tops), oblongs do (faces, fingers, torsos, forearms, ears…). however, humans create squares EVERYWHERE: doors, windows, iphones, ipads, computers, playing cards, books… is a square (or a right angle) a PRIMITIVE CONSTRUCT wired into our brains, something that animals don’t have? is this what sets us apart from animals? is there a low-energy state in the visual perception of a right angle that is not in the others?

if so, what about bees (hexagonal hives) and spiders (radially symmetrical webs)? why didn’t their regular pattern catch on and give them intelligence?

human vision works this way: we detect the edges of an object, then we “fill in” the insides with the general colour that we perceive, i.e. we _recreate_ the object from our own primitives. we don’t do sharp points well — they “leak” color. there is a checkerboard visual illusion that shows this. why do we (i assume) still treat right angles as something special?

anyone else with knowledge in neuroscience or aspergers who wants to weigh in?

As for my initials (SJ), I don’t prefer those letters either, at least if the names I give to my fictional characters are any indication. I have very few characters whose names start with S or J, compared with other letters. One story is an exception — the protagonist’s name starts with S (though I don’t actually like the name and don’t think it suits her), her father’s name starts with J (and it’s a name I like so much I also gave it to a character in another story), and two antagonist’s names start with J, and one character’s nickname starts with “S”. It might have something to do with the characters being French — some names I normally wouldn’t use sound better in French. XD

Most of my characters’ names start with K, C, L, I, H, M, A, or T. I really like the letter K, and that’s not to be found anywhere in my name or any of my relatives’ names. In one of the stories I’m writing, there’s an entire family whose first names start with K, and their last name starts with K too. I also have characters in other stories with K names, and they’re among my favourite names.

And the Japanese name I’m going to use if I ever become a citizen of Japan has the initials “NM” (my username here is a shortening of it) — no relation to my real name or initials. I just like the meaning and how it sounds.

Oh God, I just realized, my first name starts with an S, and I’m in college to become a SOCIAL WORKER!!!! (Except that I want to go into psychology after that, and I also want to be a writer, so I guess that doesn’t really count.)

And I like Skittles and Starburst, but not nearly as much as other junk food. (I’m a chocoholic.) I almost never buy them. I like soy milk but that’s because I’ve drunk it since I was a little kid.