June

[JimmyZip]

You told your girlfriend, or said to yourself, "Hey, I just made a Pac Man!"

At least I see the Pac Man.

JZ

[benos]

You poured rice into the bowl....

The first obscure hint: I did not pour or scoup anything into the bowl.

[GrumpyOne]

Did you wash the rice before cooking it?

[inkedshooter]

measured out the rice before putting into the bowl?

Got a steamer ready?

Maybe making a payaya?

[Putty]

That pattern sure looks like surface tension with rice being the media acting upon a liquid of some sort. Was the bowl wet when the rice was rotationally poured in?

Edited June 9, 2010 by Putty

[GrumpyOne]

If you didn't pour it or scoop it in, then you carefully placed each and every grain, in the bowl with a pair of tweezers, while listening to the sound of the tweezers gripping the rice (but hearing nothing because you were listening perfectly) and listening to the sound of the rice rubbing against the other grains, while rotating the bowl for the perfect rice grain placement, letting the thought of where to place the grain go, before it even began.

But before that, you filled the bowl with water....

[benos]

Now we're working - questions are good.

Did you wash the rice before cooking it?

No. Just because it's rice doesn't mean it has to be cooked.

That pattern sure looks like surface tension with rice being the media acting upon a liquid of some sort. Was the bowl wet when the rice was rotationally poured in?

No.

be

[g34]

You had a few different types of rice in a container with each type at a different level. The rice was pouring out of it, and you held the bowl under the container while slowly rotating it, creating the rice "pie chart."

[Putty]

You created a static charge.

[Brooks]

Were you making Horchata?

[Brooks]

If you were then I guess the last thing you did was add cinnamon, sugar and vanilla to the milk and rice. or strained it.

[PeterMor]

you crushed the rice into powder

[JimmyZip]

Just before you took that picture you turned on the skillet with oil you were going to use to toast the rice before boiling it in spiced broth/water.

or.

You just measured the water and turned on the pot to boil the rice.

[benos]

Were you making Horchata?

Good guess on that one, but no.

be

[Youngeyes]

There's water on the table. You just had a shower and dripped. The rice expanded.

[Kevin G.]

You strained the rice from cleaned brass.

[salilus]

you poured clean rice into a tumbler, then after different increments of time you removed a small portion of the rice from the tumbler and placed it on the plate. This went on for a few times to show folks on the internet how much dirt is removed from the dirty brass after x minutes then after x minutes.

[SLM]

you poured clean rice into a tumbler, then after different increments of time you removed a small portion of the rice from the tumbler and placed it on the plate. This went on for a few times to show folks on the internet how much dirt is removed from the dirty brass after x minutes then after x minutes.

Basically been there, tried that, didn't win.

[GrumpyOne]

I'm going to try a little different approach on the subject. Everyone is mad guessing, but no one has asked the obvious questions yet. Brian never said we couldn't ask so...

#1. Does it really matter what the actual ingredients in the bowl are?

#2. Does it matter that it is in the sink, that it is a bowl, or wet or dry?

#3. Does it matter that the sink has a bit of water in it?

#4. Does it matter if the ingedients were chopped up on a nice hardwood hickory cutting board?

#5. Were the ingredients of the bowl meant to be eaten by a human or some other animal?

#6. Were the ingredients something that everyone would have in their respective kitchen or are they special purpose/special bought for this, whatever it is?

Now, for another tactic. The question was, "What happened just before I took the pic?". We've seen all kinds of answers, but not the obvious one. NOTHING. Nothing happened before you took the pic. You just took the pic. While, in most everyones thought, if you just placed the ingredients into the bowl, did nothing but pick up the camera and take the pic, they would also say that nothing happened, but something actually did happen. If you take the smallest amount of time, say, a nanosecond, and if it took the light particles from the ingredients even just one nanosecond to reach the lense of the camera, no matter how infinitely small that amount of time may seem, it too, can still be broken down even farther, but we don't need to go there.

What happened, just before he took the pic, was not his finger pressing the button, was not the photons reflecting back into the lense, but the decay of the ingredients. Even if it were rock in the bowl, steel, diamonds, etc, all will decay, just at a different rate than other items. In the amount of time that it took for the photons to reach the camera lense, the ingredients had changed. There may be no physical evidence of it, there might not even be an instrument to measure the change, but change it did, just as all things change.

That is what happened just before Brian took the pic. Change.

Edited June 11, 2010 by GrumpyOne

[benos]

I'm going to try a little different approach on the subject. Everyone is mad guessing, but no one has asked the obvious questions yet. Brian never said we couldn't ask so...

#1. Does it really matter what the actual ingredients in the bowl are?

#2. Does it matter that it is in the sink, that it is a bowl, or wet or dry?

#3. Does it matter that the sink has a bit of water in it?

#4. Does it matter if the ingedients were chopped up on a nice hardwood hickory cutting board?

#5. Were the ingredients of the bowl meant to be eaten by a human or some other animal?

#6. Were the ingredients something that everyone would have in their respective kitchen or are they special purpose/special bought for this, whatever it is?

Now, for another tactic. The question was, "What happened just before I took the pic?". We've seen all kinds of answers, but not the obvious one. NOTHING. Nothing happened before you took the pic. You just took the pic. While, in most everyones thought, if you just placed the ingredients into the bowl, did nothing but pick up the camera and take the pic, they would also say that nothing happened, but something actually did happen. If you take the smallest amount of time, say, a nanosecond, and if it took the light particles from the ingredients even just one nanosecond to reach the lense of the camera, no matter how infinitely small that amount of time may seem, it too, can still be broken down even farther, but we don't need to go there.

What happened, just before he took the pic, was not his finger pressing the button, was not the photons reflecting back into the lense, but the decay of the ingredients. Even if it were rock in the bowl, steel, diamonds, etc, all will decay, just at a different rate than other items. In the amount of time that it took for the photons to reach the camera lense, the ingredients had changed. There may be no physical evidence of it, there might not even be an instrument to measure the change, but change it did, just as all things change.

That is what happened just before Brian took the pic. Change.

I like the mutliple question approach.

#1 There is one ingredient in the bowl other than rice.

#2, 3, 4, No.

#5 No

#6 The "ingredient" other than rice - many would have it in their kitchen, but definitely not everyone.

By "what happened just befroe I took the pic?" I mean what did I do that resulted in what you see in the pic?

Even though I'd normally be more "out there," the answer is very straightforward.

be

[BritinUSA]

By "what happened just befroe I took the pic?" I mean what did I do that resulted in what you see in the pic?

You put the bowl in the sink...

[MisterB]

Did you set the bowl on top of a running tumbler?

[GrumpyOne]

You cleaned your coffee grinder. The other ingredient is the coffee....Well, maybe not a coffee grinder, it could have been a spice grinder, pepper grinder, and the other ingredient is some sort of spice, like nutmeg or pepper. I do know if you grind nutmeg in a coffee grinder, all the coffee after that will taste like nutmeg until you clean it with rice...

BTW, ground nutmeg in water taste terrible, but is quite an invigorating stimulant...

Were you using the ingredients as a make shift heating pad for a sore elbow/knee/shoulder?

You used the ingredients to make rice water to wash your face and use as a beauty treatment.

I know it's been mentioned before but, you used rice as a tumbling media?

Trying to make Sake?

Or to dry out your phone?

The more I think about it, it MUST have been used to clean a grinder of some sort. You did not pour or scoop anything into the bowl, you held the grinder over the bowl and turned the crank, letting the ingredients fall from the grinder, the ingredients are not meant for human consumption, and as far as straight forward, cleaning a grinder has nothing to do with Zen, so that's pretty straight forward...

Maybe I'll get an "A" for effort or creativity...

Edited June 12, 2010 by GrumpyOne

[wanderer]

you spilt the rice on the floor, or you were smoking something really good and thought you'd screw with everyones mind

[kevin c]

Whatever was in the bowl before the rice (drain cleaner, lye, heat, a coloring agent) has altered and changed the appearance of the rice as it was added. The darkest rice was put in first. It looks like a pie wedge because after a short pour (not by you, you were holding the bowl) you turned it a bit, and the newly poured rice created a new wedge, which started to change, but later than the first rice. As you turned the bowl, each new pour is less exposed to the first ingredient, and hence is lighter in color. You rotated the bowl clockwise.

Moral of the story: Zen Masters with too much time on their hands should not do chemistry experiments in their kitchens.