Lorem ipsum dolor

There is an "underneath" for this "overneath", as this is simply a glassine key for a relatively complicated photo showing a group of meteorological instruments1. Taken out of context, though, the overlay without the reference image takes on quite a different and appealingly Dada-like complexion, an artful canvas of enumerated blankness...that, or a rendering of unregulated numbers in the wild, a capture of herding physical numbers. Do numbers exist? Are there points in space, and lines, and planes, floating out there just beyond our knowledge like Arthur C. Clarke-like monoliths or Abbott's Flatland objects? Well, no. But it is enjoyable to find these printed forms that, if we look at them in a certain way and allow for a bit of fancy, take on a life of their own. (What a funny thing it would be if numbers had names other than their number-- for example, "3" is the form only but its name is a taste or smell, or "Borges", or the bubble 44,332 in the head of a pint of Guinness, or a particular wavelength...that could spice things up.)

Representation of the ordinal numbers up to ωω. Each turn of the spiral represents one power of ω ( the smallest infinite ordinal).

Any ordinal is defined by the set of ordinals that precede it: in fact, the most common definition of ordinals identifies each ordinal as the set of ordinals that precede it. For example, the ordinal 42 is the order type of the ordinals less than it, i.e., the ordinals from 0 (the smallest of all ordinals) to 41 (the immediate predecessor of 42), and it is generally identified as the set {0,1,2,…,41}.