Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel....I'd Like to Thank the Academy...

How do we tell if we are dreaming or not? The problem is that in dreams our critical faculties are more than a little attenuated. In a dream it may seem plausible that one has suddenly become wildly attractive to hot nineteen year-old coeds, or (as in my case) that my lifelong dream of flying under mental power has finally been achieved.

So there I was, sitting on the edge of a roof to which I believed I had just flown. Dare I launch into space to fly down?

In the movie Inception the protagonist carries a little top to test dream vs. reality - if it doesn't stop, it's supposed to be dreamland. Well, I didn't have a top, and it wouldn't have stayed on the slanted roof anyway, but I did recall another idea: supposedly counting your fingers is a good test of dream vs. reality. I looked at my hand. At a glance, it certainly seemed to have the right number of fingers.

I began to count: one, two, three...but then the last two - or was it three - seemed to kind of blur together, and I really couldn't tell if I had counted them already or not. I tried it a few times, always with the same result.

Anybody else tried this, or a similar trick? with what result?

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