A bit of explanation about chronology of dreams:

Age of Angels - The first of ages, this is before the world is as it is now. The angels were sent to the earth to purge it and shape it. This age has only been revealed through Sera's Apocalyspes. 

Age of Humanity - This is the age that we live in now.

Age of the Fall - This is a catastrophic time, filled with celestial discord which destroys much of which we know.

Age of the City - This is where I am 'born' into. This is where I meet the brown-haired girl. Quite a few dreams take place here, it is interesting in that the sky is never lit. It is always dark. The city is under a sort of martial law, but it is not unlike other cities. There are places to eat, a hospital, and organized, but somewhat tyrannical, government. This is an age of city-states, and the City is our home.

Age of Ice - There is much snow, and cold, and the bays all freeze many many meters thick with ice. It is not dark quite so much anymore, but the seasons are not normal, and it is almost always snowing. Things are also more primative. Humanity is very much dying out, and most remaining people live in the far west and northwest. Birchs and pines are the prominent foliage.

Age of Rust - This is the last gasp of humanity. Great swathes of the world become covered in oceans of rust. All things are in decay. 
Near the end of this age, the only people left living, live within the 'seals' which is some sort of strange protective force around an average-sized city and meager farmlands. Little grows here.
Most of the city is underground, although there is not much to work with at all, humanity does seem to be getting back on its feet, as a new seal is set ensuring continued survival, and there is also medical facilities similar to 1920's level of technology. 

This dream takes place in the Age of Ice:

I dreamt that there were people who were subhuman. They were half human and half astral beings. I was referred to as "One of Arnold's." Arnold was someone's last name. I only vaguely know this 'Arnold' as some sort of researcher or teacher. I was not related to him by blood, though being a subhuman had something to do with him.

I was standing on a stone bridge, snow was falling all around. With me, there was a bearded man in his 30's, and an eskimo woman, I was an older man with white hair. We were battling an Ogre. (Ogres are very powerful astral beings.)
The man and I were supposed to coordinate an attack that would kill the ogre, but the man turned away at the last moment, and the ogre gored me, and it and I fell off of the bridge. (there was no water down below, or if there were, it would all have been frozen).
The man then left me to die after betraying me.
I slew the ogre, though it bit me very badly.
I then realized that this was not an ogre I had slain, but rather it was "Iris" who was a deceiver. Iris was also one of the immortals. Since Iris could not die, it transferred its essence into my body, to take over and become me, but I was able to supress it, despite it being an immortal, and I gained the powers of Iris.

I climbed back up the bank and onto the bridge to get my stuff out from the snow. The eskimo woman was still up there, she told me that I looked good. I then saw my reflection, and saw that I had aged thirty years in reverse! I bitterly remarked that it was because I had been bit by the ogre, because the man had betrayed me.
It was really because I had incorporated an immortal into my body.

The woman then left, and went into the town to rest. I followed her, and found myself in the bar. 
When the woman entered, everyone cheered, because she was mildly famous, and people were happy to see her safe. It should have been the same with me, but people seemed to treat me as if I were non-existant unless I quite pointedly made my existance known.

Most of the people in the bar were native americans like the woman. The bartender had a photograph in his hand, and everyone clustered around to look at it.
It was a picture of the twenty-three immortals.
He went through each of them and talked about all that they had been doing as of late, which ones were working, which ones were fighting, which ones were hiding, which ones had been extinguished.
They were neither good nor evil beings, but each acted to their own accord and desires, some for good, some for evil, some for no clear purpose.
When the bartender came to Iris, he stared at her photograph for a long time. One of the indians asked where she was, for she was quite evil, and needed tabs kept on her. The bartender did not reply, but talked of the others instead.

The discussion then turned to the subhumans. There were nine of them living in the major city just a few miles to the south, which the people seemed proud of. They talked about the numbers of them, it seemed there was usually about one subhuman per thousand people. Most of the towns seemed to have between one and three subhumans, though another fairly major city farther east had five.
The subhumans in this part of the world were all native americans except for myself and the man who had betrayed me.

The woman I had been with came over to me and said: "This place is built on sorrow, rest here until light."

We would not travel together any longer, for I was cursed in some sort of way, by taking on Iris. The 'light' is difficult to translate well. The words I have for it are "Morning," "Spring," and "Light." It is similar though, to in the most northern regions of the world, the days of endless sunshine. In this place, day and night were seasons, and not times of day. 
The 'morning' also had mystical connotations as well, it was not just a celestial thing.
The 'night' had just begun recently, and during the night, all of the subhumans manifest their astral sides and do battle with the purely astral beings, and the immortals fight on one side or another. This is what I had been participating in earlier.

When the 'morning' comes, the subhumans manifest their more human sides and cease fighting.
The subhumans reminded me very much of the Einherjar of legend.

The dream here ends.

 Last night I dreamt:

I was again on the Rust World. It was fairly early in history though, as not all of the world had turnt to rust, and people still lived in unprotected areas.
Three of us, myself, the brown-haired girl, and a short older woman, were all crossing a rust zone. I do not know why we were crossing it.
The brown-haired girl and myself were both sort of militia from the old City. We were not soldiers, and had no formal training, but we acted as soldiers because there was a need for such.

When the dream began we were in a weatherboard cabin that had been built long before the world had turnt to rust, probably a rancher's cabin or something. It had subsequently been converted into an outpost, and then abandoned. We had taken up in it as a sort of waystation or resting point, as it had beds and supplies still in it. (There were not enough people in the world to really make vandalism a problem.)

Before we could trek across the wastelands, we needed medicine. Either the rust of the Rust World is inherently toxic (because of heavy metals or radiation) or it is contaminated (similar to tetanus or something). It had a wasting effect on the body over time, ultimately leading to death. The medicine was in these foil packets which were themselves inside small cardboard boxes. The brown-haired girl and I both grabbed a good handful of the pills (they stayed usable a very long time, so they were still good from the last people who occupied the cabin.) We probably took a month's ration each, assuming a pill would be taken at least daily, if not more.

"Do you all have enough medicine?" the older woman asked us. She was a real soldier, not a militia or reservist, and she was an officer as well.

"We could probably walk back and forth across the entire planet with all the medicine here," I replied to her.

So we set off, but we ran into trouble about half-way there. One of the witches (whom I am beginning to believe have something to do with the world turning to rust) and some sort of grey thing assaulted us.
The brown-haired girl and the officer fought the grey thing using their guns, while I battled the witch, as I had fought witches before.

Now these witches are astral beings, and as such, they cannot be killed by normal means.

In this dream, I seemed to have grown significantly, and gained quite a mastery of some of Moh's powers. I could comfortably use her violet flames without exerting myself.
The witch fought with blue mists. 

Since the battle was taking longer than I would have liked, and the brown-haired girl and the officer needed help, I decided to hurry it up a bit. 
After I had incorporated Iris into my body, I had the ability to leech astral beings into my body and incorporate their substance into myself. I incorporated the witch into my body, leeching it away from itself piece by piece. This was surprising to some, as human beings cannot absorb entire sentiant beings into their minds.
The incorporation granted me great power, though it was somewhat difficult to supress the consciousness of the witch. A powerful will was required to control my own body.

After absorbing and supressing the witch however, I was easily able to dispatch the grey thing, and we were on our way.
The dream here ended.

 You must upgrade in order to use a non-garbage layout.

Anyhow.

It bothers me whenever a simple little fun-fact turns into something very long and obtuse that requires a lecture and numerous diagrams.
I mentioned in IRC that if you have astigmatism and hold your eyeglasses against a pattern (such as a brick wall) and rotate the lens about the center, you can see the pattern warp through the lens. (A normal lens will just show the pattern).

It's because astigmatism is corrected using toric lenses which are a combination of a sphere and a cylinder. If you rotate a sphere, it is the same from all directions. Normal eyeglass lenses are based on spheres, and as such, are the same no matter which orientation they are viewed though.
When you rotate a toric lens however, it rotates that cylindrical curve on the lens, and appears to make whatever you are looking at become wavy.

If you cannot see or understand this, go speak to your local physics teacher or eye doctor. It is optics.

I am mildly irritated that the Navy automatically disqualifies for mild cases of psoriasis, as I have a very minor splotch on my scalp hidden by my hair (which would be cut off during basic). The reason given is because of the way it interacts with a smallpox vaccine, and the fact they consider it an 'open wound.' 
I could probably get a waiver for it, since it is a minor amount, and is not triggered by stress, or really anything for that matter (it just sits there hiding from the sun), but from what I read on various websites, waivers for something like that are extremely difficult to obtain if you are not already enlisted.
There goes that idea.

Had a few interesting dreams recently, here they are as they were transcribed:

A Dream:

"We had thought everything would go well, that no ill wind would ever blow against us, that nothing would stand before us that we could not overcome.
We were wrong."

I said this as I stood before a tombstone in a windy field. It was the awkward time of year between spring and summer, the rains had gone, but the winds and clouds had not. 
I had brought her roses, pink and red ones, even though the people in the hamlet nearby thought it inappropriate to bring the dead such flowers.

I then thought back to the days we had been together in school. 
We had been ordered to grapple, a sort of competitive reflex competition. Blue dye was put on our palms, and at the end of the designated time, the contestent with the least amount of dye on their body was the winner. Scoring was also allocated in a point system based on the location of the marker dye. It was sort of like fencing without weapons.

She had been set to grapple some random girl, and they circled each other for a bit, but She and I were not at the bottom of the class without justification, and She was soundly beaten. The girl who had beaten Her mocked Her. When the judge turned, She took her hand and smeared the bright blue dye all over the shocked girl's face. That girl went off to cry and they were both disqualified.

There was also an incident directly involving me, in which some guy was being a bully in the dorms, and I cynically made fun of all of his musical tastes. He enjoyed listening to "Psychopath Clowns" which I assume to be this reality's version of "Insane Clown Posse"
After thoroughly mocking him in front of everyone present, he left and bullied no more. A guy I was familiar with asked me about some of his music, I looked at it, it was okay.

We graduated eventually though, even though we were at the bottom of the class. We were assigned to a very low group. (There were a variety of groups undertaking this particular mission, which was rather long and extended, only one was reasonably expected to succeed, and most were expected to return home upon their completion. The group expected to succeed were the top graduates, or the second in line graduates.)

Our groupd was assembling in a forest, it was mostly people with weaker talents and such. She and I were again in the same group, as both our talents were next to worthless (Her talent being a subtle space-warping manipulation that only allowed her to keep rain off her skin at best, and mine was an amplification talent that required maximum skin contact for any sort of effect at all.)
I preferred not to use my power unless it was with Her. With my amplification, she could perform very minor feats of space warping, almost akin to telepathy, but warping the space around the object rather than controlling it via the mind.
She could pick up pieces of paper from about a meter away when I was embracing her and focusing my power, otherwise, neither of our powers were extraordinarily useful for anything.

The other people who showed up as part of our group were various people, most of them girls. Their powers ranked from minor electrical manipulation to minor entropy manipulation. Mostly all useless.
The last girl to show up had very serious issues, and was 'hunting' us. We had to 'take care of her' and request to be sent a new team member. 
The new person was just as unstable however, and so after dealing with it, we simply did not request any more support.

Somehow along the way, we skipped out ahead of our placing in the mission, and ended up dealing with some of the things the top groups should have dealt with. This resulted in deaths, injuries, etc. Some people were confined to the hospital for the rest of their lives, some people, namely Her, lost their lives. I was lucky and escaped without any clear injuries. 
I missed Her dearly, and wished that I had told Her that I loved Her while She was still alive.

The dream here ends, with a vision of the beginning in full implication renewed in my mind.

A Dream:

We were at a spring in the middle of the desert that welled up from some ruins. Nothing grew here, as the ruins were all stone, and the spring was contained within them, a sort of man-made well/oasis for bathing, relaxing, and drawing water.
This place was said to be the last place worth visiting on earth, and one of the only natural wonders left that was made by human hands. There weren't many people left in the universe though, and so we were not crowded in the slightest. Other than myself and she whom I traveled with, there were maybe two other couples and a small family.

I was traveling with a girl who had long copper coloured hair. It was kind of a brilliant copper, like a newly minted penny. She was fairly tall too, taller than many men, but her features were all soft and feminine.

I myself was a runt of a girl, with bobbed brown hair, worn loose but carefully done, just down to my chin. I would probably have been mistaken for a child. I loved the copper hair girl very much.

No one wore bathing suits there, it was not a couple's place, or a nude beach, or anything of that sort, it was more like an innocent nakedness. Our bodies with and without clothes were no different, in that if we were not robed in clothe, we were robed in sky, wind, sun, and sand.
We felt no shame, even myself, as I was sickly of build, but did not pay it any attention.

I sat in the shallow pool, and she washed my shoulders a bit, and then she lie back and stared up at the sky. I reclined against her as a younger sister would and looked up too. 
She wrapper her arms around me, closed her eyes, and spoke of ancient times.

"Millions of years ago, a man, remembered as an emporer, surveyed the wastes his father had bequeathed him; and he spoke: "This is my land, and there will be water here, and I shall dig until I raise it from the ground."
He made this vow, a pact with whatever he served, and here built his monument to all of time.

The dream here ends.

Hegel is still being a beast to read. If you ever consider taking an intro to philosophy class, I highly recommend that you look at the syllabus, and if time is to be spent on Hegel, that you consider taking the class with a different professor. Hegel is nearly impossible for the average person to read without any sort of aides or guides. 
On that note, if you are interested in philosophy, I highly suggest reading Plato's works, as well as those by Nietzsche ("Also Sprach Zarathustra" and "Twilight of the Idols" are both good reading.)

Music recommendations for the day:
Stormwarrior - Ragnarok (Viking Metal)
Gamma Ray - Rebellion in Dreamland (Classic Power Metal)
Iron Savior - Prisoner of the Void (Sci-fi Power Metal)
Ayreon - Ride the Comet (Experimental)
Blue Oyster Cult - Magna of Illusion (Classic rock concept album song.)