More than a few of you we're wondering why the hell this picture of New York pavement was posted to the site.

"Perhaps a commentary on the sterile futileness of modern existence? The composition calls to me," says commenter KSU499.

"Actually the most interesting and enterrtaining [sic] article Wired has done for quite some time," adds Zarkov. "No shoddy research and unfounded speculation in this one."

"I know there's embedded info in the image using the jphide algorithm....I know the embedded data = 29kb, and I know there's a passkey, but I've tried brute-forcing it with a huge 600,000 English word file, and no luck," e-mails DS.

"Don't y'all see the Virgin Mary right next to the leaf?" asks BigDaddy.

Actually, he's more right than he knows. A full explanation, after the jump.

Turns out there was some kind of makseshift parade to celebrate La Madre, up on Columbus Avenue. I snapped a couple of pictures with my BlackBerry's camera – and posted one accidentally, thanks to Typepad's aggressive BlackBerry app. Here are a few more scenes from the procession: