Why is the sky blue? And is it a feminist issue?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I'm pondering.

I realize this is kind of a facetious thread to start, but apparently, that's all fine and dandy. Please, do spend your time and energy with detailed answers ... I'll just lie back and ignore.

As a man, I would just like to say that not all men think the sky is blue...

Nice thread

Don't be ridiculous, we're not discussing individual skies, but skies as a class.

It's not a difficult concept, unless you are being wilfully obtuse.

Bloody choosy choice sky colour deciders, tut!

You would say that, Briar. You're a Rainbow.

Sky-ist.

I believe the sky is blue so I'm a PERF - Pink Exclusionary Rebellious Female.

I'm a colour-blind female.

Health professionals always look impressed and slightly excited when I fail the bloody secret-number-in-the-dots test. Like a birdwatcher spotting the lesser red-throated woodchuck or something.

Capt, quite. It's clearly an example of sky privilege that the colour of one sky is considered representative of all skies.

I don't really understand colour blindness . I know that there is a sort where you confuse red and green. And a rare type where you don't really see colour at all. What others are there?

Boulevard I've been told that women tend to be blue/yellow colour blind, not red/green. Is that right?

penguins with my relatives who are red/green colour blind, in their case what they can't actually detect very well is red. so many browns will appear green because they can't see the red in them, likewise purples appear blue, and caucasian skin colour is anyone's guess! they can detect fake tan because it appears very bright green and streaky to them

boulevard is that annoying or entertaining? do you get asked what colour the grass is a lot when people find out?

they can detect fake tan because it appears very bright green and streaky to them

This is my favourite thing ever on mumsnet!

Gosh Petula. That is so interesting.

Really?!

I must ask my dad what colour he thinks fake tan is. I doubt he sees much of it.

I know he sees pink as similar to yellow.

so they say! it may be specific brands, i don't know.

Oh my So people with fake tan looks like movie monsters to them?

I am red/green colourblind, not sure about what women usually are.

Yes, I do get asked what colour the grass is
Like I'm going to go, is it not blue?

I can tell brightly coloured things, but pale wishy-washy colours (maps especially) are tricky.

TiwiSavesTheDay did a good example above; if you had a load of pots of white paint, and you added one drop of red to the first, two to the second etc... we'd all see that the start was white and the end was red, but the point at which I could tell it was starting to turn red would be later than everyone else's.

Guy Deutscher Through the Language Glass is interesting on colour - he talks about asking his young daughter to tell him what the colour of the sky is - and it's not that easy an answer. But there's also stuff on how different cultures perceive colour.

Also, the current exhibition at the National Gallery is on colour, and there's a film with it, where they experiment on you, by showing the same picture under different lighting, and also showing how something might appear if you were colour blind (I assume that part is not very interesting if you actually are colour blind.)

We covered a bit on colour perception and so on as part of my CompSci degree, and it was really interesting. (And some web page designers have clearly never come across the idea of some colour combinations being easier to read...)

And then you get synaesthetes, who see words and so on in colour...

the thing is it's difficult to say, because it's their reality, so to them it's not so surprising. it think it looks a bit more like if people had streaks of green mud on them? but i don't know because it's not what i see

we didn't find out for years that they thought peanut butter was green, and to me that sounds off-putting like it's mouldy or poisonous, but they don't have that association. they can't pick certain types of berries because they can't tell if they're ripe or not. colour blind people do well as snipers apparently, because camouflage doesn't work as well as they compensate by looking at shape and movement rather than distinguishing by colour

(i don't know whether i'm straying dangerously close to pop evo bollocks here - this is just what i have been told)

ebearhug that NG exhibition is brilliant - i really want to go again with one of my tame colour blind relatives to compare what we get from it

i should stop spouting now and defer to boulevard, who actually experiences this stuff first hand!

I did read that during WWII, they had colour-blind people (ie., who only saw black and white) look at photos taken behind enemy lines, because they saw details other people didn't notice, because they were used to the lac of colour.

'Like I'm going to go, is it not blue?'

Crocodiles are colour blind apparently. How do you ask a crocodile what colour he can see? And is it only male crocodiles?

yes grimble. it's why male crocodiles are shit at interior decorating. trufact