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.

I want to see that exhibition!

No, PetulaGordino, I like to think of myself as only mildly colourblind and have never had green peanut butter or fake tan or anything exciting.

Although I did work in a lab for years and occasionally I'd dilute something pink, and it would suddenly look green. You leave that observation out of the lab book.
Or ask the bloke (for it is always a bloke) beside you, 'Oi Steve, does that look pink to you?'

boulevard, re maps/diagrams etc, i do try to make sure when i produce reports i make the colours reasonably distinctive. it can be tricky though when your company has "muted" corporate colour schemes taht you have to use!

in exams, did you have someone telling you the colour changes in reactions or was it never necessary?

It hasn't been necessary, never had a practical exam, only coursework.

This thread is making me very happy

I've decided I'm going to see that exhibition, it sounds fascinating.

It sounds great! All the colour blindness details are fascinating.

Through the Language Glass has been on my reading list for ages since someone told me the author deliberately tried not to teach his child color names and see how her perception of them developed (not sure if I remembered that correctly!)

It's because of physics. And everyone knows that physics is a boy subject.

i've ordered the guy deutscher book from the library

Depending on your dad's kind of colour blindness you might be one of the people with four kinds of cones.

The cone cells in your eyes all detect different wavelengths of light.

So when there is "purple" light going into your eye, the ones that detect red say "quite a lot of light here" and the ones that detect blue say "yep, quite a lot of light here" but the ones that detect green say "not much of my kind of light here" and your brain pieces it together and thinks purple.

The three kinds of cones respond to different kinds of light and the combination lets us distinguish all the different combinations that we consider to be different colours.

People who are colourblind, one of their sets of cones either don't work at all, or fire off at a different wavelength to what they should, so they don't give the same combinatorial coverage.

Through the Language Glass has been on my reading list for ages since someone told me the author deliberately tried not to teach his child color names and see how her perception of them developed (not sure if I remembered that correctly!)
Yes - that's where the questions about what colour is the sky came in.

Trills... It's because of physics. And everyone knows that physics is a boy subject.

It is. Which is why I am having to grow a beard ready for going back to uni. Not just so that I can 'hide' but also so that I can stroke it sagely while looking through a bloody enormous and terribly phallic telescope.

How have I missed this thread? This is so interesting.

Haven't read the whole thread but I shall jump in and tell you about things you probably already know about the colour blue but of course not as well as I do.

In Chinese the word "green" is sometimes blue and sometimes black, depending on what it is describing. And the word "blue" is sometimes the dye that gives the colour "green" but what the colour "green" actually is I don't know, but that "green" sometimes can be "greener" than the "blue" from whence it comes.

So there.

What is this thread about again?

LordC, did you just "whataboutthegreenz" our thread?

Look, I was just pointing out that green is not given its due space in this discourse. Really, can we not have a rational discussion without all this passive-aggressive accusation of whataboutery?

The sky is grey here.

upto I am fascinated by what you say about Chinese green. While agreeing wholeheartedly that these hysterical attempts to exclude greenness suggest a certain provincialism, nay, parochialism, to which I fear the blue-ists and pink-ists are inherently prone.

Their ideologies are the colour of berries, doncha know.

The sky is now blue here, confound it! All attempts to fight nature is futile.

I've always wanted to write "whataboutery". It's a fabulous word.

Oh no, don't be greenist, I'm a green hill.

Hills are welcome! They don't even have to be far away, or without a city wall!

It is a great word.

Btw, I had forgotten (and did know), but someone mentioned that in English we only have works for pink versus red, not 'light blue' or 'light green'. But in Russian, there are two distinct words - there's not 'blue' and 'light blue'.

'Twas I!

lightredstinks.com wouldn't be such a good campaign name, though...

I thought it was interesting on the HP thread that Umbridge's outfits became a deeper pink as she became more evil. There really are so many colours that even "pink" covers.

YY, I loved that detail.