What color is the sky?
Daytime or nighttime?
The color of the sky is determined by Rayleigh scattering.
I heard once that the color is different in the Southern hemisphere because the scattering is backwards.
I think it depends on what planet you're on.
Has it OCCURRED to any of you that color blind people might see the sky differently?
Actually, most people with color blindness (Deuteranomalia and Protanopia) see typical sky colors fairly normally.
Color is just a social construct.
Critical color theory.
Ha ha. But "color" is a problematic term in this context. There are better alternatives.
The color Nazis are here.
Homer said the Mediterranean was a wine red sea. I know that's sea, not sky, but what did he mean by that?
Maybe Homer was color blind.
Greek wines were made from grapes so dark that the wine looked almost black. So "wine red" probably just referred to a darkening sea.
That's a myth. Wines in Mycenaean-era Greece were very similar to today's red wines.
Ancient Greeks cultivated dozens of different varieties of grapes.
So they had red wines and white wines?
Yes, but they didn't have names for all the different colors. They classified colors by light or dark. Glaukos might mean either light yellow or light green wines, for example.
Was that just for wine?
No. That's just how they did color in general.
So in regular life what did glaukos usually mean?
Sky blue.
Huh.
is this just a fun post about the weirdness of internet communication and comments, or am i missing a deeper meaning?
Nope, no deeper meaning.
What is the conversation between people with ADHD like?
Bingo!
I hate that old folks game.
It's not just for old folks; we used to play that as kids.
Connect 4 -- now there's a fun game to play.
We used to play arcade games during PE when it was rainy. I miss those days.
Space Invaders, right?
OMG, was that 1982?
Whip it! Whip it good!
Nah. Alan Parsons for the win.
Eye in the Sky?
Wait, do you think they were talking about the surveillance state or about a clingy relationship?
Wasn't that the Eye of Ra?
Oh yeah! Just like in Stargate, eh?
Pwok, pwok!
Chickens!
Dr. Jackson!
Who played it better? I say Shanks.
Oh no, definitely Spader. Ooh, Spade Invader!
Shanks alot.
Also, “wine-red” is not an accurate rendering of the word, nor is the traditional “wine-dark” — the most literal etymological rendering would be “wine-face”: that is, the sea (or its surface) somehow resembles wine. It’s *our* assumption that this must be color. Lots more discussion here: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2016/01/colours-in-homer-2-wine-dark-sea.html?m=1
This may well have had to to do with the color of wine in metal or clay containers, I'm sure most Greeks didn't have access to translucent glass bottles or crystal goblets. Wine looks different when there's no light passing through it.
I always assumed it had nothing to do with hue, it was all about shade. Seawater (if you look straight down at it) and red win are not the same hue, but they're similarly dark.
Kitties agree...Kitties know.
As conversations go, I've had worse.
Been in the mushrooms again Kevin?
Wonderful!
Also, will two ai bots have so much beautiful serendip in their talks?
I am a textile artist, and specialize in indigo. (My avatar is an example of my work.)
From my research, I have come to believe that words for blue developed when people figured out to to extract indigo from indigo-bearing plants; it's a difficult process where you must create a high-pH reduction and make the indigo lose its blue color in order to dye with it. At the time of Homer, the Greeks did not use indigo.
ETA: the blueish dye in use by the Greeks was Murex, from snails, the dye of emperors. The destroyed the snail population in the Mediterranean. They would have smelled of low tide on a hot day.
In some languages, blue and green are not distinct from each other, and this may also reflect the unusual dyeing method of indigo.
But around the world, so far as I have been able to discern, words for blue emerged at about the same time as people began using indigo as a dye.
This is reminiscent of the Andy letter on Cartalk. After Tom and Ray embarrassed themselves in a discussion about electric brakes on a trailer, Andy wrote his letter asking the question: do two people who know nothing about a matter know more or less than one person who knows nothing about it. The Andy letter became the listener letter by which all other letters were judged. You can look it up.
Anybody else notice the similarities between THIS "internet conversation" and the one Kevin showed us.........? We've all lost our ability to focus on one thing, thanks to the Intertubes. All diversions are welcome.
Could be the start of almost any randomly-chosen comment thread over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money
The French originally referred to red wine as black wine. It became more popular in France after the British started buying large quantities of it
Guy Deutscher explores the wine colored sea topic in a very interesting way in the book, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. It is well worth the read beyond that topic as well.
I wonder what % of LLM training is comments like these.
"Maybe Homer was color blind."
Certainly. Being blind means you're also color blind, and Homer was not known as the Blind Bard for nothing.
That's just a myth.
That Homer was blind?
That Homer was anything! How can anyone prove he really existed?
How can anyone prove you really existed?
I'm talking here and that's no myth. What more proof do you need?
Same for Homer. Somebody had to create Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
How do you know it was Homer? Maybe it was a guy named Maynard.
Homer or a guy named Maynard we know as Homer: what does it matter?
It matters to Maynard.
Look, when Rembrandt painted "Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer," he didn't care if the bust was Homer or Maynard. What mattered was that Aristotle believed the bust was Homer.
How would Rembrandt know what Aristotle believed?
Because if Aristotle believed he was contemplating a bust of Maynard, Rembrandt was never going to sell that painting.
What you're saying is: When you can't tell the legend from fact, paint the legend.
Sure.
Wanna know a secret? That's not Aristotle in that painting but a homeless guy named Joe who panhandled down the block from Rembrandt.
You sure about that?
I looked it up. Fellow in the painting doesn't look anything like the real Aristotle. Not even the same color hair.
[Long stare.]
No, I'm not color blind.
Whatever you say. Where'd you learn about Joe?
Read it on the internet.
Homer never said "wine red sea." He said "wine dark sea."
He never said "wine dark sea". He said something in Greek that gets translated into English as "wine dark sea".
Do you know Glass' Einstein on the Beach?
I think either you understand or you don't, and if you don't, it's because your brain is 100% normal.
"Happ is not going to waive his no trade clause."
"I have seen that posted here several time in the past couple of weeks. How do we know with such certainty that Happ will not waive his no trade clause?"
"I don't know. I read it here."
"Has it OCCURRED to any of you that color blind people might see the sky differently?"
This particular line of interrupting the discussion to shame people for their privilege of not being of race X, or social class Y, or disadvantaged class Z, is so common that it needs a name. An extremely uncomplimentary one.