COLORS.

COLORS. This article begins with the fact that Welsh is one of a group of languages which does not distinguish between blue and green (called “grue” languages because they conflate blue and green). Is color perception a result of nature or nurture? The article says that current research suggests that it is both nature and nurture. There was a good article by Eric Konigsberg in the New Yorker of January 22, 2007 on the color industry and how color fashions are determined. Unfortunately, I didn’t link it immediately and the New Yorker search engine is the most bizarre search feature I have ever encountered so I can’t provide a link. It points out that the eighties were the height of the gray period while Wasabi green (a “light, yellow-based green”) has been the most popular color of the last five years. Three characteristics of colors are “undertone”, which is a measure of how much yellow or blue it has in it; chroma, which measures the brightness of a color; and value, which measures how light or dark a color is. There are regional patterns in color preferences. An example is Birmingham, Alabama, where “even the sided houses tend to be brown or brick red.” Reading the article, I wonder if preferences in Birmingham were shaped by the dark red, iron-rich soil. There are lots of other good things in the article if you can find it.