Colours of the rainbow

I really must have nothing better to do to be writing a post on this subject...

ALL men see in only 16 colours, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a colour. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

The above statement is one of twenty-three from a list of observations called `Men's Rules' some smart guy wrote as a relationship guide for his female partner. I posted this list previously under the heading of `No hints please. Just say it!'.

I'm not talking about the rules again this time but about colours... specifically about the various unfamiliar names given to the hundreds of shades of colours. I remember back in secondary school, my science teacher asking the class, "How many colours are there in the rainbow?" Of course, the standard answer that came back from us students was seven. Well, that's what the textbooks tell you, my teacher said. "If you are to go and ask a shopkeeper selling paint," he continued, "he will say that there are hundreds of colours."

Indeed there are... a few hundreds from what I can see in Wikipedia's article on this topic. Unless we are working in an industry that depends on colours (for example : fashion design, paint, lipstick, electronic display screens), most of these names would escape us, let alone identify which shade of primary colour it is.

I just found out that there are two sets of primary colours : the Red/Green/Blue grouping is called the additive combination (as in overlapping projected light or CRT display) while the Red/Yellow/Blue grouping is called the subtractive combination (as applied to pigments and dyes). All the other colours can be obtained by mixing of the primary colours, in varying proportions or degree. And since there can be an infinite combination of such mixes, there is therefore an endless shade of colours. New names are coined to go with the new shades, which sometimes add to the confusion.

Apart from the primary colours, the established secondary colours are well-known and readily identifiable. Colours like brown, pink, purple, grey and orange are easily understood. It is when we come to the derivatives that we get stumped. Maroon is reddish-brown, or is it brownish-red? Beige is a popular colour but is it more pale-brown or pale-yellow? Cyan is another well-known modern day colour that's found on our computer display screen (although the origin of the name is quite ancient). It is a blue-green combination... but how much blue and how much green?

The names of many of the colour shades come from nature, especially plants and flowers. Names such as peach, lavender, periwinkle, lilac and asparagus (yes, there is a special shade of green that takes its name from the vegetable). Some natural sounding names are easy to identify (charcoal, ivory, maize) while some takes a bit of describing (fallow, teal, russet). I am quite hopeless at identifying colours. That is why I guess, I like to stick to grey (or sometimes spelled gray) as my favourite colour... there's just light grey, dark grey, ash grey, smoky grey and maybe one or two more. Pretty drab and unexciting, huh?

So what's the colour of this orchid flower?

My previous post on a similar subject -> Colourful words.
Interesting source for origin of some colour names -> The colour of words.

The absence of darkness is light

My current read is a novel I borrowed from the local library called The Rule Of Four, written by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. It has been three weeks since I first took it out and I still have not finished reading it. I am perhaps two-thirds done... pretty slow by normal standards but I want to complete it nonetheless.

It is a story about two university students trying to unravel the mystery contained within the pages of a book written by an Italian during the Renaissance period. Quite heavy going sometimes.

Anyway it is not my intention to do a book review. I just would like to share a passage from the book which I found quite enlightening. I was afraid if I wait until I finish reading the whole book, I might forget where the passage is. In this paragraph, the narrator is musing about his room-mate and fellow researcher...

The fact is, Paul has always kept secrets from us. For years he hid the truth about his childhood, the details of his parochial school nightmare. Now he's been hiding the truth about his relationship with Taft. Close as he and I are, there's a certain distance now, a feeling that while we have a lot in common, good fences still make good neighbours. Leonardo wrote that a painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light. Most painters do the opposite, starting with a whitewash and adding the shadows last. But Paul, who knows Leonardo so well you'd think the old man slept in our bottom bunk, understands the value of starting with shadows. The only things people can ever know about you are the ones you let them see.

The Leonardo mentioned above, is of course, Leonardo da Vinci, the genius artist, inventor, mathematician, engineer and everything else. The last sentence in that passage is the one I really like.

I guess I am like that... I don't reveal too much of myself. The surface me does not tell too much of the inner me. Even close friends or family members have different bits and pieces of who I am. If they are to gather around and share information, some of them would probably say, `Hey, I didn't know that about him.'

The only things people can ever know about you are the ones you let them see...

Early withdrawal will lose interest

I think I'll write about an interest subject today... yes, that's right, an `interest' rather than `interesting' subject. Although I do hope the post may turn out interesting for readers in the end.

But first, I have to go back in time a little bit. It was the winter of 1983 and I was in the final year of my engineering degree. One of the toughest subjects in that degree course is Structural Mechanics, not one of my stronger suits. The professor who taught us that subject is Dr. Neil Taylor, a brilliant and aggressive man who's quite unlike any of the other lecturers in our faculty.

Dr. Taylor is slim and tall, sports long hair to his shoulders and keeps a beard and moustache. He normally wears a white shirt with a narrow tie but with collar unbuttoned. Over this he dons a black leather jacket. In fact, he looks more like a rock star than a university professor. His classes are never boring. He speaks in a loud, clear voice and at great speed. You'll never fall asleep during his lecture... or perhaps you dare not fall asleep. He'll pick a bored face among his students in a second and start shooting questions about the subject at hand, just to make sure we all understand what he's talking about. I was always afraid to be caught by him because, as I said, I'm not terribly good at Structures.

He would start his lecture by first talking at length about a particular topic. After that, he would scribble out his notes, longhand, on the blackboard. His notes are copious and he writes like he speaks... at great speed. When he runs out of writing space on the blackboard, he returns back to the earlier section and starts rubbing them out. Sometimes, those of us slow writers would need to hold out our hand and shout, `Whoa! Sir..', and he pauses for a while to give us time to catch up.

It is during such pauses that Dr. Taylor would usually tell a story or share bits of trivia that has got nothing to do with engineering. It can be something about music, movies, sports or current affairs... practically anything. And such interesting stories too... which sort of put the slow-writing students in a dilemma. Do you stop writing to listen to the stories and risk not copying down the complete notes... or do you continue to scribble furiously before he starts cleaning the blackboard and you miss the story being told?

I liked listening to his stories so I trained myself to be speed-writer.

One day, after filling the blackboard with his sprawling handwriting, he paused for a while to allow us some time to finish copying... and then starts to share another trivia.

`Do you know why most of the big time bankers are Jews?' he asks. None of us answer... so he begins telling the story about Christians being forbidden to be involved in usury and that the Jews may not charge usury among their own kind but can do so to others. He said that money-lending first started out as one of the least respected professions and strangely enough today, it is the money-lenders who control most of the world's economy.

`I bet you didn't know that, did you?' he mocks us. `Heck, does anybody even know what usury means?!'

`Yeah,' I immediately quipped. `Interest...'

`Who said that?' Dr Taylor looks around at his students, his eyes wide in disbelief. I sheepishly put up my hand halfway.

`Right, you are!' he said. And with that, he turned around, erased the blackboard and resumed writing his notes.

When the class was over, Dr. Taylor heads out of the room but when he reaches the door, he turns back and walks to where I was sitting. He bends down to my eye level and nodded to me to say, `Usury... that's good.'

From then on, I could no longer remain low-profile in Dr. Taylor's class. But the good thing was that my grades in Structures improved...

Nature at home...

I was doing a spot of gardening earlier today and came across a reptile and an amphibian enjoying their day among the leaves of my plants.

Garden snake on the stem of a potted palm

Frog taking a rest on an orchid leaf

Look before you leap

Today is a special day. It is the first time I am able to put up a post in this blog on a day that comes once in every four years. February 29, 2012.

We all know what a leap year is... but why does it have 366 days instead of the 365 that we get from a normal year? Nowadays, it is very easy to get an answer to this question... just google. But back when I was in primary school, I remember looking for the answer in a thick book in the school library.

It was 1972 and I was in Standard 4. My teacher told me that the month of February in that year has 29 days. When I asked why, she told me to look for the answer in a book that explains about our solar system. I remember looking at an illustration in the book showing the Earth with an imaginary line circling the Sun. The caption below the picture says that the time it takes for Earth to do one complete revolution around the Sun is 365 and 1/4 days. This then equals one year. But then, it would be impractical to have a quarter day at the end of each year... just imagine that there would be a December 32nd that lasts for only 6 hours, from midnight to 6am, and that New Year's Day (1st January) would then start at 6am. Everything would be out of sync.

It was Julius Ceasar who first introduced the concept of leap days when he invented his Julian calendar at around 45 BCE. It was not terribly accurate and was later improved by a new calendar created by Pope Gregory XIII around 1,500 years later. The Gregorian calendar now forms the basis of time tracking and measurement for most of the modern world today. But why do we need to add that extra day every four years? It is because of the seasons. If we don't add the extra day, we lose about 6 hours every year and winter in the northern hemisphere would start to move forward. The recoupment of that 6 hours each year for 4 years ensures that the seasons happen at roughly the same time every year.

While refreshing my knowledge on this subject earlier today, I found out that the Earth's orbit is not exactly 365 and a quarter days. It is approximately 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds... and I say approximately because this duration can vary slightly depending on the relative position and influence of other planets. This means that even adding a day after every four years is not really that perfect if we look at the big picture. But the effect may only be significant in 8,000 years time. That's way ahead in the future for us to worry about... let the people living at that time solve it themselves.