Links

I used to scorn the practice of campaigning for links to a blog site. People who have little to say tend to do this to increase traffic to a site which has no other way to attract readers. Well, come to think of it, I still scorn that practice. But the blogs I like best are the ones with good links.

This morning I started, somewhat randomly, in my list of bookmarks for "Things to read when I have a chance," at Cognitive Daily. From there I traveled to Mixing Memory and an interesting article about language and color. I didn't know that English speakers have 11 basic color terms: green, blue, purple, red,pink, orange, yellow and brown. Wait, that seems to be only eight...

This graph was developed "by having people name Munsell color chips, which depict colors across the visible spectrum. You then determine the color names that were used to describe the bulk of the spectrum. In doing so, you get graphs that look like the following for English-speakers (from Roberson et al. 2000)"

Why is pink a separate concept when there is no word for light green or light blue? Why don't lilac or lavender count? Why are the colors yellow and orange so "small?" Why is brown just kind of dark orange? I'm a redhead. These are important questions to me. My horse, my dog, one of my cats and my hair are all very similar colors. We call the horse chestnut, the dog brown, the cat orange and me, well, red. Interestingly, the shape of the "orange" concept matches the map of my property. (And Mary Magdelene and I share a birthday - but that's another story. Let's talk about coincidence someday)

I started looking at the links to blogs that Mixing Memory finds interesting. Some are ones I already read: Panda's Thumb, Shakespeare's Sister, Pandagon and others. Blogs Mixing Memory led me to that I bookmarked to return to include: The Valve, LogBlog, John Hawks, I Blame the Patriarchy, Here's What's Left, Ethical Werewolf, Cosmic Variance.

Those sites, of course, lead to others. And now it's 9:30 and things are being added to my "to do" list much more rapidly than things are being checked off.