The Iggblog

Men and women have both known for a long time that the two sexes see colors differently. Women often wonder why men just say “blue” when we see things like the sky, the ocean, Facebook, every Ford Focus, and so on. And men wonder why women have silly colors like azure, cobalt, sapphire, iris, teal, midnight, ultramarine, and so on. I thought I would take a few minutes to explain an aspect of why we men are the way we are.

It’s going to start by sounding a little technical, but stay with me.  The part of the male brain that processes color has been reallocated over the course of male evolution towards things we consider more worthy of our thoughts. Breasts, tanks, barbecue, jet fighters, video games, breasts, beer, etc. Very little is left over for things like color, and we’ve been left what amounts to a 4-bit palette. Basically just a few brain cells in series that either fire or don’t fire when when information from the eyes goes through them. This all results in a visible range of about 16 colors. This world looks much like a 1990s video game to men. Note that early game programmers were mostly men, which is why early video games looked this way. That’s enough tech speak for now, check out the table below:

As you can see, we men do in fact recognize four shades of blue: Blue, light blue, ugly blue, and pretty blue. We just don’t use two of them very often. We don’t use “ugly blue” much because it’s ugly and we don’t like it. We don’t often use “pretty blue” because you tend to hit us we use it in a sentence beginning with “Honey I wish your eyes were a …”, and besides it just sounds funny when men say it. Some of the color names have changed over time. “Other red” used to be known simply as “bricks” (or “bacon” in some regions), and in these more civil times what was known as “gay purple” is now called “pink”.  Brown used to be “beer”, but it was discovered that things other than beer were this color so a more general term was needed.  I should note that ugly blue and pretty blue have recently been renamed “cyan” and “light cyan” because men wanted to prove we could come up with silly names for colors too, but these names are seldom heard in actual conversation.

So next time you want to badger us men for not knowing “burnt umber” from “other red” or “fuchsia” from “pink”, please keep in mind we’re not savages.  When we blankly stare at color swatches at Home Depo, or can’t find anything else to point out during your favorite interior design show (that we lovingly sit through) except the ambiguous nature of some of the contestants, we’re not trying your patience.  Our brains are just wired a little different.  Besides, “The White Mountains” has a better ring to it than “The Isabelline Mountains”. Renaming traffic colors from red, yellow, and green to carmine, aureolin, and chartreuse would just make driving students cry. And the last time they tried to change “Brown Bear” to “Chocolate Bear”, the resulting misunderstandings were unfortunate.

So this company Wicked Lasers recently came out with a new toy. When I look at it, I think to myself “I should never own anything like this” and “I have to have one” at the same time. Previously, high powered laser “pointers” would go for pretty ridiculous amounts. Usually the high hundreds to over a thousand dollars. The reason this device is surprising is not only that it is ridiculously powerful (1 watt is massive for a diode laser), but it’s only $200 because they were able to get the diodes for very on their end. The other laser they show in the beginning of the video is $2000, for example (and ~400 mW). Ok enough blabbing. I’m really only posting this because I wanted to show the video. Love the transition from the little laser’s “oh look you can kind of see the beam even without smoke!” to the big one’s “… Holy shit”

Original source: Gizmodo

… Just sayin’

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

So I got bored and impulsive on Tuesday.

It’s a stylized version of the greek letter Phi, got it on the inside of my right forearm. It represents the Golden Ratio. I got the design from a similar one I found surfing around. For the lazy, it’s a number that shows up all over the place in math, science, nature, art, architecture, etc. I wanted something nerdy that didn’t look nerdy at a glance. This worked out well for me. I’d been wanting to get something for a long while, and I’m happy with my choice. The place I got it at was cleaner and brighter inside than some dentist offices I’ve been in, I was very impressed. Didn’t hurt at all really, a scratch from Dezzy hurts more.

EDIT – Turns out the author of the blog I saw this image on is the original artist. You get so used to seeing the same tattoos cross-linked across every site, you just assume the real artists get lost in the mix. Thanks to the “links to here” section of the WordPress dashboard, I saw the post from the original artist on his blog upon finding out someone actually went out and put his work on their body.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

Yesterday I went in to see the dermatologist that’s been keeping tabs on me since friday. I think I’m a pet project of his since I’m more interesting than the normal grade of skin issues. He said I looked to be bouncing back from everything much faster than he expected, so he backed off on one of my perscriptions. He also perscribed an even longer course of antibiotics though, just to make sure the strep was dead. I whined about this a little since antibiotics tend to make me smell funny. He asked me if I’d rather smell a little off for a few weeks or have another outbreak. Before I could answer the obvious he holds up a finger and starts writing on a perscription pad, “I have just the thing” he said. He tore off the pad and handed it to me… all it said was “axe body spray”. Sometimes I miss the ridiculously obvious.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.