Just found this picture of me at the beach in L.A. this spring. That was such a good trip, and this was such a good moment.
Radiolab Podcast: Why Isn’t the Sky Blue?
I can’t stop thinking about this. As a lifelong student of Homer and a longtime lover of science, languages and culture, this blew my mind like it hasn’t been blown in what feels like years. Absolutely incredible!
What is the color of honey, and “faces pale with fear”? If you’re Homer—one of the most influential poets in human history—that color is green. And the sea is “wine-dark,” just like oxen…though sheep are violet. Which all sounds…well, really off. Producer Tim Howard introduces us to linguist Guy Deutscher, and the story of William Gladstone (a British Prime Minister back in the 1800s, and a huge Homer-ophile). Gladstone conducted an exhaustive study of every color reference in The Odyssey and The Iliad. And he found something startling: No blue!
Supposedly Gladstone’s chapter on colors in Homer is available here; I will have to take a look at it, because wow.
(via waiting4achange)
This has been my sky/lightscape today. Thanks for the welcome back, Chicago.
DAY 3 - Thursday, March 22nd 2012 - Las Cruces, NM to Roswell, NM
White Sands National Monument
UM, AWESOME. The only thing I regret about this trip is that I forgot to bring my sandboard so we could ride the dunes. White Sands is a little under an hours drive north east of Las Cruces, NM. It is miles and miles of beautiful white sand dunes. We took a few hours to hike around, take photos and video and then just lay at the top of a very large dune. The weather was perfect, no wind and about 70 degrees.
These are some of my iphone photos. -misha
Seriously, though, how gorgeous is all this?
