And people wonder why I’m skeptical of evolution
And people wonder why I’m skeptical of evolution. Of course, I’m not skeptical of evolution in general. This crap, on the other hand, reminds me of bad theological arguments from the sixteenth century. Did you see micro-evolution happen in the lab? Can you at least point at bones or fossils or something to lend credence to your theory? No? Then I’m not interested.
August 27th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
It may be bad science but I think that, if you read the original article, you would probably find that you are more skeptical of accurate journalism than of evolution. I haven’t read it so I can’t say for sure. It’s definitely pretty lame though that if they were going to do a cross-cultural study, they had so few non-UK test subjects.
August 28th, 2007 at 7:39 am
We already know that different cultures and languages have radically differing perceptions of color. The Japanese consider blues and greens to be different shades of the same color, see this and also this. If how we perceive color is so intensely dependent on language, how can you do a study with 171 brits and 37 chinese and call it good for the whole human race?
Furthermore, did they give participants a choice between all colors as their favorite, or did they only allow them to pick shades of blue and pink? With the rise of television, radio, and the internet, it’s much harder for cultures and individuals to resist cultural programming when it comes to gender issues. There’s nothing wrong with pink, pink is a very beautiful color, but most men are programmed to go YECH! because of the girl germs factor. I bet if this study was performed on children in middle school, it would have been far more polarized.
Here’s my “evolutionary” theory on why Japan has only one word for blue and green. They evolved on an island, right? With lots of trees? Well, the blue of the water and the green of the trees was commonplace, so to save linguistic energy they consolidated their words for blue and green, and created more words for other colors, because those colors were more interesting.
See? Ridiculous.
August 28th, 2007 at 10:09 am
And yet my wife and I both hate pink, although smoetimes she scares me. She actually liked and bought a blouse full of pink… and it’s not too bad. The design and patterns help me forget that it’s pink.
I’ll take maroon or blood red over pink anyday. And I like purple and lavendar. Am I gay?
August 28th, 2007 at 11:12 am
I’m a purple man myself. Being as that is right between red and blue, I think it means we are androgynous.