My mother baked Halloween cookies, and I couldn't help but notice that something was amiss.  Humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt offers his two cents:

by c-eight.

Spectral Spectres

Shrouded in mystery, ghostly apparitions materialize in many subtly haunting colors. Besides deathly white, the specrtral spectrum embraces ethereal violets, cadaverous yellows, twilit blues, midnight blacks, moonlit silvers, and near-transparent yet unmistakable hues spanning the entire night rainbow. The delicate, insubstantial hues of the ghostly realm can add an emotive dimension of wistfulness to any palette, Halloween-themed or otherwise.

Charley: What color? Nancy: Ghost color. Charley: Ghost color? Oh, ghost color! —John Cecil Holm, Gramercy Ghost (1951)

Strange white lustres and shadowy blacks are integral to the philosophy of art teacher John Ruskin. He explains: "When white is well managed, it ought to be strangely delicious,—tender as well as bright,—like inlaid mother of pearl, or white roses washed in milk. The eye ought to seek it for rest, brilliant though it may be; and to feel it as a space of strange, heavely paleness in the midst of the flushing of the colors. This effect you can only reach by general depth of middle tint, by absolutely refusing to allow any white to exist except where you need it, and by keeping the white itself subdued by grey, except at a few points of chief lustre.

"Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous. However small a point of black may be, it ought to catch the eye, otherwise your work is too heavy in the shadow. All the ordinary shadows should be of some colour,—never black, nor approaching black, they should be evidently and always of a luminous nature, and the black should look strange among them; never occuring except in a black object, or in small points indicative of intense shade in the very centre of masses of shadow. Shadows of absolutely negative grey, however, may be beautifully used with white, or with gold; but still through the black thus, in subdued strength, becomes spacious, it should always be conspicuous; the spectator should notice this grey neutrality with some wonder, and enjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the gold colour and the white which it relieves" (The Elements of Drawing, 1857).

[Read the entire article in my guest blog at ColourLovers.com.]

I contend that Rene Decartes invented the Lotto in 1633.  This figure, drawn by Decartes, is my proof, from his treatise The World.

There are eight petals on an implied lotus.

Original Colors: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Though it has been depicted countless times on stage and screen, the marvelous land of Oz has an original and quite inventive color palette. The genuine colors of the yellow brick road, the field of poppies, the Cowardly Lion’s mane, the flying monkeys, Toto, and the great Emerald City are preserved in the very first printing of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). That edition of the book is preserved in the Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division, available for on-line viewing with extraordinarily high quality scans.

“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was an innovative book not least because of the twenty four full color plates and myriad monochromatic illustrations in which the color changed according to the location in the story (Kansas = grey, Emerald City = green and so on). With the illustrative vignettes often encroaching on the text area, the type was cleverly printed over the top of the colored images” (BiblioOdyssey).

Without further ado, here are the official colors of this beloved classic.

[Read the entire article in my guest blog at Colourlovers.com.]

Diamonds in the Rouge

Though widely perceived as colorless, diamonds are infrequently achromatic and can occur in every hue of the rainbow. In fact, color is one of the four standards for judging the beauty and worth of a diamond (the others being carat, cut, and clarity). When it comes to diamond color, there are two seemingly contradictory principles: less is more, and more is more. The fewer impurities and flaws, the more transparent the diamond and the higher the value. Yet rare colors such as blue, green, pink, orange, and black are highly desirable and even museum-worthy. A faint straw yellow will detract from a diamond's value, while a deep yellow is prized.

"White" diamonds are classified according to their degree of transparency. Most white diamonds actually contain yellow or brown tints. The Gemological Institute of America developed a scale of diamond color saturation, ranging from D (colorless) to Z (noticeable light yellow or brown). Diamond color is determined by comparing a gem to a master set. Special folded cards are also used to evaluate color. Dara Horn poetically describes how diamond color is influenced by context. Three diamonds that look identically transparent against deep black velvet reveal their differences when placed in the crease of white paper: "The first sat tarnished on the paper, throbbing a bruised and tawny color; the second glowed a dim yellow like a dying gas lamp in an old painting. The last one, exposed and revealed, blazed burning white."

[Read the entire article in my guest blog at Colourlovers.com.]

When one is put "on hold," why does the telephone operator automatically send one to the Muzak Room?  Why can't one request the Solarium (for weather reports), the Library (for audio books), the Conservatory (for gardening tips), the Parlor (for live chat), the Ballroom (for toe-tapping), or the Zen Room (for silence)?  I, for one, would prefer being ushered to the Secret Passage.

Not all designers think outside the hat box.

George H.W. Bush famously mocked Ronald Reagan's supply-side policies as "Voodoo Economics."  Now someone has designed a Voodoo version of the Monopoly game.  Here's the Income Tax square, complete with a vévé for the spirit of tariffs.  The red lights are candles.  Here's another view of the card.

If Rainbows Were Architecture

What happens when an eccentric architect has the soul of a painter? He drafts a technicolor blueprint and creates elaborate canvasses out of brick and mortar. Portmeirion, the celebrated Italianate village on the west coast of Wales, and famous location of the 60’s cult television series "The Prisoner,” was built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis as a retirement project.

The fairy-tale hamlet he created (30 years before Disneyland) is like a three-dimensional picture postcard exhibiting an unparalleled array of colors. Portmeirion is often cited as an example of "picturesque architecture.” Picturesque simply means that something is proper to be pictured. In the picture that is Portmeirion, foreground and background are the real ground of a rainbow we can walk through.

[Read the entire article in my guest blog at Colourlovers.com.]

Finally, someone has taken all the awkwardness out of spontaneous picnics!

The origin of pointillism?

I finally tried to watch the film Perfume.  Perhaps I'd have liked it better had I worn one of these.

A cartoon on the value of fairy tales, from the Jan. 8, 1919 issue of Punch.  The caption reads:

Ever wondered what happens to the coins you throw into a wishing well?

Revealed for the first time: Frogs take the money and spend it unwisely. 

Theory: the Pac-Man video game was inspired by a lily pond.  The lily pads, with their triangular missing pieces pointing toward colorful flowers, inspired the munching mouth who chases ghosts.  When we flip Pac-Man art upside down, the ghost resembles a water lily blossom.

The trapping of garden gnomes is ignoble.

Gnomic genomes?  The picture explains everything!

Here's a fire hydrant gnome.

Do gnomes grow on trees?  Lauri Gröhn offers proof!

What's under a gnome's pointed red hat?

The Gnome Pebble, discovered by Nicolas P. Rougier, preserves a gnome's footprint.

Plaster gnome Danny will never be the same after taking a tumble down a stairway.  He was left tragically shattered down one side of his body, and his face and ear took a direct hit.

A lovely limestone gnome by Dan Brandemuehl.  And one in red cedar by Ray Brooks.

Gnomes placed in out-of-service urinals?

What's the dirtiest water sport on earth?  Bog snorkeling!  Every year, a host of mud-caked competitors get at loggerheads in a sixty-yard peat bog for the coveted "World Champion Bog Snorkeler" title.  The international sporting event takes place every August in the dense Waen Rhydd Peat bog on the southern outskirts of the smallest town in Wales, Llanwrtyd Wells in Powys Mid Wales.

The invisible revealed:

The invisible butterfly's wings are like stained glass windows.  (Much prettier than the transparent yellow-green soybean aphid, unless you happen to be a fan of the transparent yellow-green soybean aphid.)

Light from an invisible lamp.

Would "caller i.d." help with this invisible telephone user?

A costume headpiece that makes one's face invisible.  And another one (with glowing eyes).

Do invisible birds and unseen enemies cast shadows?

This invisible mother and child are part of the Salvation Army's "Invisible People" campaign.