The Family Circus
Super Happy
“Try these new names on for size:
Super Happy (yellow), Fun in the Sun (orange), Giving Tree (green),
Bear Hug (brown), Awesome (dusty pink), Happy Ever After (blue), Famous
(hot pink) and Best Friends (purple).”
—Paul Walsh, Crayola marks 64-count box’s 50th birthday with new colors, StarTribune.com, April 10, 2008.
Yes, the 64-count box of Crayola crayons was introduced just 50 years ago. Not Crayola crayons themselves, which are about twice that age, but the BIG BOX, the one with the build-in sharpener. If bigger is better, the BIG BOX was best! But the problem with the big box, as I recall, was getting all the crayons and crayon pieces back into the box. I mean . . . forget it! Nevertheless, the big box was, and is, big news in the color community.
Here’s another report, the announcement from Crayola, and in interesting list of Crayola color names through the ages from Wikipedia. (Thanks Mom!)
Then the copper faded into lilac
“So he lay on the cot, smoking, waiting for sunset. Through the open door he watched the sun slant and lengthen and turn copper. Then the copper faded into lilac, into the fading lilac of full dusk. He could hear the frogs then, and fireflies began to drift across the open frame of the door, growing brighter as the dusk faded. Then he rose.”
—Wiliam Faulkner, Light in August, 1932.
the yellow day
“It seemed to him that he could see the yellow day opeining peacefully on before him, like a corridor, an arras, into a still chiaroscuro without urgency. It seemed to him that as the sat there the yellow day contemplated him drowsily, like a prone and somnolent yellow cat.”
—Wiliam Faulkner, Light in August, 1932.
The red and unhurried miles
“The wagon goes on, slow, timeless. The red and unhurried miles unroll beneath the steady feet of the mules, beneath the creaking and clanking wheels. The sun stands now high overhead; the shadow of the sunbonnet now falls across her lap. She looks up at the sun. ‘I reckon it’s time to eat,’ she says.”
—Wiliam Faulkner, Light in August, 1932.
Color Worqx
Attention current color students and color enthusiasts generally: I have just been alerted to an excellent color design resource, the brainchild and labor of love of web designer Janet Lynn Ford, and it goes by the name of Color Worqx. It’s a full-semester color course on a website, without those pesky projects, deadlines and critiques.
Attention current students: Check out the information on color combinations, and don’t miss the color scheme generator. (Thank you Mallory Guidroz!)
a glottal stop
Yes, you are correct. That mark, from the International Phonetic Alphabet, represents a glottal stop. Spotted at Carl Zimmer’s Science Tattoo Emporium. (Thank you, Bruce!)
if it be as Philosophers hold
“The Sun is more Dry, Hot, Active, and Powerfull every way than the Moon . . . for we find she is Pale and Wan, Cold, Moist, and Slow in all her Operations; and if it be as Philosophers hold, that the Moon hath no Light but what it borrows from the Sun, so Women have no strength nor light of Understanding, but what is given them from Men.”
—Margaret Cavendish, The World’s Olio, 1655; quoted in The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination, by Constance Classen. 1998.
When the moon is full, our brain is also full
“When the moon is full, our brain is also full. We are then in full possession of our senses. But when the moon is new, our brain becomes emptier so that our sensory powers are injured.”
—Hildegard of Bingen, Divine Works; quoted in The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination, by Constance Classen. 1998.
‘the harder the tonality of the name the more efficacious the product in the mind of the physician and the end user’
“Prozac, the scientific name of which is fluoxetine, was the first drug whose public name was specifically created to evoke saleable images and ideas: in this case, the ‘pro’ connoting positivity, and the ‘zac’ the reassurance and exactitude of science. Since Prozac’s smashing success, it has become all but de rigueur that new blockbuster drugs have brand names that simultaneously soothe, invigorate, and inspire—the names of Viagra, Celebrex, Claritin, and others have all followed Prozac’s lead. . . . The stakes are so high that drug companies now work with branding agencies to select just the right name . . . a name like Zoloft, uplifting and scientific all at the same time. The hard decisive sounds of the letters X, Z, C, and D are attractive to drug namers. According to James L. Detorre, the president of the Institute (which came up with the names for Lipitor, Clarinex, and Allegra), ‘the harder the tonality of the name the more efficacious the product in the mind of the physician and the end user.’ The cost of developing a trade name for a drug is an estimated $500,000 to $2.5 million. Names are registered even before the drug exists. . . . The name Zoloft was invented by Frank Delano, a legendary marketing guru, who also created the names of Nissan’s Pathfinder and Quest minivans, GMC’s Yukon, and Primerica Financial Services.”
—Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation, 2008.