Color Me Confused

Today we begin with the first-ever initial Gene Pool Gene Poll, right at the top, demonstrating the majesty of this important feature. Here it comes.

Which of the following is an ACTUAL — not made up — example of something very recent and ridiculous that has actually happened at an actual institution of higher learning in the United States of America?

Choice One: The Graduate School for Social Work at Smith College abandoned the word “field” — as in “going to the field,” or “field work” from its lexicon, because the word might have connotations that could be considered offensive, inasmuch as it might suggest cotton-picking and slavery.

Choice Two: Lecturers in the journalism department at a major national university were asked by administrators not to use all capitals when communicating with students because it might make them too scared to do the assignments.

Choice Three: The New School, a private university in NYC, expressed concern and recommended changes, because it had concluded that its normal-sized chairs were perpetuating micro-aggressions against overweight students.

Choice Four: A Clemson University training course instructed its attendees that it is offensive to expect people to be on time, because “time may be considered fluid” in different cultures.

Choice Five: A professor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York was forced to change his syllabus after stating that “effort” was 10 percent of a student’s grade. The school deemed this “sexual harassment,” because it might have suggested he was promising students higher grades for intimate services.

I am going to give you the correct answer two paragraphs below, but want you all to think about this seriously, and weigh it judiciously. There is only one correct answer. So to give you time, we are going to veer dramatically to an important issue of aptonymic appreciation. This is also the highest an aptonym has ever appeared in a Gene Pool. We are setting records every week. I hope you will respond accordingly.

At the end of this paragraph I am going to link to a newspaper story. Please note the subject of the story and the name of the reporter. Please consider that aptonyms are only aptonyms if they are inadvertent — for example, the stripper “Chesty Morgan” is not an aptonym unless she was born — I strongly doubt it — with that name. In this case, however, it is not only likely but probable that the assignment of this story to this lady was deliberate, but if it was, I declare, as the worldwide expert and curator of aptonyms, that it still is notable, and qualified, because it officially recognizes the wonder and wonderfulness of the aptonym as an art form. Here it is.

Okay. Here is the answer to the Gene Pool Gene Poll. The question was a little deceptive. They are ALL true, all happened in the last few years , but not all were “very recent.” Choice A was very recent, and Choice B was, too, but it was in Britain, not the U.S.A. But all are real, and we are a stupid global academic culture.

Boring but important boilerplate: After the intro (which you are reading now), there will be some early questions and answers  added on — and then Gene will keep adding them as the hour progresses and your fever for his opinions grows and multiplies and metastasizes.  To see those later Q&As, refresh your screen occasionally. 

As always, you can also leave comments. They’ll congregate at the bottom of the post, and allow you to annoy and hector each other and talk mostly amongst yourselves. Though we will stop in from time to time.

Lastly, for this introduction, we are going to venture into very serious territory, the science of human perception. It is a continuation, and resolution, of a debate begun a couple of weeks ago, in the Gene Pool. I asked you all a question, thinking it would go nowhere in particular, just a casual question. Would we know it, if some people perceived colors vastly differently than most of us do? Let us say there was a person, we will call her Clytemnestra, who looks at a color we identify as blue, but sees it in her brain as, say, red. And when she sees what we call yellow, she sees it as, say, orange. She is not colorblind. She has a full range of color perception, but gets them “wrong.”

The question is: Would we have any way of ever knowing this, about Clytemnestra, or her about herself? Because ever since she was a little girl, she would have learned what “blue” is — it is what she sees in her head as red. So she would correctly call that color “blue.” And she would — correctly — identify yellow, even though the color she saw in her head was orange.

I had intended this to be a kind of throwaway philosophical question, however Connie would not let me do that. Connie Akers is a reader of the The Gene Pool and bombarded me with theories on this subject, guilting me quite effectively on not exploring it adequately. A lesser Gene Pool administrator/operative would have just blown her off, and she thought that was what I was doing, but that is not the way I roll here, Connie. Instead, I consulted four scientific experts in color perception, for you, the general reader, and Connie, the uber-reader. I have an answer.

I am not going to quote Connie here, but it turns out she was basically right in most of her theories and postulations. The experts I consulted were the following: Joseph Carroll, Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, Biophysics, and Cellular Science at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Jay Neitz, professor of ophthalmology and biopsychology at the University of Washington, Jeff Hovis, optometrist and expert in vision sciences from the University of Waterloo, and Roxana Bujack, Staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, late of Leipzig University, and an expert on perception. I am not going to quote all of these people either, because what they have to say is alarmingly technical, except for Dr. Bujack, who managed to bring urination into the discussion, and I love her for it.

Basically, this is a subject they all have considered since childhood. And they are in complete, wonderful disagreement at a solid answer. Mostly, though, they consider the issue moot: Because we are establishing that the physical structure of the eye is “normal” — these have a full range of color perception, across the spectrum, it is highly unlikely that there would be some confusion between general color perception; that is because color perception is linked directly to the wavelength of light. The cones on the human retina — concentrated in the macula, the center of our eyesight — react to wavelength. If we stipulate a normal range of color perception in the cones, they will tend to report accurately, scientifically. Mathematically.

HOWEVER…

What if, theoretically, there was a hiccup of a nature we cannot yet understand? (For example, reincarnation is generally dismissed as an impossibility because science has no explanation for what physical phenomenon could produce it, but some researchers allow for the possibility of something we do not yet understand.) So, what if?

It would be complicated. Among other things, there is a link between color perception and emotion: Some colors trigger depression, others joy, etc., but these are triggered not by the perception of what the color looks like to the viewer, but by the wavelengths of the color as transmitted to neuroreceptors. So Clytemnestra might feel angry while seeing what she sees as blue, but which we see as red. Whoa. Complicated.

The experts I consulted were very conflicted on the central, philosophical issue here. Roxana Bujack was the most interesting, suggesting there might be an anomaly that would create this sort of “wrong” color perception and gave a great example of how difficult it is to assess perception:

“Big picture, I think it is out of my scientific scope because it boils down to the question if a C minor sounds the same to you as it does to me or if it feels the same to you if you need to pee as it feels to me when I do.”

One of the points that some of the experts agreed on, and some did not, was how we might tell if there is someone (or many people) afflicted with this color “wrongness.” One possible way, some said — and others disagreed — was if the person exhibited bizarre choices in clothing, such as this.

I’m going to leave it there.

Okay, we are about to descend into your questions and my answers. Many of your submissions were responding to my request in My Sunday Gene Pool, asking for a certain type of joke — jokes that are somewhat offbeat, mostly unknown, very unexpected. You sent in jokes by the dozens of dozens — good for you! — almost all of which were ordinary, hackneyed, uncreative dad-quality blather and pap. Alas. However, enough of you got the idea, so we have a fine show.

Q: A man who works in a pickle factory comes home one day, distraught. His wife sees his pain and asks what’s wrong. He says “I am suffering from a terrible urge. I want to put my penis in the pickle slicer.” His wife is horrified. She urges him to get psychiatric help, but he gets angry, says he can handle this on his own.

One month later he comes home in the middle of the day. He looks devastated, deep in despair.

Wife asks: “Omigod, did you DO it?”

“Yes,” he says, miserably.

Well, what happened?

“They fired me.”

“But, I mean what happened with the pickle slicer? “

“They fired her, too.”

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See, that is a great, unexpected, outrageous joke. I’ve known it for years, happy to find it in your mail.

TIMELY TIP: If you're reading this right now on an email:   Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “Color Me Confused …”) for my full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers. And you can refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post from about noon to 1 ET.

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Q: It seems that Richard Jeni, whom I had never heard of had a history of depression and suicidal thoughts. His punch line in the joke concerning vaseline set forth in this Punch Me column caused me to laugh out loud.

Q: Yes, he was great.  Read his favorite joke in my Sunday Gene Pool, linked to right above here. .  

And then read the next post.  

Q: I miss Richard Jeni - smart, funny, and quite a looker. I blame his political science degree for his depression. When I worked in the political science office at a university that shall remain nameless, I had a Jeni quote on my door that pissed off the political science faculty to the point that someone would tear it down at least once a week (I had a pile of them in my office and would just tape another to the door to replace it).

The joke I had posted on my office door was Jeni’s joke about his political science degree - he asked his professor what he could do with his political science degree and the professor responded “You can teach other people political science.” So Jeni asked, “And what can THEY do with the political science degree?” The professor replied, “They can teach political science.” That’s when he realized; this wasn’t college - it was a pyramid scheme. It was Amway with a track team.”

Q: I’m a semi regular listener to Kornheisers podcast. He frequently talks about the Post and has many current and former Post folks on the show. One person he never mentions is you. Weren’t you his editor when he wrote for Style? When he wrote of his friend “Gino” wasn’t that you? Is there a story of estrangement here? Word is he holds big grudges and though, not overtly, is vindictive.

A: No vindictiveness or bad feelings, other than those familiarly felt between editor and writer.  It’s just that Tony wouldn’t dare have me on his show because he is too much of a wuss to ask, and never will.  He understands my intellectual superiority.  Please tell him I said this. 

Q: Gene: Scary or potentially game changing for the disabled -- this business of non-invasive mind reading ? You may have read about the breakthrough research at the University of Texas, Austin in which researchers used GPT1, a precursor to the AI chatbot ChatGPT, to translate functional MRI images into text to successfully (although rudimentarily) understand what subjects were thinking, based on what they were listening to, imagining or watching. Any concerns about what the thoughts of Gene Weingarten might reveal to the world ? Would they be of a philosophical bent or more about fud (including an emphasis on used) ?

A: The human race would soon die out, when women discovered what men were thinking.

URGENT: A good friend just this minute sent me this. His note was simply, “Father.”

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Q: What’s the best thing about having kids? You no longer have to pay someone to shit on your chest.

A: Disgusting, but not as bad as this one, which must be said aloud. Q:  What’s so great about dating 29-year-olds?   A: There are 20 of them! 

Both are utterable, IMO, because they are preposterous. Not to be taken literally.

Q: Okay how about these two? 

1. Say what you will about pedophiles, but at least they drive slow in school zones.

2. Guy enters his house with a sheep under his arm. He goes up to the bedroom where his wife is reading in bed. He says "Darling, this is the pig I have sex with when you have a headache." Wife looks up and says "I think you'll find that's a sheep, not a pig." Guy says "I think you'll find I wasn't talking to you."

A: The first is very good, the second is an excellent variation – better, i guess - than the parrot version. 

Q: One of my favorite jokes: So one day there were two muffins in the oven. The first one says, "Hey, does it seem like it's getting hot in here to you?" And the other one goes, "AGHHHH!!! A talking muffin!!"

A: Good joke.  I deleted your second paragraph because it stepped all over your first. You will thank me later.

Q: My favorite joke is about the guy who tries to bring an elephant on a plane with a piece of bread in each of the elephants ears. The stewardess tells him "what are you doing with an elephant on the plane", and he responds "what difference does it make to you what I have in my sandwich!"

A: I like it.

Q: An American, a Russian, a North Korean, and an Israeli are walking down the street. A reporter comes up and asks them, “Excuse me, sirs, what’s your opinion of the shortage of meat?”

The American says, “What’s a shortage?”

The Russian says, “What’s meat?”

The North h Korean says, “What’s an opinion?”

The Israeli says, “What’s ‘Excuse me?’”

This is a joke that Israelis proudly tell on themselves.

A: Okay, I’ll take the bait here. This is one of my favorite jokes. I tell it all the time. I told it — in some forum — in the last week, exactly as written, including “Russia” and an indication it was “a cold-war-era joke.” Are you messing with me? You are, aren’t you? You just heard this from me, somehow, right? Can’t find my saying it online.

Q: While musing idly, I encountered the following thought; it is one of many I have regarding the strange phenomenon that is the English Language: Why do we say we are griefSTRICKEN, but aweSTRUCK? These are important questions.

A: I agree and am awestricken.  

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Q: As a native, I'm sure you not only appreciate this one, but very likely lived it.

A man approaches another on a midtown street in Manhattan. "Hi," he says, "Can you tell me the best way to get to Carnegie Hall or should I just go f**k myself ?"

A: It is my second favorite NYC joke, though it should be a cabdriver who is asked. My favorite has to carry an explanation. From a standup comic I was watching in New York in the 1990s, just after a very famous incident in which I giant crane fell off the top of a skyscraper and crashed to the street below. The comic said he was actually in a cab at the time, in the street, when the accident happened. The driver veered to just avoid it, then kept driving. Cabbie muttered “fuckin’ cranes!”

Q: What's red and bad for your teeth? A brick.

A: Nice! 

Q: Speaking of waiting on line to pay for something, I am frustrated to the point of anger by people who, after having their large order finally ring up while they amiably chat with the cashier, seem to be suddenly SURPRISED that they are required to pay for their items. What ensues is a Keystone Cop worthy fumbling and bumbling through an oversized purse only to finally find the ginormous wallet (which should have been obvious to see immediately) followed by more fumbling trying to find the exact card required to pay for the transaction. Which is inevitably declined. Leading to more discussions/pleadings/“just try it again, while I stand there just wanting to buy my Ho-Hos and hemorrhoid cream and leave.

A: A lot of people mentioned this; yours was best written.  But I am using it mostly to declare that you grew up in, or lived in, New York City.  Because to my knowledge only New Yorkers like me say “wait on line,” instead of “in line.”

Oops. I am going to have to leave a little early today. However, I will leave you with this, and with my entreaty that you continue leaving comments, and asking questions that I will answer on Thursday, in the Invitational chat.

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