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Local biking; car colors
2006-07-24 21:555-6 minutes from home to Washington and Hillside. Up to 15 minutes (I took a detour) from there to Walnut and Pinewood (minor street south of Hoosier, minor street south of major Country Club Road). 11 minutes back to Walnut and Hillside, 6 minutes from Lincoln and Hillside back home.
Things noted along the way: a King Gyros which looked tempting but I didn't go in (nothing to read, never mind violating my current food rules); a car lot I'll get back to; a big expanse of grass and trees and a sign which suggested it might be all turned into a shopping center; a totem pole outside a house on Lincoln.
The car lot had a sign saying "Big car sale!" which I wanted to parse as (Big car) sale. There were lots of pickups and SUVs. I also noticed something I've noted before, which is that most of the cars are white (or light gray shades), black (or dark gray shades), or red, which other colors being a lot rarer. I first had my attention drawn to car colors in my senior year of high school, when a bright guy said out of the blue "you never see any yellow cars that aren't taxis", and it certainly does seem a rare color, though there were a couple on this lot. Sometime later I noticed the white/black/red predominance. The other colors seem more attractive to me, though I wonder if that's a function of their rarity.
But there's something interesting from cognitive science: not all languages have the same suite of color terms, but there's a nested pattern. All languages have words for light and dark. Some have only one additional color term, in which case that color is red. I think the next color will be either blue or green, the next will be the other of those two. There's a fixed sequence of color term adoption, upto some point.
So, it's interesting that the top three colors of US cars are the top three colors of language. I don't think the same would be true of housing.
Things noted along the way: a King Gyros which looked tempting but I didn't go in (nothing to read, never mind violating my current food rules); a car lot I'll get back to; a big expanse of grass and trees and a sign which suggested it might be all turned into a shopping center; a totem pole outside a house on Lincoln.
The car lot had a sign saying "Big car sale!" which I wanted to parse as (Big car) sale. There were lots of pickups and SUVs. I also noticed something I've noted before, which is that most of the cars are white (or light gray shades), black (or dark gray shades), or red, which other colors being a lot rarer. I first had my attention drawn to car colors in my senior year of high school, when a bright guy said out of the blue "you never see any yellow cars that aren't taxis", and it certainly does seem a rare color, though there were a couple on this lot. Sometime later I noticed the white/black/red predominance. The other colors seem more attractive to me, though I wonder if that's a function of their rarity.
But there's something interesting from cognitive science: not all languages have the same suite of color terms, but there's a nested pattern. All languages have words for light and dark. Some have only one additional color term, in which case that color is red. I think the next color will be either blue or green, the next will be the other of those two. There's a fixed sequence of color term adoption, upto some point.
So, it's interesting that the top three colors of US cars are the top three colors of language. I don't think the same would be true of housing.