Re: CHAT: Orange

   This sounds a lot like my friend Bill.
   Bill's father is an ophthalmologist and neurophysiologist, so he would
give his children regular, thorough eye exams.
   One day, when Bill was young, Bill asked his father why fluorescent
lights have a bright halo around them, and incandescent lights don't. This
intrigued his father, who ran some perception tests. Apparently, Bill's
perceptual range is longer than average, and extends a bit into UV. That is
the halo he sees around fluorescent lights. He also loves blacklights, but
he complains about them being too bright, and they give him a headache.
   When I inquired about this, he said "the other color" is like a very pale
violet with a lot of white in it.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Canivet
To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
Sent: 6/12/2002 6:41 PM
Subject: Re: CHAT: Orange

>From: Tim May <butsuri@...>
>
>I believe there are supposed to be people with a fourth cone type... I
>seem to recall the word used was "tetrachromat".  Very rare, though.
>Supposed to have exceptionally precise colour sense - I'd suspect
>Cristophe was one with his "Indigo isn't a type of blue", but IIRC
>they're all supposed to be female.  I'm not sure if any have actually
>been found, come to think of it.
|
|People with only one cone type are extremely rare, but they exist.  I
|imagine if there are people with four cones, there must be very few of
|them
|- but since a "tetrachromat" would suffer no impairment in colour
|perception
|(quite the opposite), he or she would probably be unlikely to report
|anything about it to a doctor and thus be "discovered."  It would really
|only stand out in art class or in discussions of colour naming
|Andy
|

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