Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 13, 1994 TAG: 9410150003
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL ACHENBACH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A: An orange is orange. A lime is ``lime green.'' But a peach ain't peach. It is darker and redder and more orangey than the color commonly thought of as peach. Really. Just take a crayon to the supermarket.
The main thing you need to know is that this mismatch is not the fault of the fuzzy fruit. It's not like peaches were once peach-colored, and have only turned somewhat more orange and red due to selective breeding and genetic engineering.
Rather this reflects the fact that, if you take the color orange and ``whiten'' it, you get a nice pretty color that has to be called something. ``Peach'' may be an imperfect description of that color, but that's been the word for it for a long time and no one has had the audacity to do anything about it.
In fact ``peach'' has been an official color (that is, listed in the Standard Color Reference of America) since 1915. During World War I, sources of dyes from Europe were cut off. Americans had to invent their own colors. The heads of American fabric and textile companies held a big meeting at which they came up with 106 official colors, to be standard across the land. Their list included such things as robin's-egg blue, beaver brown, honeydew and strawberry -and they surely didn't have the real things on hand for guidance.
``They would not have had those animals or foodstuffs there'' at the standardization meeting, says Margaret Walch, associate director of the Color Association of the United States.
The official color ``peach'' is lighter, softer and more subtle than the color that most people would call ``peach.'' Walch, for our benefit, brought a real peach to the office and compared it to the now 198 official colors, and concluded that the interior pulp is a cross between basic orange and Spanish Yellow. The exterior is a red/orange. The part surrounding the pit, or stone, is a ``blued'' red, like the color known as ``cardinal.''
For that matter, the color ``strawberry'' is not the color of a strawberry. Rather it's the color of a strawberry milkshake. Which helps you understand the peach situation: It's basically orange, mixed in with lots of vanilla ice cream.
Q: Why was Zeus angry and irritated all the time, even though he had the really great job of being Zeus?
A: Everyone's a whiner. This Zeus character has the greatest life you can imagine -he gets to be the sky god, he controls the weather, he has oodles of hot babes after him, even his kids turn out to be gods -and yet he's constantly mad, hurling thunderbolts, acting tempestuous. What's his beef?
Here's his problem: He lives in a polytheistic world, not a monotheistic one. He is not omnipotent. He lives in a world he didn't create. He may be a god but he is not God. You'd be frustrated too if you lived on Mount Olympus as the top dog but still had to make compromises. Zeus was the Bill Clinton of his day.
``Zeus is a god, but he has to make alliances and compromises and in a sense he has to build coalitions with other gods that will help him stay as chief god,'' says Deborah Boedeker, a classicist at the Center For Hellenic Studies in Washington.
Meanwhile people are constantly plotting against Zeus, including his wife Hera, who is furious about his philandering. At one point in the ``Iliad,'' Hera decides to distract Zeus so that Poseiden can help the Greeks in their war against the Trojans. Hera gets dressed to thrill. Zeus' eyes practically pop out of his head. The old goat offers what he thinks is the highest praise:
``Now let us go now to bed and turn to lovemaking, for never before has love for any goddess nor any woman so melted the heart inside me, broken it to submission, as now. Not that time when I loved the wife of Ixion, who bore me Peirithoos ...''
And then he rattles off the list of goddesses that he has, at one time or another, found bedworthy. What a cad!
But Hera's trick works, the Greeks sneak out a victory, Zeus discovers the deceit, he rages and thunders, and so on. There was lots of drama, being a Greek god. It was basically the ancient version of ``Married ... With Children.''
The Mailbag:
Our readers are fabulously informed. Richard Boyden of Arlington, Va., has some inside dope on why the Apollo 11 astronauts were quarantined for three weeks. Boyden was part of a research team that worked for NASA studying lunar soil samples. Scientists found high concentrations of titanium dioxide.
We know what you're thinking: Not titanium dioxide! But yes. The very stuff. ``This was a compound that was used in the early years of cancer research to suppress the immune system in laboratory animals,'' Boyden writes.
``When the astronauts performed their moon walk activities, lunar dust adhered to their protective clothing. ... Lunar dust contaminated not only the lunar module but also the command module upon rendezvous. Thus the astronauts breathed this airborne dust all the way back to Earth.''
The good news is, the scientists studied the astronauts closely and concluded they weren't going to get sick. Subsequent quarantines were shorter.
(But we bet Neil and Buzz and the gang are still trying to get that dang stuff out of their ears and from between their toes.)
Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB