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Bees and things
20 October 2006 00:05Today or last night, one of the bee arenas got knocked so opened up a small gap (yes, it's duct taped together so isn't always a perfect seal). Therefore, our lab meeting was interrupted by, "There's a bee on your shoulder!" and "Hey, this one landed on Van Gogh's Sunflowers!"
Although it overran by an hour because we were having a good debate, mostly. We were talking about how bees categorise colour, and if they do at all, and how to test it. However, the main fact that seemed to emerge was that colour categorisation is a bit of a fable. Mostly when we categorise colours as "red" or "green" or "blue", it's simply a product of the way the sensitivities of our cones work, not some mystical universal product of language or human cognition. Or that's the theory.
Meeting with me and supervisor also overran by an hour. Because we were discussing project ideas and other things. I now look like I may end up doing stuff on bees foraging in forest understorey type conditions. Behavioural data, yay! This also follows on nicely from a paper my supervisor did in about 1999 where they analysed the flora of some places in Germany. (*ponders fieldwork in Germany...can it be justified, is it useful?*) So there is keenness and optimism.
One of the other PhD students in the lab also likes Die Prinzen. She's actually one of the English ones - our lab is about 40% German, 50% English and 10% Canadian, or so my rough reckoning suggests. It's good. We should have a German day, have supervisor import German wine from Würzburg, eat Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and play German music all day. *bounces*
In the evening, since I'm still being careful with my Injury of D00m, which has turned out not to be a hernia as the swelling has receded, I skived off Aikido and went to the SciFi movie night instead. We watched The Incredibles. I ended up having to run back home to fetch my lappie, since the SciFi lappie wasn't playing the DVD. And then projector chose to be special and deprive us of magenta. Since I refused to sit for 10 minutes while lappie restarted so we could try a different port on the projector, and everyone else agreed (as we were already 45 minutes late by then), we watched it in 2 colours. This is a bizarre experience. The Incredibles' costumes were classy grey, which I think is an improvement. The magma looks a lot less scary when it's yellow-green rather than red-orange, hehe!
It was so very weird how intense the red experience was for the first couple of minutes after we finished the DVD and put the lights back on. It's funny...red is not my "favourite" colour, per se, but if I had to ditch any of my cones, the red ones would be the ones I'd be most desperate to hold on to. I just find the world looks lacking without red!
Although it overran by an hour because we were having a good debate, mostly. We were talking about how bees categorise colour, and if they do at all, and how to test it. However, the main fact that seemed to emerge was that colour categorisation is a bit of a fable. Mostly when we categorise colours as "red" or "green" or "blue", it's simply a product of the way the sensitivities of our cones work, not some mystical universal product of language or human cognition. Or that's the theory.
Meeting with me and supervisor also overran by an hour. Because we were discussing project ideas and other things. I now look like I may end up doing stuff on bees foraging in forest understorey type conditions. Behavioural data, yay! This also follows on nicely from a paper my supervisor did in about 1999 where they analysed the flora of some places in Germany. (*ponders fieldwork in Germany...can it be justified, is it useful?*) So there is keenness and optimism.
One of the other PhD students in the lab also likes Die Prinzen. She's actually one of the English ones - our lab is about 40% German, 50% English and 10% Canadian, or so my rough reckoning suggests. It's good. We should have a German day, have supervisor import German wine from Würzburg, eat Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and play German music all day. *bounces*
In the evening, since I'm still being careful with my Injury of D00m, which has turned out not to be a hernia as the swelling has receded, I skived off Aikido and went to the SciFi movie night instead. We watched The Incredibles. I ended up having to run back home to fetch my lappie, since the SciFi lappie wasn't playing the DVD. And then projector chose to be special and deprive us of magenta. Since I refused to sit for 10 minutes while lappie restarted so we could try a different port on the projector, and everyone else agreed (as we were already 45 minutes late by then), we watched it in 2 colours. This is a bizarre experience. The Incredibles' costumes were classy grey, which I think is an improvement. The magma looks a lot less scary when it's yellow-green rather than red-orange, hehe!
It was so very weird how intense the red experience was for the first couple of minutes after we finished the DVD and put the lights back on. It's funny...red is not my "favourite" colour, per se, but if I had to ditch any of my cones, the red ones would be the ones I'd be most desperate to hold on to. I just find the world looks lacking without red!
