I was rather hoping that it might be an indication that the SDMB has largely outgrown tiresome pearl-clutching about “woke” toy companies “virtue signaling” to the “SJWs” just because the companies decided to make some products that it hopes potential customers will find appealing enough to purchase.
(Which, after all, is kind of the whole point of being a toy company, or any other manufacturer for that matter.)
So yeah, if these sorts of topics now have to wait for somebody to notice that the product in question bears a surprising resemblance to some arcane industrial standard in order to get a thread started about them, I would consider that progress.
I’ve always thought the indigo vs. violet distinction was a bit artificial and one could quite happily descripe the rainbow as ROYGBP(urple) which also makes some logical sense as three primary + three secondary colours.
Turns out Newton may have decided on seven colours for rather unscientific reasons.
“The only reason Newton came up with ‘indigo’ is because for occult reasons he believed there must be seven basic colours that come together to make white. It certainly has little to do with physics and a lot more to do with the relationship between perception and language,” Fleming said.
For those that are not familiar with it, this is the most common mnemonic that was taught in EE / tech schools for decades for the resistor code given in the OP.
Bad = 0 black
Boys = 1 brown
Ravish = 2 red
Our = 3 orange
Young = 4 yellow
Girls = 5 green
But = 6 blue
Violet = 7 violet
Gives = 8 gray
Willingly = 9 white
This is followed by a tolerance band which is typically either silver or gold.
So a resistor with brown black red gold would be 1 0 00 or 1k ohms, and the gold means 5 percent tolerance.
While this is by far the most common mnemonic used for resistor codes, it is considered extremely offensive today, especially with the much more common “Rape” instead of “Ravish” used for the color red. Some variants also use “black boys” instead of “bad boys”. I will leave this here for clarity and historical reference, but let’s refrain from posting this except in proper context (i.e. it is permissible to discuss the offensive or historical nature of it).
You seem to assume the product could only be noticed and announced here by somebody posting their disapproval.
I see no reason somebody else can’t post about it approvingly, more like this:
Hey folks: I just saw this product. It’s an interesting sign of another stodgy company starting to move forward and finally get with the program.
Given the way most of the board leans and the fact we’re reading in MPSIMS, not the Pit, I’d sooner expect the approving tone. In fact before I opened this thread that’s exactly what I expected from the title.
My bottom line: The culture war is not over yet, not by a long shot, but perhaps you’re still fighting last year’s battles more than you realize. (Which, sadly, may well be next year’s battles once again.)
Newton was a giant nutbar who happened to be good with numbers. And he was a vindictive, jealous asshole, too. We should reduce the spectrum to 6 - just to spite his memory.
Technically there shouldn’t be purple as it doesn’t correspond to a single wavelength of light and therefore doesn’t occur in the rainbow. It is the colour we perceive when our eyes detect red and blue light. Violet, on the other hand, does correspond to a wavelength of light. More correctly, when we talk about the purple in the rainbow, we really mean violet.
Hooke’s Cradle.