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From: John Jones on 20 Feb 2010 13:51
Jeff Rubard wrote:
> Subject: A Neglected Four-Color Problem: Green, Red, Black and White
>
>
> Recently, there has been a rash of enthusiasm for "empirically"
> generated results in mathematics -- set off by the "brute-force"
> solution of the most famous probem in graph theory, the conjecture
> that no more than four colors are necessary to ensure that any
> map colors areas having adjacent segments differently. But if
> the common folk are to share in this excitement, perhaps the
> interest need not be restricted to computer equipment severally
> outside the reach of ordinary people -- "massively parallel
> networks" already exist outside the box, and it is a traditional
> complaint that they do too little. So let us consider another
> problem having to do with the ordering of pairs, the traditional
> "valences" of the colors green, red, black and white under their
> sociopolitical (political/economic) aspect. Many of us will have
> slogans like "Better dead than red" ready to hand for dealing
> with those pale males in their flying machines: but perhaps there
> is even more to these matchings than coloring souls beautiful, and
> thusly I would like to invite the reader to participate in a little
> thought-experiment involving a relatively tame form of concentration.
>
>
> To begin, I will give the historical valences of the first three
> colors. As many of you will know, "green-label" products are
> traditionally for "all the people": i.e., the cheapest such
> product that you can buy. "Red-label" products are a cut above;
> they won't make you look bad, but they won't necessarily make
> you look good either. Black-label products are "beyond the beyond":
> they are of a piece with a mystique transcending their conditions
> of production, and you can probably stand it. Now, for the fourth:
> white-label records are strictly for DJs -- as many people know --
> and we can say that "white-label" products are "beyond you": it
> wouldn't do to meditate upon them, in a manner of speaking (or,
> in another manner of speaking, perhaps there has never been a
> proper thought about "white space" in publications -- it's something
> to talk about to take your mind off text). Now, since we have
> "bracketed" one particular "color" as non-conventional,
> let's have the thought-experiment: although we all know that
> there are surprising "felicities" concerning color-coordination,
> suppose for the time being that every use of color in
> product-packaging is conventional: that a book with a brown
> cover effectively says something "determinate" about the color
> in its juxtaposition to the material.
>
>
> Now, suppose that the aforementioned four colors are the *political*
> colors: that they correspond to four natural attitudes to political
> life
> (populism, socialism, anarchism and paranoia "of any kind"). Then
> think about the position of objects with those colors in social space
> --
> that is to say, from the arrangement of items in your shopping cart
> to
> magazine glossies featuring products you could never buy. Finally,
> think about what you are "investing" in the perception so generated:
> do your beliefs about the object create many of your thoughts about
> it? Do you find a this a virtuous or unvirtuous way to understand
> it?
> Why would the former be the case? Why would the latter not be
> the case? How many different impressions of this object can you
> juggle?
> How many are you allowed to juggle in the minds of other people?
> What gives you that impression?
>
>
> Certainly not the brackets that go around an ordered pair, but maybe
> the piece of type which was handled to put those down on the page:
> and if we are to spend a great deal of time on "face" as it is
> understood
> by computer scanners, perhaps it is worth reflecting upon the
> traditional
> limitations of graph theory (that it is not a theory of "graphs", but
> rather a theory of the content expressed in graphs) and the
> "traditional"
> limitations of "massively parallel" computing architectures (they
> don't
> drive so well, and you wouldn't want to take them home) -- but
> perhaps
> you are also feeling, by the end of this, as though the furniture of
> the
> world is not being "graphed" for you.
>
>
> ----
> Trans: Do you think swastikas look cool? The same "nazis" /still/ run
> your school. They're teachers, businessmen and cops/In the real
> "Fourth Reich" you'll be the first to go/But �
> none of our thoughts are very deep and *Farbung* is /no/ substitute
> for "tact and tempo" ["jokes intrinsic" - Am. English] � rather an
> *accompagnera* that fundamentally remains Unthought as per the Law of
> the Eyeball � it's in the front of your head and doesn't do most of
> your thinking, on pain of insanity, or have "color vision" [!! - Do
> you remember President Horwich? - J.C.] of objects that
> *conceptually* lack it such as texta.
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