Daily Dose of Science

Three good articles on ScienceBlogs:

Synesthesia: More common than previously thought. I am synesthetic, but my crossover is mostly between sound and color. Taste and color, too, I guess. I don't see colors in printed words/letters, but when I think them in my head, there is a color that goes with each sound and each word. Same with numbers. Examples? 1 is yellowish, almost white. 2 is green. Three is yellow. Four is orange. Five is brown. Six is bluish. Seven is red. Eight is dark blue (though going by the sound it really ought to be a deep red). Nine is yellow. And for the first time, I notice that the sounds of each number are the same color for me as the number itself. Except for eight. Somehow eight is dark blue, while ate is red with a tinge of yellow. Not sure why.

Another interesting bit of trivia: the curse words that I prefer are mostly goldish red in their sound. Damn (red). Hell (goldish). Bloody (red tinged with green). Blast (red, with lighter streaks, rather like a blast). Bastard (deeper red). For the purposes of discussion, I'll list the ones I don't like and their colors [mildly edited because they even look ugly to me]. A** (red, but a really deep, dark shiny red, like a poisoned apple). Sh*t (brown, but ship, oddly, is blue). F*ck (an incredibly ugly poisonous green). I will say that, by and large, vowel sounds dominate in determining a word's color. There are some exceptions where the consonants override things, but most of the time it's the vowels.

Next up, Sleep Deprivation. Conclusion? Chronic lack of sleep is bad.

And despite what the poor Christians with the persecution complex might think, Discrimination against Atheists is sadly quite common. Unless they follow "don't ask; don't tell," of course, since no one should have the right to openly disagree with the majority religion. Oh, wait. First amendment. Damn.