Crayola® Crayon Chronology

Since 1903, when Binney & Smith introduced the first Crayola crayon, people have been fascinated with the heritage of our color names. You’ll find a summary of Crayola crayon history for now but come back soon and explore a detailed description of how each individual crayon was introduced, how the name was chosen, read interesting stories about each crayon, and more!

Link from Aly Colón by way of the muted horn.

We could refer to the mocha-colored man, or the café au lait-colored woman, or a child with the skin tone of a Starbucks caramel frappucino.
For [my daughter], a Starbucks fan, caramel frappacino is a color she’d be proud to call her own.

“I wouldn’t like to see you in a dark alley at midnight.”
“I wouldn’t like to be in a dark alley at midnight, so we’re even.”

I wonder why on-the-job training, at-will employment, ex-parte application, in-vitro fertilization are more usual than the better English training on the job, employment at will, application ex parte, fertilization in vitro.

I also wonder why children say me and him in the subject, leading to the odious hypercorrection he and I in the object.

A couple of weeks ago I happened to meet Jeff Hummel on Market Street. My eye was caught not by his face but by his t-shirt, which bore several crossed-out misspellings of Laissez Faire.

Multiculturalism at Cal Poly

On Jan. 29, Cal Poly [California Polytechnic State University] charged Hinkle with “disruption” of a “campus event.” The students who objected to the posting of the flier claimed they were holding a Bible study dinner and meeting at the time of the incident. The university’s “finding of facts” notes that the Bible study group is not officially recognized, that the bulletin board is in a public “student lounge area,” and that no notice of any kind indicated that a meeting was underway at the time.

. . .

On March 12, Vice Provost W. David Conn found Hinkle guilty. Conn ordered Hinkle to write letters of apology to the offended students. The sentencing letter from Conn stated that the text of the apology would be subject to the approval of the Office of Judicial Affairs. The letter, Halvorssen notes, also warned that “this decision is final.” Conn informed Hinkle that if he did not accept this punishment, he would face much stiffer penalties, including expulsion.

Column by Vin Suprynowicz; link from Rational Review News Digest

Declaration of Individual Independence (link from Rational Review News Digest)

At dinner last night, whom should I espy but loyal reader Mysterious Mike Linksvayer. (After that, it is fitting that Mike’s page leads me to a guide to spices.)

Afterward my party went to a cinema for Lawrence of Arabia, which none of us had seen before. Unfortunately the sound was muddy enough to obscure some of the dialogue. We left at intermission (how many movies have an intermission?); it was already ten p.m.

In one scene where Lawrence sits meditating on a dune, my eye was caught by aeolian (wind-made) ripples in the sand, with a period of about half a foot; I’ve seen orbital pictures of dunes that looked just like those ripples. Can’t recall whether they were on Earth or on Mars. If on Earth, then: hey, fractal self-similarity! If not, perhaps the sizes of the grains or the differences in gravity and atmosphere make the difference in scale.

One of the Bedouins says of a particularly nasty patch of land, “This is the Sun’s Anvil.” I wonder: would nomads know about anvils? Where did their knives come from?

I once heard someone on television refer to Lawrence‘s director David Lean as “David Lynch” – director of another film that had something to do with sand.