What colour is seventeen

Now to double your money - what colour is twenty three.

Seventeen is orange, no question.

(Guess who has Photoshop and essay procrastination to do?)

Synaesthesia rules, except for constantly getting D, H and R mixed up all the time as a kid cause they were too-close shades of yellow/gold.

(I don't think I qualify as a synesthete because I don't see the colours as a hallucination-type thing, only in my mind's eye. I used to do it properly as a child, but less so now. Occassionally I get a visual/ smell crossover, but even that's getting rarer)

23 = yellowy browny.

Wednesday is a sort of cacky shite-brown, especially at about 4 o'clock. Thursdays are yellow - a sort of pale butter-yellow, not the sort of freaky acid yellow that makes you wear sunglasses to avoid getting a migraine.

But it could be black? Or a fireery red??

anyone have characters for numbers? like little minidramas when you do mental(ist?) arithmetic? like 2 is quite easy going, 5 (who is always blue) is a bit brash but kindhearted in an all american goody way. as numbers get nearer to 10 they get more cliquey and evil. 9 is the evillest, 10 is kinda fat and loud but sinister 9 runs the show def.

1 is ineffable, but 11 is THE ENIGMA!!!!

yeah...

I have always been a bit puzzled that when I was a kid I assigned femaleness or maleness to colours and numbers, but they weren't just like pink for boys. In fact the only pink-related one was a dark crimsonish pink and it was male. I can remember the number correlations still: female = 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10. male = 4, 5, 7. (this seems a bit unusual to me because in most of my play things/characters were only assigned maleness, unless they had obvious characteristics to prevent this, like breasts on dolls or whatever). I don't think this really has anything to do with synasthesia but,...can anyone relate???

I only get this in a mental-association way, not in a hallucinatory way, and I'd like to know if you get the full-blown version - is it as beautiful as I imagine it?

17 is a combo of 1 (black) and 7 (teal)!

Male
BCDGHIKNOQRTWXZ

Female
AEFJLMPSUVY

It's probably all from picture books I read as a little boy.

these are the the ones i'm completely sure about - the others are kind of sketchy. 9 could well be violet. Shit - actually has anyone got the colours for BBC Basic programming? I used to be able to do it and I reckon that's where my choices come from.

7 is green and has strange, witch-like powers. Don't fuck with 7.

8 is blue and is kind, caring and fair. It is the big brother of the numbers.

1 - is a good singer but also rather secretive.
2 - yes, he is a bit stuck up. rude even.
3 - jolly. good fun to have around.
4 - loyal and understanding. a good confidante.
5 - also fun but messier and more shambolic than 3. might get you in trouble if you're not careful.
6 - six is just six but he is everybody's friend. a good all round guy.
7 - she is very mild and gentle. maybe a bit serious. a mother.
8 - like Wooden said. A father.
9 - gay

COLOUR 0 Black
COLOUR 1 Red
COLOUR 2 Green
COLOUR 3 Yellow
COLOUR 4 Blue
COLOUR 5 Magenta
COLOUR 6 Cyan
COLOUR 7 White
COLOUR 8 Intensified Black
COLOUR 9 Intensified Red

Hmmm - as I thought, they're not far off my own list.

Horizon
Thu 30 Sep, 9:00 pm - 9:50 pm 50mins

Derek Tastes of Earwax

Every time James Wannerton sees Derek he experiences a strong taste of earwax. James runs a pub and Derek is one of his regulars. Another regular's name gives him the taste of wet nappies. For some puzzling reason, James' sense of sound and taste are intermingled.

John sees words as colours - even though he is blind. Both men have a mysterious condition called synaesthesia - in which their senses have become linked.

For years scientists dismissed it, putting it in the same category as seances and spoon-bending. But now, synaesthesia is sparking a revolution in our understanding of the human mind. For it seems that we are all synaesthetic to some degree. Some now believe that it might even explain how we evolved two of the traits that define our species and have transformed our world - creativity and language.

In a film that is touching, witty and filled with cutting-edge science, Horizon continues its 40th anniversary season with an exploration of this many-faceted world.

So how in the fuck did he know what wet nappies tasted like?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,1047635,00.html

martin has a piece on freaky trigger at the moment that is vaguely related and, well, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat is also very similarly packed with fascinating case studies.

the other interesting thing was the one bloke who had no colours associated for words except words that formed some kind of sequence - numbers, days of the week, months of the year etc

ps 17 is purple

Colour in the eye of the beholder
By Victoria Griffith

Some people are convinced they can see coloured auras around others that no one else can detect. Researchers at University College London say the auras may be nothing more than the condition known as emotion-colour synaesthesia, generated by a quirk of the brain. "These colours do not reflect hidden energies being given off by other people," says Jamie Ward, author of a study appearing in this month's edition of Cognitive Neuropsychology. "Rather they are created entirely in the brain of the beholder."

About one in 2,000 people say they see auras. Dr Ward's group studied a woman known as GW who could see distinct colours when looking at photos of people she knew or when their names were read out. Words triggered a colour that spread across her whole field of vision, while people themselves appeared to have coloured auras around them. The scientists discovered that certain vocabulary generated colour responses in GW.

Researchers believe people who see auras may have a cross-wiring in the brain confusing centres involved in emotions with those of the senses. The condition runs in families.

"The ability of some people to see the coloured auras of others has held an important place in folklore and mysticism throughout the ages," says Dr Ward. "It is not hard to imagine how such an interpretation could arise."