What is color anyway?

In the paint section of some hardware stores, there's a place where you can test what your chosen color sample will look like under different lights. I've often wondered how one color can looks so different in varying light. The interaction between a single pigment and the light reflected off of it are so innumerable it seems an injustice to classify it as - or rather confine it to - just one color.

The way we perceive color starts when a photon, artificial or from the sun, hits an object - well, one molecule of that object. The properties of the reflected light, and thereby the color we see, depend on the wavelength of the original photon, the chemical make-up of the pigment molecule, and even the angle at which the light hits the object.

Variations in color can also be caused by the amount of light hitting the color. Our perception of color depends so much on abundant light that, lacking it, the color sensing cells in our eyes "turn off", leaving simple black and white perception cells with full responsibility for providing us with sight. The light we depend on to see color is itself unclassifiable. The full spectrum of light is an ever-changing blend of colors, seen or unseen, that has no boundaries.

Whether we try to categorize color by wavelength or chemical composition, we still can't seem to define it. Try explaining red to a blind person. To people, the concept of red is hard to grasp and explain because there are no limits to what red can be; it is impossible to mark the boundaries of color.

C H O C O L A T E !!

No other words needed (besides the recipe).

Cake:
6 eggs
3/4 c. corn starch
1 1/4 c. sugar
1 1/2 c. chocolate (chips or baking)
1/2 c. butter

Melt chocolate and butter. Add sugar, corn starch and eggs yolks. Beat egg whites until firm.
Fold into the chocolate mixture and pour into buttered cake pan. Bake at 350 for ~40 minutes.


*Alternate option: Bake batter in two separate pans to create a layered cake, and put your favorite fruit preserves in the middle!


Icing:
6 tbs. butter
2 1/2 c. chocolate
1/4 c. confectioner's sugar
1/2 c. cream cheese
1/4 ts. vanilla
4 tbs. cocoa powder


Melt the chocolate and butter, stir in cream cheese, cocoa, vanilla, and sugar (adding more to taste).

Can anything truly be perfect?

The very definition of perfection seems to be a contradiction. "Being free ... of flaws and defects" is a flaw in and of itself. Something classified as perfect would have to display every possible virtuous quality and no flaws.

Say there existed such a thing as the "perfect bird". Such a bird would, in fact, be flawed in two ways. First, the bird - even a perfect one - is still only a bird. The perfect qualities of other creatures (e.g. perfect underwater breathing) are unattainable unless the qualifications of the category "bird" were drastically changed. So the fact that a perfect bird is still an avian creature limits its perfection, and perfection will not tolerate limits.

Secondly, if such a bird were to achieve complete perfection, it would then encompass every perfect characteristic. It could not gain anything more and would be, by definition, unable to change. Such an unchanging bird would be immutably perfect. Can anything be perfect if it always remains in one condition; limited to that one state, cut off from change?

Also, if perfection is defined by the nature of flaws - of which the bird has none - what could the bird be compared to that would reveal such an ideal? This assumes that there could not exist an "anti-bird" for contrast, since an absolutely perfect bird could exist independently (not would, could). Even the concept of perfection alone, without the bird identification, seems impossible. In a world defined by opposites, such an absolute flawlessness could not be recognized. But does perfection have to be appreciated to be perfect? Perhaps some ideal manifestation exists, but as humans, we cannot discern it because we must compare and quantify, and cannot comprehend infinite or absolute.