Wehrenberg Theaters just started offering “$5 Movie Tuesdays.”  This might be in reaction to the long-running Regal Theater chain’s $5 Wednesday movies.  Wehrenberg, however, offers a bag of free popcorn for each ticket purchased, a perk not included at Regal.

Ted and I playfully wondered how the 46 oz. of popcorn would be measured.  Ounces can be a solid measure of weight (16 oz. = 1 lb.) or a liquid measure (16 oz. = 1 pint).  Since 46 oz. of liquid popcorn would be impossible, we assumed a measure of weight would be more likely and questioned whether the weight would be popped or unpopped corn–either being a huge amount of popcorn.  To cut the theater (and its advertising editors) a break, we decided it was probably reasonable to expect a container capable of holding 46 oz. of liquid (a little less than 1.5 quarts) to be filled with popcorn.

We would never eat that much popcorn together at a sitting, never mind one serving per ticket holder.  Still, imagine our surprise when we saw that the 46 oz. of free popcorn was handed to us in a bag with a volume slightly greater than that of a 12 oz. can!

46 ounces in that bag?  I think not.

I asked the server how they measured the 46 oz. and he told me that it’s a “new measurement” and is actually a “measure of value.”  So theaters can now set new measurement standards?  And what on earth is a “measure of value” in a food product?

Oh, well, the movie was good and that 46-ounce measure of value amount was plenty of popcorn for us to share as a snack.

Just wondering:  What if this is one of those ubiquitous editing errors I keep finding, and no one at Wehrenberg noticed it was supposed to read 4 point 6 oz. of free popcorn?  That certainly would have been closer to the actual measurement.

Today, every natural language that has words for colors identifies two to twelve basic colors.  English identifies eleven.  Do you know what they are?  If you want to quiz yourself, do it now, before reading the text below.  Hint:  Indigo is not one of them.

In early times, the only colors that were identified were bright (white) and dark (black).  As time went on, red became a recognized color.  The next two identified colors were green and yellow (or yellow, then green), followed by blue.  All languages that distinguish colors have these six colors.  Interestingly, these six colors roughly correspond to the sensitivity of the retinal ganglion cells.  This indicates that development of color identification might be related to biology.

Brown, orange, pink, purple, and gray were the next colors to appear as color names, but not in any particular order.  People started identifying pink and purple as colors from pinks (dianthus flowers) and from Tyrian purple, the dye that became the royal color (wearing the purple).  Orange is a color mystery.  Was the fruit named for the color, or the color for the fruit?  At this point, there’s no way of knowing.

The eleven colors identified in English are black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple, and gray.  Italy, Greece, and Russia name azure as the twelfth color.  Other color names may be used in a language, but they are considered to be derivatives of the basic colors.  Languages and cultures are selective when deciding which hues to split into different colors, based on how light or dark they are.

“I learned this from the Grammarly blog” said grammar-nerd Diane, wearing a teal-colored shirt (derived from blue).