How To Make Anything Signify Anything "By the time he retired from the National Security Agency in 1955, Friedman had served for more than thirty years as his government’s chief cryptographer, and—as leader of the team that broke the Japanese PURPLE code in World War II, co-inventor of the US Army’s best cipher machine, author of the papers that gave the field its mathematical foundations, and coiner of the very term cryptanalysis—he had arguably become the most important code-breaker in modern history."
posted by puny human on Feb 4, 2011 - 10 comments

Purple Burglars Burgle a Purple House I'm sure they thought they would blend right in wearing so much purple, but a petcam doesn't care what color you are wearing.
posted by cjorgensen on Nov 1, 2010 - 48 comments

Smarties Australia paired 8 kids up with 8 artists to create art based on each Smarties colour. Here's orange video art, a song about moonwalking under the deep blue sea, the spoken word saga of a disco karaoke'ing duck, an upside-down red pop art world, The Pink Moon, photos of the purple Filecian dancers, a green tree sculpture, and the dance of insects burrowing through brown earth.
posted by divabat on Aug 29, 2010 - 28 comments

Sea urchins do not have eyes, yet appear to be able to see where they are going. One posible answer: they may use the entire surface of their bodies as a compound eye.
posted by Artw on Feb 7, 2010 - 31 comments

Gogol Bordello describe their music as "Gypsy Punk." Formerly the Bela Bartoks, singer Eugene Hutz was in the movie Everything Is Illuminated, as was their song Start Wearing Purple.
posted by homunculus on May 31, 2007 - 45 comments

A remarkable wedding portrait. Portraits: First Prize, Singles from the 2007 World Press Photo Winners Gallery by Nina Berman.
posted by spock on Feb 9, 2007 - 98 comments

A rabbi, some snails, the color purple, and a 1,500 year old mystery. By puzzling through various sources, a group of researchers and religious scholars think they have found in the mollusk Murex trunculus the source of a purplish dye that was used in ancient Jewish ceremonies over a millennia and a half ago. Murex has been used for the last 3,600 years to make Imperial or Tyrian Purple, a key color in the ancient world. There are many other pigments with their own interesting stories as well.
posted by blahblahblah on Dec 20, 2005 - 15 comments

I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.
By Mr. Gelett Burgess
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies on Nov 26, 2005 - 20 comments

And The Winner Is....
Hurray! I can finally sleep at night, the new M&M color is Purple. The intro is a bit annoying, but the flash page they have to show voting stats by country is kinda nifty. mmmmmm...purpliscious
posted by Blake on Jun 20, 2002 - 25 comments

Most Valuable Object in the World The Supreme Purple Star - as it is being called - is a deep purple diamond, turning to crimson when rotated in the light. Diamonds come in a rainbow of colors and are called "fancies" in the trade. Some are beautiful, others less so. This one is the only one of it's kind, and has been pronounced "priceless". The speculation, of course, is that the owner is looking to sell it.
posted by Irontom on Jun 17, 2002 - 20 comments