19a82c65   
   On Tuesday, 11 November 2008 20:18:31 UTC-8, Zorag  wrote:   
   > (Note: This is a serious, scholarly, on-topic question.)  I recently   
   > started adventuring in outdoorsy, wilderness-type areas, so I was in   
   > the market for a hat.  I examined the wardrobes of famous adventurers,   
   > with an eye toward functionality as well as style, and revisited this   
   > description of Gandalf:   
   >    
   > "He wore a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, and a silver   
   > scarf. He had a long white beard and bushy eyebrows that stuck out   
   > beyond the brim of his hat."   
   >    
      
   I find it noteworthy that the hat is blue, making it poorly matched to the   
   rest of his palette. It makes sense that Gandalf the Grey would wear a long   
   grey cloak and a silver scarf (silver is just shiny grey, after all,) but why   
   a blue hat? While blue is    
   not the worst colour to match with grey, placing your splash of color on the   
   periphery is a strange choice. Could it be that the hat was a hasty last   
   second addition to his wardrobe, a calculated move intended to help him impose   
   on the (already much    
   smaller) hobbit, and to signal his status as a wizard to rural bumpkins?   
      
   Or perhaps there is something darker at work here. We know there is a white, a   
   grey, and a brown wizard, but we never hear anything of a blue wizard. Did   
   Gandalf perhaps secretly murder him for his hat? If so, the fact that the hat   
   is poorly suited to    
   Gandalf's situation makes more sense - it is not, after all, his hat. It's a   
   trophy.   
      
   Ultimately, without Tolkien himself available, we will never know the answer   
   to this mystery, but it is clear to me that any explanation of the hat must   
   also account for the anomalous color.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)