Ask a lawyer for advice on any problem and you'll usually get an equivocating answer like, "It depends." I used to think such vacillation must be taught in law school, but recently I've come to the conclusion that lawyers' brains are like everyone else's—they can't help being ambiguous because that's what each of us is wired to be.
The brain's "law" of simultaneous contrast states that the appearance of an object surrounded by a different shade or hue will change in a manner that reflects the opposite of its surroundings. For instance, the small gray diamond in the images above looks lighter when surrounded by black but darker when surrounded by a lighter gray. The same gray diamond looks slightly magenta when surrounded by green, the complement of magenta. Complementary colors are those that produce white when mixed together.
This law of contrast holds in all cases—except when it doesn't. ...
