Blue is my favorite color!  Is it yours?
I do like blue. I like blues with a greenish hue, like azure. But other blues like ultramarine are pretty, too.
How does the different shades of blue come about?
It lies between violet and green on the light spectrum, so the closer the color moves to one side or the other, the stronger that color will be.
Interesting.  Does the color have any significant meaning to any cultures?
In many cultures. For example, in China in the eighth century artists would use cobalt blue for fine blue and white porcelain.
I imagine those items are worth quite a bit now, right?
Blue and white pottery
"Blue and white pottery" () covers a wide range of white pottery and porcelain decorated under the glaze with a blue pigment, generally cobalt oxide. The decoration is commonly applied by hand, originally by brush painting, but nowadays by stencilling or by transfer-printing, though other methods of application have also been used. The cobalt pigment is one of the very few that can withstand the highest firing temperatures that are required, in particular for porcelain, which partly accounts for its long-
whole range of colors denoted by the English term "blue". Instead, it traditionally treats light blue (голубой, "goluboy") as a separate color independent from plain or dark blue (синий, "siniy"), with all seven "basic" colors of the spectrum (red–orange–yellow–green–голубой / "goluboy" (sky blue, light azure, but "does not equal" cyan)–синий / "siniy" ("true" deep blue, like synthetic ultramarine)–violet) while in