Anarchy may not be the best form of government
but it is better than no government at all

Concept 1.1 - Blending
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Blending is the act of combining color value of 
pixels so that parts of the scene are translucent.

So far in all our programs we have seen an 
alpha value associated with glColor*() command
and the glClearColor() command, or the 
glLight*() and the glMaterial*() command.So far 
we have always set the alpha values to 1.0

So what does the alpha value do?.  
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Without blending, each new fragment overwrites any
existing color values in the framebuffer, as though
the fragment were opaque.

When blending is enabled, the alpha value is often 
used to combine the color value of the fragment being
processed with that of the pixel already stored in 
the frame buffer.   

Another way of looking at blending is to think of the
RGB components of a fragment as representing its color 
and the alpha value as representing opacity.   Therefore
an alpha value of 1.0 implies fully opaque like a rock
whereas lower alpha values would mean translucent and
still lower values tend towards transparency.