JollyGoon:
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Q.I yet. Amazing show that dispels the half-truths and outright lies that permeate the psyche of the generally ignorant millions. Basically the straight dope presented as a panel show by the great Stephen Fry. Youtube it!
One of my favourites is the one that the ford model T came ‘in any color you want so long as it’s black’. Actually, there was more than 30 colours used.
It doesn’t seem that QI is any more accurate than Snapple’s lids.
From here :
In the Series 3, Episode 7 edition of the BBC’s QI quiz show, Stephen Fry made this comment:
There's no evidence that Ford actually ever said, "Any color you like so long as it's black."
Fry’s researchers would do well to read Ford’s autobiography, My Life and Work, 1922, which includes this passage:
In 1909 I announced one morning, without any previous warning, that in the future we were going to build only one model, that the model was going to be "Model T," and that the chassis would be exactly the same for all cars, and I remarked:
"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black."
It is likely that Ford was being somewhat playful in making that remark. Model Ts were, in fact, offered in a choice of colour early in the car’s lifetime around 1908, and again after 1926. The statement was true when Ford’s biography was published, in 1922, and when he was cutting costs by using a type of quick-drying paint that was only then available in black.
As for the “30 colors” part, that seems not quite correct either. From here (bolding mine),
While this saying is true for the model years after 1913, earlier cars were available in green, red, blue and grey . In fact, in the first year, Model T Fords were not available in black at all. The switch to all black cars was due to Ford’s ongoing obsession with cost reduction, and not, as is commonly believed, to reduce drying time and hence increase production.
Over 30 different types of black paint were used to paint various parts of the Model T. The different types of paint were formulated to satisfy the different means of applying the paint to the different parts, and had different drying times, depending on the paint and the drying method used for a particular part.
Huh, that’s actually a different LEGO cube-solving robot than the one I’d seen before. This one seems to use the same basic principle, but it’s much faster than the other one.
It’d be even more impressive, though, if it did the processing on-board on the Mindstorms computer, rather than on a laptop. It looks to me like that’s the only non-LEGO part of the process.
Don’t threadshit.
Everyone knows there is no such thing as education at Michigan State.
I was surmising Mississippi State U, myself.
