I wrote a post last week called "
Colors and Branding" that looked at the extensive use of the color purple on the Yahoo campus down to the sprinkler heads distributed around the campus for watering landscaping. It turns out that there is an entirely different reason why the sprinkler heads are purple: to signify the water is recycled and not potable.
California resident Chuq Von Rospach picked up on this misplaced example and
blogged about it over at
Chuqui 3.0.
It's because purple in plumbing indicates that the water in that system is recycled. They're irrigating their landscape with water recovered from the wrong end (or maybe the right end!) of the sewage treatment plant, which would otherwise flow out into San Francisco bay.
BDIDI of Desultoration picked up on Chuq's post and took a
philisophical look at the issue :
Ed was trying to make a valid point about colours and corporate branding, and thought he'd spotted a relevant example, except the pattern he'd recognised wasn't really there. I chuckled over this, right up to the point when I realised that we all make this type of mistake, and more often then we may even realise. The human brain is wired to search out patterns. And sometimes it finds pseudo-patterns. The result is conspiracy theories, most political debate, religion vs. science, Windows vs. Mac, the inability of English cricketers to handle Australian wickets, and so on. It actually requires some effort to not draw conclusions too readily.
Duly noted. Thanks.
The purple piping thing is new to this Minnesotan who's purple pipe is probably the Mississippi River.
On a related note, Jason Kottke has
posted some excerpts from
Regret the Error listing some of the best media errors of the year. Here is my favorite:
Because of an editing error, a recipe last Wednesday for meatballs with an article about foods to serve during the Super Bowl misstated the amount of chipotle chilies in adobo to be used. It is one or two canned chilies, not one or two cans.
That's one hot Super Bowl party.
