Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Correction of the day


Trust me, magazines and newspapers do NOT like to print corrections. Whenever we have to print one, there's much discussion and we always try to figure out what went wrong.

I, for one, would love to hear how this choice error happened. (The theory of the person who comments at bottom of page sounds very plausible. But really ... how did someone not check this?)

4 comments:

Dave said...

OK, sexual confusion aside, how does it take 15,000 LEGO pieces to make a 30 cm (by what diameter) schwanz in whatever language?

According to a page at rice.edu, a standard LEGO brick is 9.6 mm high and 8.0 mm wide (with a little knob on top per the picture). I can't find a length dimension so I'll use 10.0 mm. Hell, use 30.0 mm.

10.0 mm equal 1.0 cm. There are 2.54 cm in an inch. You do the rest of the math. That giraffe has one fat schwanz if there are 15,000 bricks in it.

And 3,000 Euros?

Jim Donahue said...

Hmmm. Good point. Perhaps there will be a second correction.

Jim Donahue said...

A concerned reader sent me a better photo than appears in the story: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/gDDM8xul5jz5UPMJQGldKQ

Tail is clearly longer than 30 cm.

Dave said...

I'm assuming the bottom floor of the building behind the schwanz is ten foot, making for a five foot tail. I'm going for a six inch girth. Ain't no 15,000 bricks in that tail. I figure the Euros go into the really neat painting and a German union pension fund.