I like the famous anecdote about the US's phenomenal talent of wasting money. NASA engineers spent millions of dollar trying to develop a pen that could write in space, or so the story goes. Meanwhile, the soviets used pencils.
pencil shavings floating around were perceived to be a problem as they could get into delicate electronic packages. hence, pens.
at least there was some reasoning involved. whether it was valid? who knows. NASA (back then) was all about safety, anything that might cause equipment failure was minimized.