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Hacking the Highways
cindy writes "LA artist Richard Ankrom got fed up with the terrible signage on the Harbor Freeway. Rather than wait for CalTrans to do something about it, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He carefully made additional signage and added it to an existing freeway sign. The results were so good that no one, including CalTrans, noticed for months! The LA Times has an article including some of the video shot by the artist to document his "crime.""
I don't think I'll be filling in your holes -- I'm a married man -- but the unit you refer to is the "Smoot."
Well you certainly dont consider West 3 art, do you??
The bridge is marked out in Smoots. IIRC, a few drunk guys were walking around the bridge at night when one of them, named Smoot, passed out. The rest of them used him to measure the bridge, placing him down, marking one Smoot at his head, and moving his feet to the previous mark. I don't really remember quite how many Smoots long the bridge is, but I think it's around 120-something.
"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire
They could have grafitti'd "Peace, Love, Linux, this way to Oakland" on the sidewalks in San Francisco. Then they might have gotten some GOOD press...
I was one of the motorists who drove by it about, oh, a thousand times. I even used it to go to a wedding a few miles north on the I-5. I just thought when I saw it the first time, "Hey CalTrans is finally doing its job."
He added something to a highway sign. Something that appears on thousands of highways signs in the country. What point is he trying to make here? The article made numerous references to an almost heroic face-egging of the elite pork-barrelists in their ivory towers, but why? Kind of funny how the transit authority agreed with him...kind of cheapens the whole thing. Maybe they understand it.
Does the fact that he was very careful in making this sign make it art? Can I lovingly craft a standard school issue room number placard and label an unlabled room in the name of art? The faceless school gestapo will never notice, and my sign may be seen by dozens of unwary students shuffling to and from class in that way they tend to. I'll be a hero. Take THAT, facilities and maintanance!
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
What I want to see him do next is come re-stripe North Carolina's highways. For those who don't know it, NC has this rather odd policy of redirecting the right lane off onto *almost* every exit and adding a new lane somewhere else to compensate. It's really stupid, for a few reasons. First off is that if you were cruising along in the slow lane and didn't want to exit, guess what...you get to go anyway, unless you want to be a traffic hazzard. Second, is the inconsistency. If every lane went off, maybe you'd get used to it, screwy as it is. Last, about every place I've ever been hashes off the exit lane, so it's obvious that it's going away.
Then again, I'm sure something is really wacked at NCDOT. Else how do you explain the fact that the 440 beltway around Raleigh intersects with itself . Someone at NCDOT has a good supplier of (1) moonshine or (2) crack.
What is your Slash Rating?
Troy, Michigan:
I75 - Exit 69 - Big Beaver Road.
Everytime I take that exit I think that SOMEONE in the DOT was pulling a similar stunt.
Some people with less pure intentions (e.g terrorists) might decide to do some redirecting.
actually, now that you mention it, i heard on the news today that osama's most recent fatwa was to misdirect all americans on the highway.
greg "tired of hearing everything called a terrorist" clarke
sig - .
Here's an interesting picture of "Hacking the Highways".
The guy is glad no charges are being pressed( for ...impersonation, he dressed up as a construction worker)
Where is it a crime to impersonate a construction worker?
Ok, ok, other than a Village People concert?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
P.P.P No, because it ain't art. My mom could have done that.
<absurdity>Personally, I think that the Point-to-Point Protocol is art, but I have weird definitions of art.
And if your mom really can write a better PPP implemenation, by all means encourage her to do so! It's all about the innovation.</absurdity>
They that would sacrifice their
In the world of aviation, even the FAA has some humor. For instance on the GPS 16 approach into Portsmouth NH, the Instrument Approach Fixes (IAF's, points defined in airspace for an instrument flight path to a runway) are named ITAWT ITAWA PUDYE TATT and the missed approach is named IDEED.
On the ILS 18 approach into Lebanon NH, the fixes are named HAMMM, BURGER and FRYYS
Pick up a copy of the illuminati trilogy firsth though.
War is necrophilia.
Hey.... your sig is the same as mine!
From: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~opa/ur/pranks.html
In 1988, a group of students pulled off the biggest prank at Rice. They rotated the 2,000 pound statue of William Marsh Rice 180 degrees, making Willy face Fondren Library for the first time in 58 years.
"We were sitting in the pub drinking beer, and we decided something had to be done," says John Q. Smith '86, who helped mastermind the operation. After two futile attempts, the pranksters decided the third time had to be the charm.
Three electrical engineers, two mechanical engineers, a civil engineer, a mathematical scientist, a biochemist, a chemist, a physicist and an English major put their brains and brawn together to carry out the elaborate scheme.
Using plans of the statue taken from Fondren Li-brary, they simulated the transfer load through a computer model. They built two 24- foot A-frames, which they painted black to blend with the night, and put a beam on top that supported a three ton hoist in the middle and two one ton hoists on the sides.
The A-frames were tested at an off-campus garage by lifting a 2,250-pound Toyota that was swung back and forth to simulate rotation. A pair of Houston police officers looked on after being told the car hoisting was "a senior research project. "
These same police officers stopped the students as they were hauling the A-frames back to campus. Convinced it was only a school project, the officers gave the students a police escort to Entrance 8.
Lookouts and decoys positioned themselves around the Quad and communicated to each other through walkie-talkies using code names from the X-Men comic book series. The light on Anderson Hall had been turned off every night for the two previous weeks. Each morning the pranksters reconnected the light so that physical plant people would not replace it.
In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Apri112, 1988, before the sun came up, Willy sat facing the library. Only one student was caught, Patrick Dyson '88, and was made to pay the cost of turning the statue to its rightful position.
Students rallied behind Dyson and sold T -shirts that read, "Where There's A Willy, There's a Way. " More than enough money was collected to pay the cost of restoring Willy to his familiar perspective.
What took the pranksters one hour and cost $400 to do took professional movers three hours and a rumored $1,500-$2,000 to remedy. The students were blamed for breaking a guide pin underneath the statue, but they claim the professional movers did that.
Reports of the prank quickly spread across the country with the help of the media.
"People are going to have a hard time beating this one," comments a contented Smith.
Well, maybe. But Rice students don't have excellent minds for nothing and they know quite well that a masterminded prank is a terrible thing to waste.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
When you do get started, how about some "Get your fxxkin ass in the far right lane at least a quarter-mile before your exit instead of trying to cross 4 lanes of morning traffic at the last possible second forcing every car up to a mile behind you to slam on their brakes!" signs as well.
:)
You'd slow down traffic while they tried to read the damn sign
There was a bank in Holland, MI that had a sign offering "Totally Free Checking" (in big letters) when I was in college a few years back. I knew a guy who did something similar to the guy in this article: he created false letters to match the ones on the sign exactly. He altered the sign so that it read "Totally Free Chicken". He walked into the bank a little while later, and told them with a completely straight face that he was there to get the Totally Free Chicken they were offering. The bank took down the sign, but I don't think he was ever caught.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
My dad was a division manager for a southern california construction company that did work for California Division of Highways and the federal government a lot. Anyway, he had a buddy who complaigned to him that he had a dangerous intersection near his house that really needed a stop sign. He asked my dad about the process of getting the city to put one up. My dad just ordered him an extra sign the next time he ordered signs. He had the guy pay him the $18 the stop sign cost, then helped him put it up. The guy asked "won't they notice?". Not only didn't they notice, the cops even gave some guy a ticket for running it about a week after they put it up.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score