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Mystery Tiles From Around the World
puppetman writes "The Kansas City Star has an interesting story about Toynbee Tiles.
They show up embedded in streets, and can be found in the US (Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Aberdeen, Edgewood, Washington, etc), Chile, Argentina and Brazil. They are made of "epoxy or super hard plastic that's actually inlaid in the asphalt itself."
The tiles invariably state, "Toynbee Ideas in Kubrick's 2001 Resurrect Dead On Planet Jupiter".
Sometimes there are secondary tiles that request people make more while others are of a more paranoid slant.
Toynbee was a religious historian who believed that "well-being of a civilization depends on its ability to respond successfully to challenges, human and environmental". There is even a Ray Bradbury book, The Toynbee Convector.
Toynbee.net has a link to a Usenet posting where someone ask's Kubrick's daughter if the man himself knew of the tiles.
To date, the origin of the tiles are a mystery. Any /.'ers able to provide the location of additional tiles, or perhaps clues for solving the mystery?"
it actually would be, without this add-on, in bold ...
Toynbee, who lived from 1889 to 1975, was best known for his theory that humanity's perception of its history shapes its future. This theory was turned on its head and used as the premise for a 1983 Ray Bradbury short story titled "The Toynbee Convector" in which a character by the name of Stiles travels 80 years into the future and returns with stories of mankind's marvelous achievements. Stiles' reports of a future free of war and disease (ie, Rob Malda's GRID (Gay Related Immuno Defficiency)) prompts people to join forces to work together to attain this future and in 80 years they have succeeded. Stiles then reveals that his story was a lie. But the world he prophesied has nevertheless come to pass, validating a kind of corollary to Toynbee's theory, that humanity's perception of its future shapes its present.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Slashdotted, some images in a google cache further down, here's the text though.
Google Cache
I am NaN
The http://www.toynbee.net/ website lists addresses of all known tiles. If you can't convert an address to a co-ord you probably aren't geocaching. I'm going to find one in Boston and setup a cache.
Krispy Cream is people
Only 3 posts, and the site is already slashdotted... Google Cache here
This is the text of the rant which is attached to one of the tiles:
.
John Knight Ridder is the Philadelphia thug (?) hellion Jew XXXXX Hated this movements guts- for years- takes money from the Mafia to make the Mafia look good in his newspapers so he has the Mafia in his back pocket. John Knight sent the Mafia to murder me in May 1991 XXXXXXXXXX journalists XX then gloated to my face about death and Knight Ridder great power to destroy. In fact John Knight went into hellion since of joy over Knight-Ridder as great power to destroy.
I secured house with blast doors and fled the country in June 1991.
NBC attorneys journalists and security officials at Rockefeller Center fraudulently XXX the "Freedom of Information Act" all XXX orders NBC executives got the U.S. federal district attorney's office who got FBI to get Interpol to establish task force that located me in Dover England.
Which back home Inquirer got union goons from their own employees union to XXX down a "sports journalist." Who with ease bashed in lights and windows of neighborhood car- as well as men outside my house. They are stationed there still waiting for me.
NBC CBS group "W" Westinghouse, Time, Time Warner, Fox, Universal all of the "Cult of the Hellion" each one were Much worse than Knight-Ridder ever was mostly hellion Jews
When K.Y.W. and NBC executives told John Knight the whole town gloated in joyous fits on how their Soviet pals found a way to turn it into a...
It's L. Ron Hubbard. Goto Xenu.net and read a little bit of OT III if you don't believe me. All it needs is some volcanoes and atomic bombs and it could be the high teachings of the Scientologists!
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx? ID=36606
In Chicago, outside the John Hancock Center, at the northeast corner of Michigan Ave. and Chestnut--map.
Answering my own question (sort-of) check this out. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx? ID=36606
Well, theoretically here's one. When I can duck out and drive across the country to verify it, I'll let you know ;)
d etails.aspx? ID=36606
k .html)
For now, geocache away, Toynbee followers!
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_
For a message board on this topic, go here (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/3790/geoboo
Two years ago, a reporter found evidence that one James Morasco is behind the tiles.
I seem to remember reading more about the Morasco link somewhere, but it was so long ago I cant remember where. It was almost definately linked to on the snopes.com message board, but their search system is pretty bad.
In downtown Washington, somewhere around Hotel Washington. It wasn't red, white and blue though, just black and white. I thought it was a joke and painted on recently. I guess I was wrong. I live in Philly myself, but never saw one around here.
So, the fact that the tiles are also harder than the asphalt is about as shocking as the tiles themselves.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
Depending on how hot it was, the asphalt could get pretty soft.
Yes, just ask anyone who has come back to their motorbike on a hot day to see the sidestand 3 inches deep in asphalt. :-(
--
This sig is inoffensive.
But "Kilroy" had a meaning, and was just graffiti spread by WWII soldiers, which came to represent American soldiers presense around the world. It was a meme that spread like "All your base" or "In soviet russia", though noone is 100% sure where it came from. I remember an old war era Bugs Bunny cartoon where he goes to the moon and "Kilroy was here" is scrawled on a moon rock.
These tiles are supposedly the work of the same person/group as they're all the same composition and tarred to the road in the same way. At least so the articles say. I'd guess some are spray painted or whatever, most are the work of copycats.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It's in front of my office here in Cincinnati. In fact, the local alternative weekly ran an artical a few years ago.
Creepy.
There used to be one on Michigan avenue (I think around Adams) on the northwest corner in Chicago. However, when they redid the street, they just sorta covered up some of it. I believe you can still see about 1/2 of it. I never bothered reading it, I thought it was one of those weird art things that the city tends to do from time to time.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
funny thing: most of the sites that are linked to from this page seem to have ... dissapeared.
http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/15831
This post was brought to you by the number 584811 and the characters / and .
Many of these towns/cities DID have an 'h' at the end until the renaming convention stated in the article at everything2.com mentioned. Pittsburgh just happened to be large enough (and stubborn enough) to tell them all to go fsck themselves.
There are several reasons the Everything2.com story doesn't seem to hold water. First, there are as many towns in PA along the same path that end in "boro" that were founded by the British, such as Barnsboro, Springboro, and Waynsboro. None of them switched over to 'burgh'. 2nd, Pitt didn't found the city of Pittsburgh. In fact, no one British did. The city was founded by the French in the late 1600s and was called Duquesne. They built Ft. Duquesne at the point where the 3 rivers (Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio) meet; currently were Point State Park is. There is a historical marker commemorating the old fort. The British were took control after defeating the French (shocker there
In fact, MANY of the french (and german, more on this later) named border towns were renamed to British names after the war. You will find hundreds of towns ending in 'boro', 'burg', 'town', 'ton', 'ville', and 'hill'. You'll also find that even though it was originally found by the French, and claimed by the British, most of the towns in Central/Western PA contain mostly people of German, Polish, and Slovakian descent. This also led to a lot lot of misspellings and mis-pronounciations.
-Ab
ps. Considering the original article is in the Kansas City Star, are you sure they didn't mean Pittsburg, Kansas? I can't check www.toynbee.com cause it's currently slashdotted.
Nothing fails quite like prayer.
TechTV did a thing on it about a month ago...
Toynbee Mystery
Mysterious plaques with a prophetic message have been appearing all along the Eastern seaboard. Tonight, Bill O'Neill, the foremost expert in this phenomenon, joins us via netcam from Atlanta to talk about who or what is leaving these plaques and shed some light on their meaning. The plaques read:
"Toynbee Ideas
In Kubrick's 2001
Ressurect Dead
On Planet Jupiter"
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Also one in downtown Detroit, passed it on the way to lunch on Friday... was odd cause I've walked that way before and never noticed it... will have to go back and take a look. At the corner of Randolph and Congress I think (on the south corner of Congress at the intersection).
It has a picture of a much larger tile with some sort of manifesto written in it, next to the standard Toynbee tile. (This picture is also visible from the picture gallery for the original article.)
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"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Again, I rarely have anything to contribute (hey, I'm an artist) to /., but I've seen these things before. This particular one is at the intersection of 5th Avenue and 40th Street in Manhattan.
Toynbee Tile here
there are sort of similar tilings, predominantly in europe, although i believe the guy (invader) who is responsible for them is currently in NY... although these aren't "profound" statements, they are really well done mosaic tiles of little space invaders!
you can check it out here. for fellow londoners who are interested...i, personally, have seen two in london. one on brick lane outside vibe bar and one in the notting hill area on some bridge that the carnival goes over - dunno which one, i live in the seeouthhhhh.
A little googling reveals that couple a years ago one journalist tracked possible responsibility for the tiles down to one "verna sevrino", who he was ultimately unable to contact, even though he had an address in philadelphia.
google turns up a funeral home in philadelphia called "verna sevrino funeral home", hmmm what might a funeral home have to do with resurrecting people on mars?
more googling turns up philadelphia councilwoman Anna C. Verna, who is married to " husband, Severino Verna, a funeral director, were born and raised in South Philadelphia.".
And finally, everything you ever wanted to know about Anna C Verna is here I, for one, welcome our new neptune resurrectionist overlord.
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
Well, if an error was made, it was made by the tilemaker, since some of the tiles specifically include the work kubrik.
However, the guy may be saying there is something in the adaptation, not present in the original, which is what his tiles refer to?
Adiitionally, 2001 the movie and book were created simultaniously, as a collaboration. They are however both based on Clarke's earlier work, "The Sentinel"
Due to some artistic differences, they took their names off the other media, and it is now a common misconception that the movie is an adaptation of the book.
Did this scentence strike anybody else as odd?
Though Toynbee and Kubrick were both brilliant British visionaries...
Hmmm. Talk about thorough journalism...Stanley Kubrick was born in The Bronx, New York City.
Do any of you schmucks even realise that Arthur C. Clarke, NOT STANLEY KUBRICK wrote the flippin' book the movie is based on??? so the question is whether or not A.C.C knew about the bricks. Now go read 2001, 2010, 2061, and 3001 The final Odyssey. Phear my super sci-fi knowledge!!!!!!!!
Obey started in 1989 in Charleston, SC. The crew who got into doing it were a pretty ecletic group of skater/artists. The did some pretty intelligent and beautiful work in the late 80's and early 90's in Charleston. I was hanging around back then and new most of the guys involved. If you're in to modern art and underground subcultures, this is one of the really interesting stories.
Anyway I seriously doubt these two phenomena are related, Shepard Fairey promoted and commercialized the Obey line, whereas this one is a lot more mysterious.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
I don't see why heavy equipment would be required. Several semis running over it, on a hot day, would do it. In El Paso I've seen what look like "waves" of asphalt, where trucks have driven. Granted philly is not as hot (thank goodness), but on a hot day, with several thousand cars driving over it? Yeah, it'd be embedded.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
"Adiitionally, 2001 the movie and book were created simultaniously, as a collaboration. They are however both based on Clarke's earlier work, "The Sentinel""
Yes, and this explains the many small inconsistencies you'll find between the two.
The largest inconsistency between the movie and the book is the destination of the voyage. In the book, the voyage is to Saturn, but in the movie this voyage is to Jupiter.
The reason for the change? Kubrick could not afford the cost of all the artists rendering Saturn and its rings, so they changed the storyline to Jupiter.
The book 2010 was written ENTIRELY as a sequel to the movie storyline. It's funny because you can read 2001, then pick up 2010, and be damn confused.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Zoroaster and Zarathustra are alternative spellings of the name of the same person -- a Persian philosopher who founded the religion known as Zoroastrianism. Quote from that link:
. htm.
"The Persian religion was founded by a legendary sage named Zarathustra, who had taught that there was a supreme god, the wise lord Ahuramazda, who was opposed by the forces of evil, which were under command of Angra Mainyu. (Since only Ahuramazda was to be venerated, the exiled Jews in Babylonia considered Cyrus a monotheist like themselves.) All other gods were regarded as mere good spirits or demons. The most remarkable aspects of this religion were the radical dualism and the presence of an ethical message: no other pagan religion had postulated a dichotomy between good and evil, light and dark, truth and lies."
If I'm not mistaken car maker Mazda is named after that religions's god.
More at http://members.tripod.com/historel/orient/08perse
In 2001, the monoliths were of the proportion 1x4x9 (1^2 x 2^2 x 3^2), presumably as a hint from their creators that they were artefacts of intelligent beings.
I also find this site very complete. And I have my own picture of a Toynbee from Philly. ;-)
Date: Wed, 03 May 2000 17:36:37 -0400
Subject: Toynbee Mystrey Solved!...(almost.)
Hello, my name is Justin K*H* and I am sending you this to let you know of my research into the "Toynbee Idea" phenomenon. I have been obsessively photographing & documenting these tiles since around 1992-'93, when I first started noticing them. I have a very extensive collection of photographs, but this is not my reason for contacting you. My reason in sending this E mail is to let you know that I have figured out EXACTLY how these tiles are "made & glued". You see, sometime this past winter I left my house on a mission to my lacal convinience store for a late Sunday night snack (about 4:00 A.M.,so perhaps "early morning snack would be more appropriate wording.) On my way back to the house I noticed a black mound in the street which had made it's appearance there sometime in the 10 minute period that I was in the store. Upon closer inspection I discovered it to be a mound of tar paper, intermingled with what appeared to be wood glue. Being the inquisitive soul that I am, I lifted the top layer to see what may lay underneath----a "TOYNBEE IDEA" TILE!!!!!( This was discovered at 12th. & Race ST. in Philadelphia, if you want to add it to your sightings list.) Needless to say, I examined the tile for quite a while, my heart racing all the while, knowing that I had missed catching the "mad tiler" by only a matter of minutes. Here are my findings - The tiles are indeed that - tiles. If you heat a standard floor tile it will rubberize and become as easy to cut as butter. But when it hardens it will not be able to withstand the pressure afforded it by car tires as it will be too brittle (I have tried making my own tiles, as you can infer.) However this tile was some kind with a higher rubber content than a standard floor tile, and therefore able to absorb greater weight and shock. It's inlayed letters were of a slightly less malleable substance, but were held in place neatly, even if they were to crack, by the white tile which surrounded them. All of this intricate stencil-esque tile work appeared to have been done with an X-acto knife or razor blade, judging by the angle of the cuts and my own failed attempts with cutting letters into standard floor tiles. The tile was sandwiched between thick layers of intricately folded and glued together tar paper. The effects of the weather(the paper decays, but the tar remains behind as an anchor to affix the tile to the street) and passing cars(they serve as the force which squashes the tile into - literally INTO - the street. Over the course of the next few days I took a series of detailed photos which display the entire process visually. I hope my explanation of all of this is understandable, and I apologize for typos ( I am in a rush. ) Anyways, I hope this gives you some sense of satisfaction as to at least HOW these "plaques" are made.
P.S. I checked out that Philly adress from the Rio tile - no luck, although I did find a SLEW of Toynbee tiles in the surrounding South Philly neighborhood. (Rather unusual for the tiles to be seen in such a residential neighborhood!) 9th. & Shunk St. is the only specific one I can think of off the top of my head. There are three tiles there which have to be seen to be believed. O.K......Put up my sightings & mention my findings! Thank You, Justin K*H*
Kids - don't try this at home. Sticking your thumb in soft asphalt isn't big and it isn't clever. Think about the police and ambulance crews turning up to try pulling yer thumb out from the now-not-so-soft asphalt - doesn't quite fit with the smart kid on the block image does it now.