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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?"
...for a nice, orderly queue under this posting, so we can avoid cluttering the main topic.
So, where are all the tiles? Who knows, but it sounds like a fun thing to geocache for. :)
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
...and all we get are these lousy tiles.
Seriously, thinking about 2001 depresses me. When I was a kid I had every expectation we'd be flying around in Pan Am Space Shuttles and learning how to use zero-g toilets.
Instead we live in a world where Pan Am goes bankrupt, and NYC still hasn't figured out how to install restrooms in the city.
These tiles are nothing more than a cruel reminder of just how lame the 21st century is turning out to be.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
But only in the early 80's. Since the quality and durability of pavement here in Brazil is approximately the same as chicken crap, streets get paved and repaved every decade or so. They're long gone.
Slashdotted, some images in a google cache further down, here's the text though.
Google Cache
I am NaN
i have seen those here, in Philadelphia, for a long time (i guess since the 80's?) and kind of like the author i never understood them, but once the light turned green, i got on my way and totally forgot about them.
/. effect wears off you can look up your town's documented tiles.
i honestly could not tell you where they are, but after seeing the picture it came back. i don't remember what the local ones say but the style of text in the same and the size of the tiles and whatnot.
for people in Philly, i am 99% sure there is one in a crosswalk on South street maybe around 4th and south? i guess when the
If no more of these are appearing, maybe it is the old (now dead) guy in the article. He published an article about resurrecting dead on Jupiter, and he lived in philly where these first appeared.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I've seen a large number of these mysterious tiles. They too have strange writing on them, which sometimes makes lewd suggestions or tells offensive jokes. I have always wondered how that writing was created on all those tiles. I've usually noticed these mystery tiles in restrooms stalls at schools, offices, and even airports in many major cities around the world! It's good to know people are starting to investigate the matter.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
"It's probably a man, because the tiles are obviously installed at night since nobody seems to have witnessed them being put in. It's unlikely a woman would risk being alone at night in a downtown environment."
Yeah, as if a person insane enough to put prophecy tiles into asphalt would drop the idea due to risk of being alone in a downtown environment.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
It's in front of my office here in Cincinnati. In fact, the local alternative weekly ran an artical a few years ago.
Creepy.
funny thing: most of the sites that are linked to from this page seem to have ... dissapeared.
http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/15831
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but aren't they the most filling of all tiles?
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
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?"
And he requested another 87 billion on TV last night!
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails