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Japan's Melody Roads Play Music as You Drive
Krishna Dagli writes "The road works by using grooves, which are cut at very specific intervals in the surface. Just as traveling over small speed bumps or road markings can emit a rumbling tone throughout a vehicle, the melody road uses the spaces between to create different notes."
An oversized viynal? But what if you dont like the song?
Make SELinux enforcing again!
I have to say that after just getting back from Japan that they do have a certain affection for the whimsy even on large scale publicly funded projects that is just awesome. One of the things I saw was a huge platform with a glass top and water on top that served nothing more than a spaceship like cover for a courtyard down below and an attraction. Pics here .
I would have loved to have traveled on these roads while I was there...
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It's my understanding that the rougher the road surface you drive on, the faster it wears out your tires. Not just a small amount either, I seem to recall reading that it could shorten the life span of your tires by 50%.
I don't know about anyone else, but I think tires are expensive and hate spending money on them. I would not enjoy having them wear out quickly so that I can listen to the same damned song every day on my way to work... The radio already does that for me, and it doesn't ruin my tires.
-hps
If you drive up that road in reverse it says, "Paul is dead."
-Peter
Disney beat them to it. There was pavement that played zip-a-dee-doo-dah.
http://www.allearsnet.com/aa/aa100807.htm#ques5
From over 2 years ago on slashdot.jp: http://slashdot.jp/article.pl?sid=05/02/02/0340256 (pseudo-english translation)
That is awesome. I wonder if you could manipulate the harmonic quality of the hum, and take it as far as synthesized speech. "welcome" or "yokoso" as you enter town. That would be jaw-droppingly awesome.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Saw this on Top Gear (on Discovery Channel) a couple of years back. Not sure if it was Japan, I think it was a European country. I think they used bumps though instead, so that at certain sustained speeds it would play a nice melody but if you went too fast it would sound horrible and scarring.
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
See & hear it in action: Video here
What is the motive for playing songs? Maybe the Japanese, with their radically different sense of aesthetics, will play songs. But Americans will have advertising:
rummmble...rumbble..Today's...screee...special...rummble...at..Wal-Mart...rummble...voice...suppression...rummble...tires!
Years ago the Walt Disney World was looking for additional magical things to add to the roads for their upcoming Millennium Celebration. On a desolate piece of road on property speed warning indicators were tested (the kind you encounter on the side of the road or before a toll road) that played a song. That song was "Zip A Dee Do Dah", and for years it stayed there. There were problems with it. First, was the fact in order for it to work, you would have to be driving a VERY specific speed, not faster, not slower, or it would seem like a random assortment of rumbles. And when someone would go the wrong speed, they'd think there was something wrong (veering of the road, toll soon, etc), and would try to break, get the car back on the road, etc, that it became dangerous. Since it was dangerous, no one would drive the correct speed, and the fact they'd need to tear up the roads just to install it, Disney mothballed the idea.
Forget tire wear. What about the uneven coefficient of friction? That can get you killed. Predictability of your vehicle's reaction in all situations -- especial in emergencies -- is important.
Fight Spammers!
I remember an interview with the chief engineer of a road construction company. He claimed that if the state was willing to pay about twice as much, he could build them a road which could last 100 years. But if he did that he'd be underbid for every contract and would go out of business. So the state ends up with roads which need to be resurfaced after 5 years and rebuilt after 15-25. Essentially the longevity is enough to span one politician's career in that office. After that it'll be someone else's problem, so why spend extra money on it?
Troll Road?
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
. . . but Achewood predicted this.
In the arc's defense, the robot did dress up his hair like Pete Rose.
Any information may be true or incorrect depending on your perception of said information
While it looks like these were done just for fun, one idea I have heard is to place them only in the passing lane, at regular intervals. This would discorage people from staying in that lane any longer than they need to, else be forced to listen to "It's a Small World" at increasingly annoying pitch the faster they drive :)
you mean like:
Space Station
Space Shuttle
or
Las Vegas
or
Lincoln Financial Field
and... yeah, it is cool that the good old USA can muster up a few of these bad boys:
F-22
So I guess we're just totally broke?
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This may come as a shock, USA is not the World.
Many other countries have their own recording industry associations that are perfectly good at collecting royalties and prosecuting file sharers.
Ruts cut in roads, or slightly raised areas are all over the place in Japan, with the former usually to provide better traction in ice/snow, and the latter to warn of sharp curves, etc. They are annoying as hell, and noisy. They also have a tendency to wake up my toddlers in the back seat, even when driving quite slowly. Sure, use them for better grip on slippery roads, but just for novelty value? Yet another waste of public funds in a country that is notorious for it...
In Montreal a generation of Metro subway cars electric motors were tuned to perfect fifths, coincidentally the first three notes of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man". The tones were even part of a TV ad campaign when the line was opened.
Technical Explanation PDF (in French.)
However the Montreal Metro offers another treat to the senses: Smell.
The train brakes are two part, electromagnetic over ~10km/h and birch wood injected with peanut oil slower. Thus when a train comes to a hard stop the station smells faintly of burnt popcorn. If you have to smell your public transit this is about as good as it gets!I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I'm afraid this is what happens when there just isn't enough cash to go around. The amount the States get from the Federal taxes in various forms is reduced and so local infrastructure expenditures drop. However, it's not like the Federal government is spending more than it takes in on something that benefits only a select few and has quietly hidden the true costs here and there. There is a war going on; how can we complain about the state of our roads when on the other side of the world there are roads actually getting blown up daily? We have to rebuild those first, along with the electrical distribution, water supplies, schools and hospitals...the list goes on and we haven't even started. Once we have rebuilt Iraq in our image, then and only then can we talk about fixing things here with a clean conscience.
I've thought of using the grooves along the road to make a menacing voice for years. 'Get your ass back on the road stupid!' or some such thing. I think it's more American than playing music.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Having short term vision is a common problem among American's and their politicians. Planning for the future doesn't matter - only quick gain does. We'll save a nickle today so we don't worry that it'll cost us a dollar tomorrow. Stupid isn't it? You'd think we're all children.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
If you get a flat, do you get A flat?
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"Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
+5 interesting
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
Boy: Daddy, why are we driving on gravel road?
Dad: I don't know, Watusabi. It was tar sealed road yesterday.
(500 metres later)
Boy: What's that sign say, Daddy?
Dad (slowing down and reading sign): "This melody road contains copyrighted music. Under the DMCA, and Japan's copyright treaty obligations, this road has been dug up to remove the infringing notes"
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
I looked at that translation; check out the moderations -- "score 3, It is strange funny" and "score 4, splendid discernment." For the hell of it, I used babelfish to translate "First post" from English to Japanese and then back again. The result was "Engaging in floor bugle."
Unfortunately the Mythbusters busted the brown note otherwise it would be a truly epic prank to pull off if you could do it to say one of the roads leading to the professors parking lots.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Numbers are still growing; but recently--it is impossible to know exactly when--an inflection point seems to have been reached. The rate of population increase began to slow. In more and more countries, women started having fewer children than the number required to keep populations stable. Four out of nine people already live in countries in which the fertility rate has dipped below the replacement rate. Last year the United Nations said it thought the world's average fertility would fall below replacement by 2025. Demographers expect the global population to peak at around 10 billion (it is now 6.5 billion) by mid-century.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9545933
(Anonymous to protect friend's privacy, just in case.)
I'm told by someone who works in Oklahoma's DOT that the tension between concrete and asphalt roads is this:
Asphalt roads are pushed by human-factors people because they're softer and less fatiguing to drive on. Obviously this is more a factor with highways. Concrete roads are pushed by engineers because they last longer. However, they're a pain to resurface because great chunks must be pulled up ('crete is laid in large rectangles), while with asphalt you can just pull up the bits that need to be redone, say the area around a pothole.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Dunno how this got modded to insightful but the idea that there will ever be even 400,000 Americans is ludicrous. The population growth rate of the US is not growing, it is SHRINKING. Same with the rest of the world. The parent seems to be living back in the 70's with his "dire predictions" of overpopulation.
Ah, I merely cited figures by the Census Deparatment, you know, those guys that count people. They have the USA at 1.25 billion people in the year 2100, in their "fast population growth" scenario, which, as I've pointed out, we have already exceeded.
Dude, you aren't factoring in immigrants and their children. The first wave comes in, gets American rich, has a ton of kids.
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