November 22, 2003

Freeway blogging. One surefire way to make your voice heard: put your blog on the side of the road. Of course, this isn't always popular: in Scotts Valley, CA a pair put an anti-war banner on an overpass bridge after the Sept. 11 attacks. While the US flags and pro-America sentiments were allowed to remain, Caltrans removed Courtney and Brown's banner, claiming that it was more "distracting" than a flag. We can be thankful that Caltrans policies regarding this were overturned, so people can use this unusual but valuable medium.
posted by tracicle 20 years ago
  • "32,000 dead and I'm still paying $2.29 for unleaded". Touch
  • I wouldn't be surprised if it was an arbitrary number. I'd almost say it was too low, if you consider the number of countries that the US has "protected" for the sake of their oil/pipelines. Then add in the deaths at the World Trade Center and in the other highjackings. Plus as at October 7 this year, there had been 320 US soldiers killed in Iraq since the US and UK moved troops in back in March. We've had two major helicopter accidents plus the bombing of the British Embassy since then. It adds up quickly. And that's just US citizens. Imagine the number of Iraqis, Afghanis, and citizens of other countries that have been killed for oil before then. And then we've got the major oil pipeline in Georgia that the US government will have to protect during their political coup. I wonder what that will cost in lives.
  • This is on MeFi today. Yay Trace!
  • Yeah, I noticed that the comments weren't very positive. I personally think it's a great way to get noticed - although admittedly the current messages could be seen as trite 'sound' bytes. I lived in Scotts Valley and saw the banner I mentioned in my post, and followed the story then. so the concept has interested me for a while. I've also travelled on the I-5 several times and the volume of traffic is quite phenomenal - hundreds of thousands a day, I imagine. Not to be taken lightly.
  • Oh, and here's some more cool public art, in a different vein. (Not that the above is art, but...) Taken from the metafilter freewayblogging thread.
  • Freeway blogging!
  • Okay - I have a problem. Having just reinstalled windows, I've lost my ability to see non-English characters. How do I get that back? Using the latest version of Opera, if that matters.
  • I sort of had this idea that nobody would check any of the threads and they'd just sit there for about two hundred years until future-tracicle's-head-in-a-jar found herself wondering where everything had gone all wrong and checked into "What was that whole MOFI thing about anyway?" and there would be lovely little whimsical two year anniversary game and maybe she'd have a good cryogenic chuckle and then go back to furtively rolling through the sewers in a desperate effort to flee the Kiwi Republic of Evangelical Ant People.
  • Woah. Okay, now I want to jump into the future to learn about the Kiwi Republic of Evangelical Ant People (aka K.R.E.A.P.). The mind boggles.
  • $2.29 for gas? It's a travesty!