Thursday, February 03, 2011

JUST PLAIN WEIRD













I hadn’t heard of the Toynbee tiles until the excellent Wendy alerted me to this odd phenomenon. (And the guy who won an award at Sundance for a documentary about them.) Wikipedia tells us…

“The Toynbee tiles (also called Toynbee plaques) are messages of mysterious origin found embedded in asphalt in about two dozen major cities in the United States and four South American capitals. Since the 1980s, several hundred tiles have been discovered. They are generally about the size of an American license plate, but sometimes considerably larger. They contain some variation on the following inscription…
TOYNBEE IDEA
IN Kubrick's 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER
Some of the more elaborate tiles also feature cryptic political statements or exhort readers to create and install similar tiles of their own. The material used for making the tiles was long a mystery, but evidence has emerged that they may be primarily made of layers of linoleum and asphalt crack-filling compound.Articles about the tiles began appearing in the mid-1990s, though references may have started to appear in the mid-1980s.” (Click here for more)

Click here for more about the documentary.

The secret word is Inexplicable

1 comment:

Billy O. said...

It's for things like this that I read this blog.