Dead Geek Icons Hitchhiking Across USA

pacopico writes "The Register has a mammoth story on a weird art/technology project. An artist has created five life-size wooden figures of Silicon Valley pioneers such as Hewlett and Packard and Intel founder Bob Noyce. These figures are supposed to hitchhike around the country and make their way from the East Coast to Silicon Valley. They're outfitted with GPS tracking systems, and you can watch them move via the web. It's all part of the ZeroOne art and science festival taking place next week in San Jose."

Re:Beautifully weird

[PopeRatzo]

This is absolutely OT, but you mentioned leaving books on a train. Twice in the last several months, distracted, I left a library books on a subway. Now I live in Chicago, where although people are pretty decent, the law of "finders keepers" is held sacred. In both cases, when I went to the library to man up and pay for those lost books, the librarian told me that the book had been returned. I was on a train line that is not particularly close to a library branch. The idea that someone out there, probably two different someones, would be decent enough to tote a stranger's book to the library without thought of reward or even thanks amazes me and warms my heart. It's actually made me behave a little differently in the same situation. I found a really nice cellular phone on the back seat of a cab the other day. The menu language was set to Spanish, not one I speak, and I went through considerable hassle to call the various people on the contacts list and after 8 calls I finally found out who owned the phone, a man from Washington D.C. I got his address and FedEx'd the phone to him. Before the library book incident, I might not have gone through the trouble. Decency can be viral, apparently.

The Hitcher

[Doc Ruby]

In the early 1990s, I picked up a weird old guy, with long hair/beard and fingernails but exremely clean, in the late dark of night in the Santa Cruz (CA) mountains. He wanted a ride to the beach, so I took him over on my way home. He was pretty quiet at first, but as we passed the airport on US1 outside Half Moon Bay he started talking aircraft. And movies - he knew all these backstories from the "Golden Age", up until the mid 1960s. When we got to politics, he muttered "Nixon" and clammed up again. I dropped him off and lost him in the dunes near the pier. He was the most articulate and most fastidious bum I ever picked up, so I thought about him from time to time after that.

Boy was I surprised to see Leonardo Di Caprio playing him in a movie [imdb.com] on cable this Spring.

Re:Beautifully weird

[Anonymous Coward]

Last weekend, somewhere in the Netherlands, I entered a train, saw a mobile phone on the seat I was going to take. Without much thinking I took it, walked back to the train doors, and shouted rather loudly to the hundred or so people who had just left the train, "HAS ANYONE FORGOTTEN A MOBILE PHONE?" Some very happy guy came running back :-) Went back quickly after given it to him, since I didn't want that good seat to be taken (it wasn't).

I did it rather absent mindedly (I was reading an Economist article and busy finding a good seat), but apparently this was something special since several people gave me compliments at my destination. I for one felt good being decent :-)