Welcome back to Infilnews!
Due to technical difficulties last summer, Infilnews was temporarily
offline for many months. Many of the news items we had been saving may now
seem out of date or less important -- indeed, all infilnews past and
present has been eclipsed by the unfortunate events of September 11th,
2001. If you'll forgive our tardiness on these news items, though, we
promise to get back up to speed shortly.
Full-Motion ads Aren't Just for Highways Anymore
Atlanta subway riders got a taste of the cinematic future last September
when subway tunnel advertising was introduced along the MARTA routes.
Riders looking out their train windows were able to view glowing
full-motion ads for Dasani bottled water. The ads are generated using 1,000
feet of light boxes displaying compressed images (200-300 frames per
second) that, when viewed from a high speed train, appear as moving
billboards. Coca-Cola, Dasani's manufacturer, along with Adidas had already
experimented with subway tunnel ads in Budapest and Athens. (Thanks to Fern
for this story.)
Guy Parachutes onto Statue of Liberty
In a botched attempt to parachute onto the Statue of Liberty's torch,
Frenchman Thierry Devaux snagged himself on the statue's flame and dangled
above New York Harbor for half an hour last August. Deveaux had been
maneuvering a motorized parachute in an attempt to land on the torch and
then bungee jump from it.
After clinging to the statue's arm for safety, Deveaux was eventually
rescued and arrested by police. Deveaux's history with the statue dates
back to 1994, when he was arrested for hiding out in the statue overnight
and defacing the structure.
New Jersey Man Loves Monorails
Robert Mathews took a leap many of us only entertain for a few moments
last November when he assumed the controls of an unmanned monorail train at
Newark airport and began to drive. The train, which was full of passengers,
traveled part of the way between Parking Lot E and the Rail Link station
under Mathews' command. The monorail, known as the Newark AirTrain, is
remotely controlled and intended to be unmanned.
The train Mathews boarded happened to have a control box in it that was
for some reason unlocked and had an operators' key inserted in the control
panel. "I'm a curious sort of person," Mathews said, "and I pushed one of
the buttons." Able to bring the train to a stop, Mathews then decided to
see if he could make it go. He drove the train about fifteen feet before an
AirTrain engineer on an adjacent catwalk signaled for him to stop the
train. Minutes later, authorities arrived with guns drawn and arrested the
man for "stealing the monorail". "I'm clearly not a terrorist," said
Mathews (a self-proclaimed transit geek), "Maybe I shouldn't have touched
it, but I was curious."
Big Drill Comin' Through
An enormous tunnel boring machine (TBM) was delivered this past August
to Minneapolis-St. Paul international airport via ocean freighter and
side-by-side trucks. The TBM will be used to dig Minnesota's longest
transit tunnel, a light-rail corridor along Hiawatha Avenue leading to the
airport and crossing under several runways. The 11.6-mile tunnel will
largely be dug through layers of sandstone with stable upper layers of
limestone and shale. However, there is one segment of the tunnel that will
require boring through an underground valley of collapsed limestone
boulders. Risks include getting the 500-tonne tunnel-boring machine caught
in the boulders, or worse, inadvertently creating a massive sinkhole.
During this dangerous stage of tunneling, air pressure will be applied in
this area around the clock in order to support the earth nearby. The
tunneling project is expected to be complete in November of 2002.
Post 9/11 Idiocy
A California man dressed in army fatigues succeeded in getting an
upgrade to first class on an American Airlines flight in January by
claiming to be a sky marshal. Michael McManus has since been charged with
impersonating a federal officer after it was discovered he was neither a
sky marshal nor, in fact, a military officer. The pilot of McManus' flight
became suspicious when McManus asked for the "code word" to access the
cockpit and performed an inspection of the galley. McManus, claiming to be
a member of an "elite military unit", told real sky marshals that he was
the "military version" of a sky marshal. He did not carry a weapon.
Call for Submissions
As always, Infilnews welcomes and encourages your contributions. Please
forward any articles of interest in the areas of exploration, construction,
infrastructure, infiltration, and so forth, to liz@infiltration.org.
Upcoming issues of Infiltration's print publication include the "Where
are they now?" issue, which will take a look at past article subjects and
examine what changes they have undergone. Anyone with an interesting story
about anything that's been previously covered in Infiltration is enthusiastically encouraged to
submit it for publication. We also need submissions for our "Churches" and
"Secret Societies" issues, so please step forward if you've got something.
Please send submissions to ninj@infiltration.org and/or
liz@infiltration.org.
The latest issue (#17) of the print zine Infiltration, "Buildering", was
released in December 2001. You can get one by sending $2 (US/CDN) cash to
PO Box 13, Station E, Toronto, ON M6H 4E1, Canada.
Sign up for Infilnews by e-mail.
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