Fine Signs to Sign Fines: Correcting typos and misspellings is an expensive hobby.
In a case of government overreaction, two men were recently banned from National Parks for a year and ordered to pay over $3000. Their crime? Something your English teacher did to every paper you ever wrote. They corrected a typo.
In March, Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson, two members of the Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL), left Boston to begin a massive road trip across the US and back. They started by going through the southern US, turned right at the Pacific and came back to the East Coast along the northern route. The goal of their trip was to correct as many typos as they could find. They did their work free of charge and, frankly, without many people noticing.
In fact, that was the case with their correction of typos on a sign in the Desert View Watchtower in Grand Canyon National Park. For over 60 years, the sign, made by architect Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, stood there, typos and all. That is, until Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson decided to correct it. Or, as our government came to see it, engaged in a criminal conspiracy to vandalize government property.
 Here is the sign they edited, taken from the court documents. It seems the TEAL website has been replaced with the message: “Statement on the signage of our National Parks and public lands to come”. |
The corrections made by the duo went unnoticed until government workers happened upon the TEAL website. Now the two men have discovered that while our government can’t be bothered to fix typos, they are very serious about unfixing them.
Both Deck and Herson plead guilty to conspiracy to vandalize government property in Flagstaff, AZ and received probation. Additionally, they must make payment of $3,035 in restitution. They are also banned from modifying any public signs or even entering national parks for a year.
Tags: teal sign
August 27th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Why in the hell would they plead guilty?
August 27th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I am glad those two individuals got fined and into trouble, they broke the law.
It is plain and simple, a law is written to be absolute and if you want to get something corrected like a sign at a public park or national park, tell them. I am sure that something could have been done but to just go around and “fix” it is not the correct way to go about things.
If everyone went around and did this where would it stop? You cannot come up with an arguement for or against as one person would come up with something different than another no matter how you want to see things.
What I mean by this is a simple look at things form the stand point of the National Parks, people vandalise things all the time and they need strict enforcement of the laws to stop this.
If you say you are just trying to help where would it stop if everyone said the same thing about what they wanted to change, add or correct on all the signs in those parks.
Government is trying its best to do what is right but you also have to look at it from the other side of the street or even the several other sides. On one side we have people who are also human and who also make mistakes running our government. They do things wrong or by mistake but we also get people there who are corrupt and do the wrong things.
On the other side we have people doing their best and doing a great job at it. Ever hear about all those government officials who go their whole career in government doing the right things?
We also have good intentioned people who don’t really understand fully, or care, about the right things to do or how to go about them. If you go around vandalising, and it is that, do not try to disguise correcting with the actual definition, you can get into trouble.
Vandalism: willful or malicious destruction or defacement of public or private property. To deface something refers to marking or removing the part of an object (especially images, be they on the page, in illustrative art or as a sculpture) designed to hold the viewers attention.
You are actually defacing, vandalising, something if you are marking on it without the owners permission.
Are you doing this to get attention, I bet you are. Try getting attention by bringing up the point that it is incorrect to get it fixed the right way instead of the way you want it to. That is what it boils down to here, you want to get the attention instead of doing it the right way, only my opinion but I bet I’m right.
September 23rd, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Jeff,
You’re a dick.
I might have misspelled that.
No, that’s right.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:51 am
Jeff,
Yes. You ARE a dick. About as much of a dick as y’can get.