raccoonradio
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Posted on 12/26/2011 2:15:49 PM PST by raccoonradio
It looked like the gentlest MIT prank of all time: The lyrics to “Deck the Halls,” dancing across the digital message board at Park Street Station, to the delight of Red Line riders on Christmas night.
It was not an outside hack, though, but an inside job. An MBTA dispatcher working the holiday shift injected a bit of unauthorized whimsy into the normally staid LED signs at Park Street. He programmed them to scroll the lyrics to the carol four times in five minutes Sunday night, before, mirage-like, they resumed their ordinary display of date, time, and the T logo.
That employee, whom the T declined to name, will be reprimanded when he returns to work Tuesday, MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said. The punishment will be determined in part by the employee’s past record and could be a written warning, suspension, or termination, he said.
The Yuletide message had Twitter abuzz Sunday, after a Harvard University graduate student who captured a brief video of it with her cellphone posted it alongside the caption, “I think someone hacked the MBTA Red Line.”
By the afternoon, it had been retweeted dozens of times, the 10-second clip viewed by 1,600 people. Some seemed to think it was an official message, tweeting their thanks to the T for embracing the holiday spirit.
Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, the comparative literature student who posted the video, said she hoped the T would be lenient on the dispatcher.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
The ACLU will probably file a lawsuit, don't you think? "Separation of church and state"...
Howie list ping
Dumb.Leave the guy alone. Stop being a-holes.
Wait, it is Boston, Not much else up there.
They’ll prolly reprimand him with a wink and warn him that it’s contrary to MBTA policy to put anything about “Christmas” or “Yule” on the signboards in the future. Maybe Jingle Bells next year.
Some useless bureaucrats are wound way too tight.
He should have gone with “Deck us all with Boston Charlie”.
This is the latest of the ongoing effort to scrub Christianity from the American culture. As with any totalitarian effort, all they will accomplish is that Christianity will go underground. Anyone heard of the Catacombs? History my dear Americans. History.
Rome—I mean, America—will crumble and Christianity will pull humanity out of the ashes.
America, take notice of your subway ride to destination, “separation of church and state,” Destruction.
don we now our gay apparel,
Bawney Fwank
Bawney Fwank
Bawney Fwank...
raccoonradio
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No, the really sad thing is the Harvard grad student has been so programmed throughout her educational career about seperation of church and state that she thought in no way could a government employee have done this so someone else must have hacked it. Sad. Even sadder is that she probably would show no remorse if the guy got fired and probably thinks he deserved it.
Personally, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought but then that’s just me.
Now, if the words had been Arabic, there wouldn’t be any dust-up.
Agreed, everyone?
If there really were a separation of church and state,
Dec 25 would be a regular day of work or school (in years it doesn’t fall on a Sunday). “Gee, I wanted to renew my driver’s license on that day and it was closed...City Hall
seemed to be closed too and for some reason there was no school”
They can take “Deck the Halls” etc. out of the list of
“holiday” songs the kids are taught to sing in school,
but for some reason they never seem to require school on
Dec. 25. Hey teacher! Why not open up the school on Dec
25 and have a “Professional Conference Day”? What...you want the day OFF?
And yet...this isn’t tolerated (brief Christmas lyric
message on the subway!)
...dancing across the digital message board at Park Street Station, to the delight of Red Line riders on Christmas night... He programmed them to scroll the lyrics to the carol four times in five minutes Sunday night, before, mirage-like, they resumed their ordinary display of date, time, and the T logo.
Hard to imagine any adult making this some kind of priority.
Note to the T: “Deck The Halls” isn’t so much about Christmas as it is about celebrating Christmas. Too bad there aren’t any academic types in the area who could explain that to you.
Oh, wait...
Unfortunately FACTS no long have any place in our PC society.
FACT 100% positive Christ did exist.
FACT 100% positive Christ did preach peace.
So even if you completely dispute or reject anything else about Christ we certainly should be able to celebrate those 2 facts just as we are given a day off to celebrate MLK especially when there is some evidence as to him being a communist.
Christians should be able to demand anyone celebrating MLK day be fired, sanctioned, given days off...
Government is very luck Christians are more civilized TODAY than the vile filth mudslimes of today otherwise many government officials would have more to worry about than someone singing, writing, Christmas Carols.
True, but I guess the MBTA found it to be too religious for their tastes.
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