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Sign Snipers Have a New Trick

Thursday October 28, 2010 - 02:31:00 PM

It seems likely that an amusing story written by a neighbor of mine on the Berkeleyside blog about who's winning the battle for District 8 lawn signs has annoyed someone. Today a sticker saying “NIMBY ROBOT SAYS” was slapped across the “Stewart Jones for District 8 Councilman” sign in front of my house on Ashby. This is possibly the same person responsible for a bit of sophomoric video humor now circulating on the internet featuring a robot with an inexplicable British accent and poor-quality text-to-speech pronunciation rules. Might also be the same thugs who are stealing all the “No on R” signs from people’s yards. 

Someone should tell the illiterates who toss NIMBY (short for Not In My Back Yard) around as a term of opprobrium (now there’s a word that’s probably too long for them) that it was originally coined by neighbors of Love Canal, who justly objected to having carcinogenic chemicals dumped near their homes. 

--Becky O'Malley