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 January 9, 2004 - The Leaning Tower of Mail Box
Mail boxes stand out in front of your house through snow, rain, heat, and gloom of night. They often get hit by backing-up cars. They also fall victim to joy-riders with baseball bats like in the movie Stand By Me. Eventually, they get tired and old and they begin to lean one way or another. Which left us to wonder, like politicians, do they tend to lean a particular way?
Yesterday the dedicated staff of edhat.com ventured out to take a closer look at our little neglected friends (mail boxes that is, not politicians). First of all we discovered some obvious things ... that not all houses have mail boxes! On quiet empty streets with spacious sidewalks, the mail carrier often walks from door to door (wearing shorts and pushing one of those carts that look like running strollers) putting the mail into slots that drop right inside the house. It is only on hilly, winding roads and busy streets where carriers slink from one box to the next in their red, white, and blue mini-cars.
The most mountainy busy street we know of in Santa Barbara is Foothill Road. That is where we gathered our data. For one particular two block section of Foothill, between Calle Palo Colorado and Alamar, we decided to take a picture of every single mail box. As you can see the state of mail boxes here is not good.
Our survey of the mail boxes yielded the following results:
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The Mail Box Lean
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Color Distribution
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Back
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38%
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White
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32%
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Left
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26%
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Black
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26%
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Forward
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21%
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Silver
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19%
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Right
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15%
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Stain
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9%
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Green
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6%
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Hmmm ... back and to left, some would say the same of south county politics :-)
Our contest was won by edLaura who correctly identified the lean and the color. A Peet’s coffee card will be arriving to her mail box soon!
Want to get instant fame and cool prizes? ... enter today’s contest
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