Indiana Jones journal mystery solved | Hacker News Reader

Indiana Jones journal mystery solved

uchicagoadmissions.tumblr.com

229 pointsCesareBorgia47 comments

Seeing this resolution to the mystery made my day. It's refreshing to see that all this buzz was the result of a glorious postal mishap, not a concerted effort to hijack our attention with a viral marketing stunt.

I was hoping for a new Alternate Reality Game, along the lines of I Love Bees [1] or The Beast [2]. Advertising or not, some of this "viral marketing" can produce large, immersive narratives.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_Bees

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_(game)

This article is missing an image of an old map with red lines connecting Italy, Guam, Hawaii, and Chicago.

How's this? http://i.imgur.com/P5MxB.jpg Courtesy of iPhoto (I appreciate it's technically incorrect, but I think it captures the spirit)

Pretty good, though:

- Shortest route from Chicago to Rome would be west->east, not east->west.

- 1930s air travel/mail delivery would likely have been by DC-3 (introduced 1935). Early models had a range of 1000 miles, later extended in the DC-3A to 2100 miles. Military C47 A/B aircraft had a 1600 mile range. So you'd have to introduce a few more hops on the map.

- A package would more likely have traveled via ground route, mostly ship. A trans-Asiatic route would be highly unfeasible (or would make for another Indian Jones movie: "Delivery of the Misrouted Journal").

Still, nice touch.

Actually it's pretty clear in the movies that most of the long distance air travel is by some variant of flying boat (he's seen getting on and off an Pan Am clipper), and the dotted lines in the map do not show refueling hops.

If you look at the history of Pan Am, it started out operating two flying boats: Sikorsky S-38 and S-40. The S-40 had a range of 875 miles (but can land in more places than a DC-3).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_am#Clipper_era

That said -- Chicago to Italy should definitely be easterly.

this

I was initially underwhelmed, but on second thought, it turns out that crazy, huge system of machines, trucks and humans that routes letters and packages around the country is pretty amazing. Going to go with damilocampos on this one.

Mildly disappointing ending to what I hoped to be some epic story/gimick/whatever.

Amusing that the USPS thought the vintage (fake) Egyptian postage was real though

Oh, I disagree completely. I love the serendipity of this story far more than if it were just a viral stunt on the part of Disney, U Chicago, or anyone else. Something entirely mundane became something extraordinary for everyone to enjoy.

I'm going to call that a win.

That's actually a very good point. I rescind my original disappointment. It was a pretty cool story that emerged out of something as simple as a postal mishap.

and the resolution is great too:

"Paul has graciously let us know that he will make the intended recipient a new journal, and that we are welcome to keep this one— thanks, Paul! It will find its home either in the Oriental Institute at UChicago or the Special Collections at the Regenstein Library because, as many have noted, “It belongs in a museum!”. "

It will be simply too cool if it ends up in the Oriental Institute!

Paul has just had epic incidental marketing.

The USPS thought the fake postage was real after the fake package came out of its properly-stamped wrapper once it was already in the USPS process stream. It's always easier to pass a fake at a point where everyone assumes the fake has already been verified.

Now we just need someone to invent a gimmick disintegrating envelope. Stuff multiple letters with fake stamps into it, and mail several letters for the price of one!

Great way to disrupt the postal system! It's a legal gray area, but you would only be against it if you're against innovation and new technology! I'll call it Stampr.

I'm pretty sure there isn't much gray area in defrauding the postal service.

A "hack" would be to switch the sender and receiver addresses on the envelop; and mail without a postal stamp. What is the postal service supposed to do with an envelop missing the stamp? Yes, you are right. Return it to the sender.

Reminds me of when we would make collect calls from a payphone and our parents would get: "Will you accept a collect call from...MomPickUsUp"

Haha that reminds me of a similar hack we discoverd as kids. Australian payphones had an interesting feature where you could place a call without paying however the call would hangup almost immediately upon being answered. There was a split second where you could actually hear each other so we'd usually yell something out and our parents would know it was us waiting to be picked up from the beach or some such.

My Mom's family had a different solution. At 7 o'clock, call. If you let it ring once then it means pick us up now. If you let it ring three times, then pick us up in an hour.

Thinking about it now, Skype gives rings on the caller's side even before it's connected on the receiver's side. In that case, use synchronization. If it takes between 1 and 4 caller rings for the receiver to ring, then a call at 7:00 means "come now" and a call at 7:05 means "come in an hour."

When I was 9 I used to send my SASE and $.50 or so off to various mail-order companies. They required that you put your own address as both the return-to and destination on the SASE...through absentmindedness I soon discovered that the stamped part of SASE was optional.

In the UK, they don't do this - they send it on to the recipient, but hold the mail at the office until the recipient travels down there and pays postage plus a £1 fee.

I did this a while back as a test; it traveled two hours away without postage, despite both recipient names being the same.

I'm not surprised at all. I have a relative who sends out Christmas cards every year using cancelled stamps from those 1000 stamps for a dollar stamp collector starter kits. He has been doing this for 15+ years. It is amusing though to get a Christmas card in 2012 covered in multiple 8 cent Eisenhower stamps.

Apparently stamp fraud is not a high priority issue at USPS.

Are those real, but used, Eisenhower stamps, or fake ones?

They'd be real, but used stamps. I can't imagine anyone cheap enough to bother faking 8 cent stamps -- although apparently there are people cheap enough to use cancelled ones! =P

Kidding aside, I think it'd be awesome to get cards like that -- and maybe the USPS thinks so too, which is maybe why they're letting them through. =)

> Kidding aside, I think it'd be awesome to get cards like that -- and maybe the USPS thinks so too, which is maybe why they're letting them through. =)

haha, totally agree, I suspect that the canceled stamps are detected, probably automatically, but when a human gets involved, he thinks it's funny/cool/nostalgic ("why those are the same stamps my grandma used!"), and just laughs and passes them on...

Also, you know, Christmas... :]

I've seen uncanceled, but taped-on (adhesive had gone bad) stamped mail returned for invalid postage.

I suppose you pretty much have to assume that once a package is in the system, it's valid, especially if it's got foreign stamps.

"Mildly disappointing ending to what I hoped to be some epic story/gimick/whatever."

I started to wonder if it was some sort of publicity stunt by Disney to get interest into a new Indiana Jones movie after buying Lucasfilm.

Unlike Star Wars, Lucasfilm doesn't outright own all of the rights to Indiana Jones. Disney would have to do deals with Paramount to do much of anything with Indiana Jones.

Something I hadn't previously considered is that given Disney does its own distribution, they probably have no need to use 20th Century Fox on the new Star Wars movies. Having a Star Wars movie that doesn't open up with the 20th Century Fox drumroll is going to be downright weird.

Good to know. The only Indiana Jones movie I have seen is the Crystal Skull one, so I'm not up on my Jones.

"Something I hadn't previously considered is that given Disney does its own distribution, they probably have no need to use 20th Century Fox on the new Star Wars movies. Having a Star Wars movie that doesn't open up with the 20th Century Fox drumroll is going to be downright weird."

I didn't think of that either. It would be weird, although, I don't think I'm going to see it anyways. The story has ended and I'm content.

Go watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. I can't bear the thought of someone having only seen the Crystal Skull (aka Nuke the Fridge) as their exposure to Indiana Jones.

Who has ordered his own replica journal?

For $200!!

(http://www.ebay.com/itm/Indiana-Jones-and-the-Raiders-of-the...)

The seller has sold a few of those, for between $150 and $200. Making thousands of dollars seems like a pretty good business.

I think it's a great little package; the perfect gift for an Indiana Jones buff. Unless that Indiana Jones buff is also a graphic designer:

"This is amazing! All of the little details like the illustrations and photos make it look really authentic, and the letterheads...OH MY GOD, IT'S PAPYRUS!!! GET IT AWAY FROM ME!!!!"

Coincidently, do you know name of the font used on maps in LOTR/Hobbit movies?

For example: http://ii.wbshop.com/fcgi-bin/iipsrv.fcgi?FIF=/images/warner...

That particular font is a copy of Tolkein's personal handwriting, but you can find similar font design in any of a dozen Gaelic fonts. (Or probably find a font that's a copy of his handwriting, too; I don't know.)

There does seem quite a lot of work involved though, I wonder how long it takes him to make one.

How can the contents of a package "drop" out of the package and then be routed to the wrong place? Sounds like 18th century postal service going on there...

Boxes, packages, letters etc. can get ripped and shredded by processing machines and conveyor belts and truck doors, etc.. I've gotten remnants of destroyed letters delivered before. Given the huge amount of mail moving through the system, even a small percentage experiencing accidents can amount to a large number of damaged items. The insides of these things don't always stay inside all the way through their trips, basically.

An online community I used to frequent had a Christmas card exchange every year, with roughly 200 people participating. One year, someone's cards made it to almost nobody, because apparently the envelopes that came with the cards were garbage. I got a swell torn-up front of an envelope in a plastic bag in the mail, and so did most everyone else on the list.

I had envelope issues with wedding invitations - a lot of people received empty envelopes.

No, but it is Hawaii. They may not be backwards, but within a few days visiting there I saw people on the job at two different locations taking a pot break.

I would think they have rules about smoking in the workplace :)

It's a great story. One of the things I'm curious about is the original use... What was it created for to begin with?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com