>An ANON must have made this sign, or covered over the old one - check it out.
I did check, Anon. We think alike. While on the Hampshire College campus this weekend, visiting a friend's son, we noticed that all "Speed Limit" signs at that Den of Libtards had a posted speed limit of 17.
So then I hit Google. Found a lot of stories stating that the college intentionally changed the speed limit to 17 in order to honir a retiring math professor. For example:
https:// www.google.com/amp/s/www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/10/17/hampshire-college-changes-speed-limits-honor-math-professor/LN73juokCzLM217YVF1UzI/amp.html
Hampshire College changes speed limits to honor math professor
By Nicole Dungca Globe Staff October 17, 2015
If you find yourself chuckling at the seemingly random speed limits of 17 miles per hour around Hampshire College, you can thank David Kelly.
When the longtime math professor retired this summer after more than 44 years, he said he didn’t want a retirement party or ceremony.
Instead, he opted for something a bit quirkier: Changing the speed limit signs around the college from 15 miles per hour to 17 mile per hour.
Anyone who has taken his classes knows Kelly is a bit obsessed with the number 17. He does a lecture on the prime number, which Kelly says has fascinated mathematicians for centuries.
If you ask Kelly to name some of his favorite facts about 17, he can go on for hours: Did you know, for example, that Carl Friedrich Gauss, a famed German mathematician, learned that you could create a 17-sided shape with just a compass and ruler? Or that there are 17 columns on the long side of the Parthenon in Greece?
Kelly said he has been pushing for the speed limit change because it’s a nice way of letting people know about the uniqueness of the college. He wants people to know the culture of the school as soon as they drive onto campus.
“When they see 17 miles per hour, that just alerts them to the fact that Hampshire is kind of special in a quirky sort of way,” he said.
Kelly said he has been trying to get the college to change the speed limits for decades. This year, Elizabeth Conlisk, a professor of public health at Hampshire, and the college president, Jonathan Lash, teamed up to grant him his wish.
This summer, workers changed the signs overnight to surprise Kelly, who is usually on campus until 11 p.m. and back around 7 a.m.
What was his reaction when he saw one of the signs?
“Finally, it happened!” he recalled.
Kelly, who said his age is “between 68 and 85, which are both multiples of 17,” still teaches summer classes to high-schoolers who are gifted at math — and he will surely continue to regale them with facts about the number 17.
Since this is a transportation column, I did ask him about some of his favorite transportation-related facts about the number. Without further ado:
It used to take 17 transfers to get from New York to Los Angeles via train.
Interstate 17 is one of the “interstate” highways that don’t run through multiple states. It’s located entirely within the state of Arizona.
And since space travel is a form of transportation: Apollo 17 was the final mission of the United States “Apollo” program, which put humans on the moon.