MetaFilter

These Posters were an Artbomb that went off across the street from my apartment last night. The posters were plastered over a bus shelter ad and over several other public objects nearby. I was taken aback, as I had last seen those images hanging in an exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art. San Jose has a fairly bad graffiti/tagging problem, but I'm OK with this type of thing. Apparently, the SJPD are too (quoted from the Mercury News): "The poster-pasting could be considered a violation of municipal statutes on vandalism, but San Jose Police Department spokesman Steve Dickson seemed more amused than concerned. "It's not something that we would get involved in unless someone makes a complaint," Dickson said. "Then we'd ask them to take them down. People have a right to political speech." In fact, Dickson broke into laughter at a description of the two posters. "Hey," he said apologetically, "we have a sense of humor like anyone else."
posted by JDC8 at 10:29 PM PST - 8 comments

After getting the inside story (ha?) on the inventor of everyone's favorite non-orientable surface, the Klein Bottle; and perhaps playing a few games inside of one, you can check out a few 3-dimensional immersions of klein bottles: in Lego, knitted fabric, paper, or glass.
posted by kidsplateusa at 9:41 PM PST - 5 comments

election results canada will provide real-time results of the Canadian 2000 general election on Nov. 27th from across the nation, as the polls report their results. In B.C., where I live, the eastern polls close at 5p.m. our time, but results are blacked out on t.v. until 8p.m. "The Canada Elections Act has certain provisions, which attempt to make the transmission of factual information to the public a crime, imposing a hefty penalty on those who do not obey it. This election gag law will harm numerous responsible, law-abiding Canadians. It is unconstitutional, and must be challenged on that basis. The citizens of Canada deserve timely access to public information. This site will provide it to them." Is there such a site for the U.S. election?
posted by riley370 at 8:55 PM PST - 3 comments

Now while these guys are not exactly the most unbiased source for an evaluation of the PlayStation 2, they have nonetheless backed up their evaluation with a lot of convincing hard information on the performance and in particular about the financing. If these guys have got it right, Sony's going to take a bath on this; they'll never come close to recouping their costs of production, let alone all the research they did. If these guys have it right, Sony will lose money on the PS2 as long as they sell it. This Is Not Good. (Unless you hate Rambus, like I do, because this means both of their markets will collapse.)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:27 PM PST - 19 comments

Attack of the Killer MS Flacks Has anyone seemed to notice that shortly after the Wall Street Journal broke the story about the Microsoft hackers that the NYT became a voice for MS when they first claimed that no source code was stolen and next when they seemed to remember they tracked the entire attack for all 12 days.
posted by bkdelong at 7:39 PM PST - 2 comments

The New Venue Aggressively Boring Film Festival is accepting submissions of silent greyscale films in the resolution of a Palm Pilot (or less). Any length, any format, just 4- or 8-color greyscale. Win a Sony CLIÉ and a showing of your film at Comdex. The catch: deadline is November 7th.
posted by dan_of_brainlog at 7:18 PM PST - 2 comments

MSNBC gained some weight. No, it's not a redesign but an evolution of MSNBC's homepage. Looks better than one before. Sigh. Where have all the real redesigns gone?
posted by Brilliantcrank at 7:13 PM PST - 8 comments

Who was that masked man? And what was he thinking when he put it on?
posted by allaboutgeorge at 6:59 PM PST - 6 comments

The Fireland.com Blind Dialog contest. This is a hilarious contest. And how can you resist putting an entry in, when the grand prize is a Lego Ninja Fire Fortress?
posted by Succa at 5:39 PM PST - 1 comments

Isn't this how the IMDB got started? Maybe this guy will eventually be able to sell out. (But to who?)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 5:36 PM PST - 14 comments

Boo is back. And apparently "this time it's personal".
posted by astro38 at 4:59 PM PST - 1 comments

Eric is fat! After a month of gorgeing himself for The Fat Project, Eric has finally achieved his goal of 30 lbs. in 30 days. Nicole, on the other hand, isn't faring so well. Updates every few hours today.
posted by isildur at 3:03 PM PST - 7 comments

Ninga? Nintendo and Sega to form joint company. With Sony and M$ to contend with, it doesn't come as much of a surprise.
posted by john at 1:35 PM PST - 28 comments

Patrick Farley's latest comic is a great halloween treat. Anyone know of other good online comic artists?
posted by mathowie at 1:30 PM PST - 18 comments

Court Finds Mr. Cannabis Guilty of Growing Cannabis (insert similar play on words to evoke laughter here).
posted by Hankins at 1:10 PM PST - 1 comments

Not exactly "Green". "The trouble is, Nader seems uneasy being Green. He refuses to join the party (never has joined one, and swears he never will). And while he matches the Greens in anticorporate fervor—our current government is "of the Exxons, by the General Motors, and for the DuPonts," he says—the environment seems rather low on his policy agenda. Last year he devoted just three of his weekly syndicated newspaper columns to the subject. "
posted by owillis at 11:58 AM PST - 8 comments

About.com acquired by old-media concern Primedia for $690 million in Primedia stock. One of the true original web-content concepts has found a valuation anchor.
posted by MattD at 11:44 AM PST - 9 comments

Introducing Flash 6 - now only 98% Bad!
Jakob Neilsen focuses his alertbox on the evils of Flash, calls it 99% bad. Take that Rob Burgess, CEO of Macromedia (who last week equated the technology have-nots with being damned to Hell).
posted by DragonBoy at 11:16 AM PST - 39 comments

I'll take great jobs for $100, Alex. My favorite quote: "I used to joke that I mentioned how I collected caps, so I wind up getting a lot of caps. I should have mentioned that I collect Rolex watches and see what happened." Fluffy, but fun.
posted by baylink at 10:41 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

You gotta love that Tom Tomorrow. . .
posted by snakey at 9:36 AM PST - 1 comments

Unsafe in any state. Salon trashes the Nader campaign big time, mainly claiming that his run for the Presidency is "reckless" and "dangerous". In an alleged democracy, doesn't any candidate who passes muster with the entry requirements have the right to run for the office?
posted by ethmar at 8:24 AM PST - 38 comments

U2's site gets a redesign, losing the befuddling wireframe "studio" concept for something a little more familiar: a timeline-cum-blog, taking elements of Classic Motown and U2log.
posted by hijinx at 7:00 AM PST - 13 comments

An article in The Standard about vote swapping... Nice to see that someone other than the folks here at MeFi noticed.
posted by silusGROK at 6:17 AM PST - 12 comments

The Hereford Mappa Mundi (Map the World) is a remarkably beautiful and rare glimpse into the medieval view the world. It is the largest map its kind (54 x 64 inches) to have survived and dates from around 1295. It still resides at Hereford Cathedral in England just as it has done for the last 700 years.

The map depicts the world as a flat disk with east at the top. It shows all the features the then known world including Africa, India and China. Paradise is depicted somewhere east India. The Holy Land and its important sites expand to fill the middle the map. Jerusalem is placed at the centre the world.

It is a work of cosmology as much as a cartography. That is, it seeks to explain the world as well as merely depict its features. This was a time when the population was uneducated and provincial. In the Hereford map, people could revel in this vision of the outside world, which taught natural history, classical legends, explained the winds and reinforced their religious beliefs.

Here is a simplified sketch which makes the details and country names easier to identify. Here is the original and a very good written description.
posted by lagado at 3:29 AM PST - 10 comments

Now this is really too meta. MetaFilter's post about borrowed blogs being borrowed by borrowed blogs.
posted by lagado at 1:38 AM PST - 6 comments

Q: What tastes like lemon but isn't? A: Design theft at its most brazen and appalling.
posted by jjg at 12:31 AM PST - 10 comments