From Yahoo! UK News:
Government officials in Siberia are planning to set up a special research institute dedicated to the study of yetis following a number of recent mysterious sightings of the folkloric creature.
2011. Year…of the Yeti.
The Friday Cool Posts
The Friday Cool: YETI!
The Friday Cool: Soda Pop Stop
Watch this cool little documentary about a soda pop specialty store.
Would that I could live there…
LINKS
The Friday Cool: KK.org’s collected ‘The best articles ever’ for you to read
You must check out this collection of links to what’s touted as the best articles ever written. From kk.org:
This is a work in progress. It is a on-going list of suggestions collectively made by readers of this post. At this point the list has not been vetted or selected by me. In fact, other than the original five items I suggested, all of the articles mentioned here have been recommended by someone other than me. (Although I used to edit Wired magazine none of the article from Wired were suggested by me or anyone who worked at Wired. I also did not suggest my own pieces.)
I forget who pointed me here, and I only just got around to taking a look at some of the linked magazine articles here, but I think this is a text-book definition of ‘goldmine’ for wannabe writers looking for samples and examples of top-shelf writing.
These are big, meaty chunks of non-fiction from well known magazines ranging from the ’60s to the ’10s.
My Instapaper account is going to be filling up pretty quick here.
LINKS
The Friday Cool: The Mongoliad goes live
A new creative effort by such well-known writers as Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear is now open for business. From Mongoliad.com FAQs:
The Mongoliad is a serial novel, the kind of thing that Charles Dickens wrote. It’s also an experiment in fiction and technology… Fast Company said that we may be “the future of the novel.” The Mongoliad is set in the thirteenth century of a universe very much like ours, a world we call “Foreworld.” We publish chapters every so often (about weekly), and every chapter has associated discussions and other ways for readers to interact with each other and with us. Sometimes we’ll also have graphics to share as well, or movies, or music. There is a user-editable ‘Pedia with information about Foreworld-related topics, general-purpose user forums, and soon we hope to have easy ways for people to contribute their own stories, art, and music to our shared Foreworld experience.
From BoingBoing’s announcement:
For $5.99 you get a six-month subscription to the main body of fiction; $9.99 gets you a year (you retain access to the fiction after your subscription expires, but don’t get any new material until you renew, which is a major plus in my view — much fairer than most online “subscriptions” that lock you out once you let your sub lapse).
I’m skeptical about a subscription fee for a mainly prose piece of entertainment, but I guess the price isn’t too far out of line if you do get a reasonable amount of content comparable to a novel.
Honestly, the sample stuff hasn’t been strong enough to get me remotely interested in subscribing. But it’s a very interesting business model experiment.
LINKS
The Friday Cool: Color photos from Depression era
A collection of rare color photos taken by the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information between 1939 and 1943.
LINKS
