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.

Would that I could live there…

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Soda Pop Stop Store

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.

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Cool Tools – The Best Magazine Articles Ever

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.

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The Mongoliad

BoingBoing’s write up

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Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943

I don’t think my wife will mind much, despite the fact that my last attempt at making my own ginger ale ended with devastation.

I think we’ve finally gotten the last bits of ginger off the ceiling and cabinets…and out of her hair.

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Soda Pop via kottke

From an article by Witold Fraczek of Esri:

The following is not a futuristic scenario. It is not science fiction. It is a demonstration of the capabilities of GIS to model the results of an extremely unlikely, yet intellectually fascinating query: What would happen if the earth stopped spinning? ArcGIS was used to perform complex raster analysis and volumetric computations and generate maps that visualize these results.

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If the Earth Stood Still

via kottke

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You Are In Demand If You Can Draw (Cartoon SNAP!)

I got 100%. Just so you know.

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Star Wars Sound Effects Quiz!

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