Click the image for more of the same..

The iPhones built in pdf viewer made a dogs breakfast of our staffs weekly newsletter. To great comedic effect since the topic of the article is legibility and the importance of clear communication.. at least so I believe.

Clearer communication at SLU

[...] for the reader a formal and simple language. The graphical layout will be  [...]

[...] understands the message.

Welcome to Chako Paul City.

Founded in 1820 by a rich widow. The population is dominated by lesbian lumberjack-ladies and any man that dares to enter gets beaten up by the local police.

The story was run recently by a whole number of magazines that the chinese paper Xinhua News was reporting of  a lesbo town in the northern parts of Sweden.

Searching google very quickly reveals that there seems to be no foundation for this at all. Xinhua news has no such story in its archives, and nobody has been able to produce a link or a screenshot of the original story.

Kind of sobering to see a pure fabrication get so much attention, isn’t it? Thankfully we live in an age where it is possible to quite quickly check sources, use that power and never trust anything too much..

Thanks to Anders for filling me in on the details.

The region of Bergslagen, where this moon-mine would be situated, is historically famous for its production of iron. There are recorded accounts of minerals being extracted from these sites as early as the 12:th century, but most of the visible remains today come from the very end of the  era, late 17th century.  We took a guided tour from one of the mines in the area, and the recorded history of the place is really fantastic.

Now of course the situation is different. We talked with the municipality of Nora some years ago, and it became pretty clear to us that they would be open for pretty much anything that would give the  region a boost. This is pure speculation of course, but it is this how a project this far-fetched could get the ok?

Fig 2: Idea plan

So here is what i gathered from project moon-mining so far.

• The project aims to establish a self-sustainable habitat in the mine, to simulate the enviroments of a habitat on the moon.
• The project has been given some kind of all-clear from the municipality. It seems that some kind of access to the actual mine has been granted.
• They do NOT yet have the permit to pump the water out of mine. I’m not sure why this is such a big deal, but we spoke to some people that diregarded the whole project as being “a fantasy” and hoped that the water would remain in the mine as it is now.
• Taking water from the mine in question Storgruvan, would also drain the adjacent Lockgruvan, interfering with Lockgruvans current touristic activities.
• The pumping of water is scheduled to begin july 20 2009.

So what do you think? Great entrepeneurial spirit or madman delusions? As a sci-fi nerd I love the project, but reading on the official web is not comforting. Some kind of focus on Hergés Tintins adventures on the moon? Extraction of ore from the mine “for domestic use”?

Yes its easy to disregard this one as a madman and a nutcase, but let the man with his own moon-base throw the first stone says I.

Here are some links

Swedish press about the project: http://www..ingenjoren.se/Sidor/6nov2008.aspx

Official page and source of images: http://www.moon-mine.com/

The full amazing story is here