These postcards, handed out by a German chocolate company at the turn of the century, attempted to predict what life might have been like in the year 2000 based on the developing technology of those days. I think my favorite is either the city with a ceiling or the weather machine… But wouldn’t they have been mutually exclusive?

X-Ray Surveillance Machine

Weather Machine

Aqua Train

Walking on Water

Broadcasting Sound & Images

Underwater Boat / Submarine

Escalator / Moving Walkway

Movable City Blocks

Flying Contraptions

City w/ Ceiling

Hot Air Family Zeppelin, pre-Hindenburg

Arctic Vacation Fly-By

Via The Card Mine

Spreeder is a new free internet service which lets you test your speed reading skills and then improve them! Paste in the text of your choice in the language of your choice, the amount of words per minute to be displayed, and how many words to be thrown at you at one time.

Thanks spreeder!

Yes, the Critical Theory department at Occidental College is offering course 180. STUPIDITY.

The course description claims stupidity to be “those operations and technologies that we conduct in order to render ourselves uncomprehending…the double of intelligence rather than its opposite.” Stupidity has been redefined and “dumbed down,” the department says, and can be “felt in political life ranging from the presidency to Beevis and Butthead.”

Interestingly, “Beavis” has been misspelled in the Stupidity course description. Was this intentional, maybe just to see who’s paying attention? Or is the show really too stupid to be thoroughly analyized by the department? Wait, that wouldn’t count as stupidity either since they’re looking at it from a philosophical perspective.

Via Occidental College

Mannahatta, as the indigenous called it, meant “land of many hills.” And The Mannahatta Project tells the story. Take a look at some great computer generated images and years of research into the ecology of Manhattan prior to the arrival of Henry Hudson in 1609. Very awesome!

Unreal, that’s all I can think of. The North Korean Children’s parade, featuring more than 18,000 children has to be seen to believed. 2000-3000 children are upfront, performing extremely intricate gymnastics routines, while 15,000 or more children stand behind a massive set of cue cards (no that’s not a giant screen!), switching them out perfectly in sync with the routine occurring in front of them. This is absolutely stunning and frightening all in one, I loathe thinking about what the consequences are for holding up the wrong cue card or falling during a somersault.

Watch the North Korean Children’s Parade after the jump..

Read more of ”Video of the North Korean Children’s Parade featuring 18,000 children or more“

Whoa I don’t even know where to start with this. Wayne’s word (not world – duh) is a giant, giant collection of texts and articles covering natural history, making Wayne’s word one of the largest (if not THE largest) virtual text book. Covering everything from blood types and Crassulacean Acid Metabolism to morse code conversions in JavaScript and the Zigadenus, you can spend hours browsing through all of the online texts and quite possibly write a report or 10 for your kids’ science class.

Read more: Wayne’s word – The online textbook of natural history

Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne are the creators behind art project Celestial Mechanics, a brilliant experiment plotting FAA data, parsing it using the Processing programming environment, then compositing the resulting frames with Adobe After Effects and/or Maya. Resulting are beautiful and flowing animations displaying the flight patterns of commercial aircraft throughout the United States as flight upon flight arrives and departs America’s airports. Celestial Mechanics have been on display at many trade shows and conventions around the world, most recently at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria.

Read more: Digital visualizations of US flight patterns

Mike is a professional tornado and storm chased from Nebraska, home to some of the most breathtaking weather disturbances in the country. Originally starting out as an amateur chaser, Mike documented a stunning tornado on his first trip, which undoubtedly caused quite a bit distress. But the seed was planted and after 8 years, many storms and several movies, he’s posted hundreds of stunning weather images from his many chases and quite a few amazing photos of his pets playing in the rain (always good to see an animal lover who chases tornados).

Read more: Storm chasing photo gallery

Through his personal site, Author Will Self has providing a stunning 360 degree photo tour of his working space or ‘writing room’, featuring 71 photos taken by photographer Phil Grey. It’s a pretty interesting insight into the professional life of a successful writer and sometimes actor, giving fans an inside look into where all of Self’s work is conceived and produced. I’ve never seen so many Post-It Notes in my whole life, I couldn’t imagine what would happen if a gust of wind or a crazed cat blew through that room.

Read more: Photo tour of Will Self’s writing room | Will Self entry @ Wikipedia

The Foreign Service Institute is the US Government’s primary training institution for officers and support personal of the US Foreign affairs community. Through the use of language programs and studies, the FSI prepares future diplomats and other professionals who are advancing US foreign interests overseas and around Washington, via communication and whatever else those people do. These foreign language courses are published using federal money, which basically means they are public domain, and thus, available to any citizen who’s interested in learning a new language. So enter FSI Language Courses.com, a community-driven site, collecting, scanning and distributing the Foreign Service language program documentation and audio-tapes to anyone interested in learning Cantonese, Spanish, German, French and Portuguese, among many other languages, all on the government’s dime (well, your dime really).

Read more: Foreign Language Courses (many thanks to Stiv for the updated link!)