Looking for a reason to visit the Philippines? This mermaid school should do the trick. No, seriously, there’s an actual school that will teach you how to be a mermaid. It’s called the Philippines Mermaid Swimming Academy. (Photo by Philippine Mermaid Swimming Academy/Exclusivepix Media)

“Body blading (also known as buggy rollin') is an extreme sport that involves descending down a slope while wearing a flexible aerodynamic plastic roller suit that has wheels on the feet, knees, torso, and arms. This suit was created by Jean-Yves Blondeau, and he is one of the premier body bladers. Body blading is similar to roller blading, and in fact a body blader often starts out using the rollers on their feet in the same fashion as roller blades in order to gain initial speed, but then the rider generally assumes a position laying on the stomach facing down the hill. A body blader is capable of reaching very high speeds. Maneuverability is achieved by moving the body into various positions to change direction”. – Wikipedia

Photo: French designer Jean-Yves Blondeau demonstrates his “Buggy Rollin” suit during a performance on August 16, 2007 in Beijing, China. Blondeau is able to roll along in any position and can achieve high speeds wearing the suit. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

Having $100 in your pocket would be so much cooler if it was designed by Martin Joubert. He went all out and created a number of different designs for the 100 USD banknotes, ranging from silly to witty. We especially liked the one with “That’s right. This is real money” written on it, showing just how many cups of coffee, basketballs, and guns you can buy with 100 dollars. All in all, even the currency that we have today is nothing but paper, even though it looks official and strict. There is nothing backing it up except for our noble military that ensures that Gulf States sell their oil using only the “green” kind of currency. (Photo by Martin Joubert)

For more than a century, the Barcelona skyline has been graced (or marred, depending on who’s talking) by the spectacle of the Basilica designed by Anton Gaudi, first started in 1882. If you want to know what it’ll look like when finished, don’t fret — 2026 is right around the corner. Or you can watch this video, released last week on YouTube by Basílica de la Sagrada Família and titled simply “2026 We Build Tomorrow,” a 3-D artists’ rendering of the building stages through completion.
(If 144 years sounds like a long time to finish a cathedral, keep in mind that there were decades that they didn’t work on it — and that Notre Dame de Paris took 182 years, although the 13th century Parisians didn’t have diesel-powered industrial cranes.) Now, if only the video could show us what the admission and hours will be in 2026 (and how to avoid the inevitable long lines).

Runner-up. “The City of London, looking towards the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England. The ever-changing London skyline provides many excellent opportunities for cityscape photography, none more exciting than the ebb and flow of traffic at night”. (Photo by Mark Caldon/The Guardian)

Los Angeles native Mike Stilkey has always been attracted to painting and drawing not only on vintage paper, record covers and book pages, but on the books themselves. Using a mix of ink, colored pencil, paint and lacquer, Stilkey depicts a melancholic and at times a whimsical cast of characters inhabiting ambiguous spaces and narratives of fantasy and fairy tales. A lingering sense of loss and longing hints at emotional depth and draws the viewer into their introspective thrall with a mixture of capricious poetry, wit, and mystery. (Photo by Mike Stilkey)

“The Southern Tamandua, Collared Anteater or Lesser Anteater (Tamandua tetradactyla) is a species of anteater from South America. It is a solitary animal, found in many habitats from mature to highly disturbed secondary forests and arid savannas. It feeds on ants, termites and bees. It has very strong foreclaws that can be used to break insect nests or to defend itself”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A three-month-old baby Southern Tamandua “Konbu” lies on its mother Tae's back at Sunshine International Aquarium on July 7, 2009 in Tokyo, Japan. Baby Southern Tamandua feels safe and comfortable holding onto something and normally stays on the mother's back until around 3 months old. (Photo by Junko Kimura/Getty Images)

“The telectroscope (also referred to as “electroscope”) was the first non-working prototype (i.e. conceptual model) of a television or videophone system. The term was used in the 19th century to describe science-based systems of distant seeing. The name and its concept came into being not long after the telephone was patented in 1876, and its original concept evolved from that of remote facsimile reproductions onto paper, into the live viewing of remote images”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Visitors to London wave to people they can see in New York as they peer through the Telectroscope situated by Tower Bridge on May 23, 2008 in London, England. The device named the Telectroscope provides a live visual link up between London and New York, to another Telectroscope by Brooklyn Bridge. (Photo by Cate Gillon/Getty Images)