The U.S. dollar—official tender in the United States as well as Panama, Liberia, East Timor and a handful of other countries—is one of the world’s most widely used currencies. Its bills are also widely regarded as one of the world’s ugliest. To help spur a monetary makeover Richard Smith, a creative strategy consultant, launched a website to collect ideas for new notes: The Dollar ReDe$ign Project.

Of the various designs that have been submitted to the site, one of Spot Cool Stuff’s favorites most also happen to be the most controvertial.

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• The Statue of Liberty will be plastered with advertisements.

• Men will have flying machines built into their clothes and use them to pursue women; women will use the same to escape from men.

• New York City will be covered by a giant man-made roof from which humans will control the weather below.

• Having sex with robots will be commonplace; technovirgins (humans who have only had sex with robots) will proliferate.

Those are not predictions about the future. They are past predictions—from 1885, 1901, 1949 and 1997, respectively—about the word of today. They, and many more past visions of the future, are collected on the website Paleofuture.

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What’s the proper way to use a semicolon?

How fast can cats run?

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How long could you survive after kicking a bear in the balls?

These and other burning questions are answered in fun graphical form on a Spot Cool Stuff website favorite: The Oatmeal.

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Almost everyone knows Amazon.com for its bargain deals on books and electronics. Amazon is also a good source for discount groceries. We like their DRM-free MP3 store (even more than iTunes). And we love their Amazon Kindle. But Amazon also has a surprisingly large selection items that defy categorization, from the odd to the downright wacky.

Here’s our look at some of the weirdest items for sale on Amazon and the solution they provide to some of life’s most common problems:

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Sure your standard bookshelf dictionary is useful for looking up the definitions of words that are, you know, “acceptable.” But what about cutting edge slang words? Or words no longer in use? Or words you can use to insult a Klingon? For that you need an out-of-the-ordinary dictionary. Here are eight of our online favorites:

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We absolutely love maps. We have since we were six years old when we traced out a giant map of the world and then painstakingly demarcated the territories that would be controlled by each of our stuffed animals.

In the hope that some of our readers enjoy maps as much as we do we present one of our favorite blogs: Strange Maps.

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The best cartoons are no longer in the newspaper. They are online. Exhibit 1: xkcd.

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How should we categorize Breed ‘Em And Weep? This blog from Berkshires writer Jenn Mattern is ostensibly about the trials and tribulations of motherhood but, really, it is about so much more.

We could see putting Jenn’s blog under our Quirky category because how else would you describe, say, an imagined couple’s therapy session between Obama and McCain? It could go under Communication because Jenn has written the world’s wisest words on how to talk to a sad person. Humorous could work too, because virtually every post of Jenn’s has a comic touch, as could Community, because Breed ‘Em And Weep has a loyal group of readers who form friendships through her site.

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