There goes the weekend. I had the best intentions of making productive use of my time over the next few days and then discovered that the German Federal Archive has agreed to donate 100,000 historic images to the Wikipedia Commons under a Creative Commons License. Like the release of the enormous Life photo archive, this is fantastic news unless you were planning on getting something done.

For the indefatigably curious:
The above photo on the left, beside being a paragon of the lost art of outdoor wear, shows Karl Wienert in 1938 using a phototheodolite. Wienert was the geologist on the German expedition to Tibet sponsored by the Ahnenerbe, a research organization founded by Heinrich Himmler to study the history of the Aryan race and to prove some of the more questionable assertions of Nordic Theory. The photographer, Ernst Krauss, was on the team to produce a documentary film which was released in Germany in 1942. For more information see Joseph Cummins' account of the Nazis in Tibet in his book History's Great Untold Stories: Obscure and Fascinating Accounts with Important Lessons for the World.