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Avian Fashions
What with the pop-ups, java intro, scrolling boxes and excessive color assault, this site is a study in web abuse. It's also a place to buy diapers for your bird. Yes, their product is the "FlightSuit", which allows you to attach a leash to your parrot or pigeon or whatever and contains a special "POOP-pouch" (their term) so you can take it visiting without the darned thing crapping on your neighbor's carpet.

Q: How long can birds wear FlightSuits (and still catch POOP?) A: While we have seen FlightSuits last much longer, we strongly recommend they be changed every 4 to 6 hours. The unique design of the patented POOP-pouch allows easy monitoring. Newly available FlightLiners make changing even easier! Simply change the liner to extend the time between changing FlightSuits.

Animals

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U.S. Army Cool Stuff
Your tax dollars um, doing something. There's been a java programmer here, designing a concentration game and a sliding block puzzle. There's downloadable wallpaper, featuring many broken links. But most of all, there is a java coloring book to keep you amused.

Military

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The Promised Planet
Despite brain-damaged navigation (mouse over the "control panel" area and wait for the painfully-slow descriptions to load), this Lost in Space fan site is quite fun. You can read about why this particular piece of sixties schlock is actually worth preserving, see lots of photos, catch up on an extensive episode guide, or read new fan fiction. Or you can just peruse the extensive list of names that Dr. Zachary Smith called the robot.

Parsimonious puppet pathetic pomposity pedagogical pip-squeak pitiable pip-squeak plasticized parrot pompous pip-squeak ponderous plumber

Television

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Amazing $20 Bill 9/11 Coincidence
You may have seen this mentioned elsewhere; it's been getting around. If you fold a $20 bill and squint, you can believe that you're seeing pictures of the Pentagon and the WTC on fire. Completely silly, of course, as even the people who put together the site admit. But take a look at the page upon page of wacky comments and you'll realize that some people take this stuff seriously.

THIS DESTRUCTION WAS PROPHISIED IN VENTURA COUNTY JUVINAL COURT THE SUMMER PRIOR TO 9-11-2001 {JUDGE JOHN DOBROTH PRESIDING}THE 9-11 DATE WAS GIVEN, SO WAS OSAMA BIN LADEN'S NAME AS WELL AS ALQEDA. THE REASON FOR THE PROPHESY WAS TO PROVE TO THE COURT THAT I WAS A SAINT, AND THAT THE SLEEPING CHRISTIAN CHURCH SHOULD WAKE UP. JERRY FARWELL'S LIE THAT 9-11 WAS BECOUSE OF THE A.C.L.U. WAS PREDICTED AS WELL. SO WAS ANTHRAX ETC. ETC. THIS WAS SECRETLY TAPED BY VENTURA COUNTY COURT WHO NEED TO SHOW IT TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC. JULY 4th 2002, THERE WILL BE A BUCH OF BIG BANGS ON THE EAST COAST. SORRY TO YOU ALL. I'M NOT CAUSING THEM, JUST PREDICTING THEM. DRAW CLOSE TO THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, AND REPENT FROM YOUR SINS. ESPECIALLY THE SINS AGAINST THE SAINTS OF GOD ALMIGHTY, HIS BORN AGAIN CHRISTIANS, NOT THE {SPIRITUALLY DEAD} JEWS AND MUSLEMS. PEACE TO YOU ALL, EXCEPT THE SATANIST! MAY THEY GO QUICKLY TO HELL THE ETENAL LAKE OF FIRE!

Culture

Source: Gammatron

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Leaflets Dropped over Afghanistan
JPG images of leaflets from Operation Enduring Freedom, in both English and the native languages in which they were dropped. Quite a variety, actually. One wonders whether there's someone in the military whose job it is to measure the effectiveness of this stuff, much of which seems pretty obviously propaganda.

USAMA BIN LADEN THE MURDERER AND COWARD HAS ABANDONED AL QAIDA . HE HAS ABANDONED YOU AND RUN AWAY. GIVE YOURSELF UP AND DO NOT DIE NEEDLESSLY. YOU MEAN NOTHING TO HIM. SAVE YOUR FAMILIES THE GRIEF AND PAIN OF YOUR DEATH.

Military

Source: Easily Amused

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PoshTots
This would be for parents with more money than we have to spend on children's furnishings, I guess. $1700 toy chests, a bed that costs nearly $40,000, $900 wall hangings. There are a few items under $100, but definitely this is a place to shop if money is no object.

Can I have a creation designed especially for my child? We work with many artisans who are thrilled to design custom pieces. If you would like a creation designed around your favorite fabric, unique ideas or a specific theme, simply complete the Ask Our Interior Designers form and our designer will contact you.

Shopping

Source: Andrea's Weblog

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Polyedergarten
A site devoted to photos of lovely colorful models of polyhedra. These are not just the Platonic solids, but all sorts of stellated and complex shapes as well. No doubt this can be appreciated from a mathematical standpoint, but I just like the pretty pictures.

All Polyhedra are made of type-writer paper. The diameter is about 7 up to about 30 cm. Construction is done making layers beginning in the center. The facelets (up to more than 1500 in model w85) were cut out with knives and scissors and then they were glueed to the final shape. The sequence and the combination of the models on the sites are not systematical.The names and the w-numbers (for example w85: Quasirhombicuboctahedron) are taken from M. Wenningers book "Polyhedron models". Sort and number of the faces of most of the models are given.

Art Mathematics

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Gulliver's Travels
Sure, Gulliver's Travels is out of copyright, so there are other versions of it floating around on the net these days. What makes this one special is Lee Jaffe's notes and annotations. There are also a timeline, links to other sources, a list of Swiftian firsts, and more. A great way to make a classic work more accessible to those without a background in Swift's life and times.

One of the mysteries of the Travels is its description of the Laputan discovery of the two moons of Mars, which would not be observed in reality for another 150 years after Swift's book was published. Swift was probably neither psychic nor original in this prediction, likely having copied speculation by Kepler and others popular at the time. The idea was that the further out in the Solar System the more moons a planet would have. Earth has one, Jupiter was thought to have four, then Mars should have two. Simple. However, Gulliver continued his report, "whereof the innermost is distant from the Center of the primary Planet exactly three of his Diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten Hours, and the latter in Twenty-one and an Half;" which turned out to be remarkably accurate.

Literature

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Origami Records and Curiosities
I've wandered through a bunch of odd little origami pages lately; the hobby seems to have a quite vibrant web presence. This page collects some notes about biggest, most folds, and other records from around the web end elsewhere. No pictures, but it might inspire you to search out some of the other origami content out there.

A life size Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, 18 feet by 30 feet, was shown at the Charlotte convention in October 1996. The original model was created by Issei Yoshino and requires 21 equally sized square sheets of paper.

Crafts

Source: Lake Effect

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Hoover Dam Bypass
So, Hoover Dam is too congested with traffic these days (or too vulnerable to bombs, take your pick), and they're going to build a bridge across black canyon a bit downstream to take the traffic load. Check out their animated movie of the route. Looks like the views will be spectacular, if you’re the sort of person who can stare at anything other than their hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel at that height.

United States Highway 93 (U.S. 93) has been designated a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) route. The increasing congestion caused by the switchbacks leading to the Hoover Dam site and the restrictions at the dam crossing have led to the development of the Hoover Bypass Project. The Hoover Dam Bypass Project is a 3.5-mile corridor beginning at approximately milepost 2.2 in Clark County, Nevada and crossing the Colorado River approximately 1,500 feet downstream of the Hoover Dam, then terminating in Mojave County, Arizona near milepost 1.7 on U.S. 93.

Transportation

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Hello Kitty Has No Mouth
A set of aphorisms addressing Hello Kitty's lack of mouth, together with some correspondence. No, I don't know why this page exists. But then, I'm none too sure why any of the other pages on the net exist either.

Hello Kitty has no mouth, and when she gets sick, her head swells to near bursting.

Humor

Source: AntiQuark

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Lightning on Demand
Every boy dreams of playing with Tesla coils and other large dangerous spark-making objects. These folks have taken that dream to a reality, having built a bunch of 'em, including a 38-foot tall model that generates some impressive sparks. Now they're trying to raise money for a 12-story model. I'm sure they'd be happy to build something for you too.

The principal goal of Lightning On Demand is to design, construct and operate a proposed large-scale experimental platform known as the Advanced Lightning Facility. This facility will consist of two 12-story resonant transformer structures, capable of generating 300ft lightning discharges continuously through open air -- and deliver current intensities similiar to those of natural terrestrial strikes.

Electronics

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The Business Card Menger Sponge Project
This site dates back a few years. The plan was to build a giant origami model of a Menger's Sponge of depth 3 (a sort of three-dimensional fractal) out of 66,048 business cards. You can see sketches of the thing, view a photo of a smaller Menger's Sponge built with the same technique, and consider the calculations as to whether the thing can support its own weight. I don't see whether it was ever finished, though.

By the way, a level 4 sponge would require almost a million cards and weigh over a ton. I do not believe it could support its own weight. So level 3 is the biggest sponge we can hope to build.

Art Mathematics

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Inside David's Head
this is kinda cool: David Coppit participated in an experiment that included an MRI of his head, and then he turned the resulting data into a series of MPEG movies and animated GIFs. So you can watch a cross-section of his head evolve in various directions: top to bottom, side to side, and so on.

A couple notes about this and the other pictures: First, my ears aren't really that big -- what you see is the foam from the ear protection I wore. (The MRI machine is loud!) You can faintly see the LCD goggles I was looking at during the experiment. The "wood grain" look of my head is a result of combining the multiple layers of data that the MRI machine takes. Also, I haven't shaved my head -- hair doesn't show up on the MRI.

Biology

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The Ova Prima Foundation
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? These people are pretty well convinced that it was the egg, and they fund an elaborate program of research to buttress their facts. A bit more interesting than the average foundation website.

The Ova Prima Foundation has provided funding for ovaprimatological research and education to over 100 colleges, universities, and other education or research organizations throughout the world. Each year, Ova Prima receives approximately 1000 new or renewal support proposals for research, graduate and postdoctoral fellowships, and community partnerships between schools and businesses. More information on funding is located on our Grants page.

Biology Humor