Lonelygirl15

[shifty]

[Luminous]

[shifty]

The Blue-footed Booby (Sula nebouxii) is a bird in the Sulidae family which comprises ten species of long-winged seabirds. It is on average 81 cm long and weighs 1.5 kg (3 lb), with the females slightly larger than the males.

The name “booby” comes from the Spanish term bubi, which means "stupid fellow". This is because the Blue-footed Booby is clumsy on the land, and like other seabirds can be very tame. It has been known to alight on boats, where it was once captured and eaten.

The natural breeding habitat of the Blue-footed Booby is tropical and subtropical islands off the Pacific coast of South America from Peru to Mexico including, most famously, the Galápagos Islands.

The courtship of the Blue-footed Booby consists of the male flaunting his blue feet and dancing to impress the female. During the dance, the male will spread his wings and stomp his feet on the ground.

The female Blue-footed Booby lays two or three eggs. Both male and female take turns incubating the eggs, while the non-sitting bird keeps a watch. Since the Blue-footed Booby does not have a brooding patch (a patch of bare skin on the underbelly) it uses its feet to keep the eggs warm. The chicks cannot control their body temperature up until about one month old. They must be fed frequently, so the adults constantly hunt for fish. The chicks feed off the regurgitated fish in the adult's mouth. If the parent Blue-footed Booby does not have enough food for all of the chicks, it will only feed the biggest chick, ensuring that at least one will survive.

The Blue-footed Booby's diet consists entirely of fish. It dives into the ocean, sometimes from a great height, and swims underwater in pursuit of its prey. It hunts singly, in pairs or in larger flocks. When the lead bird sees a fish shoal in the water, it will signal the rest of the group and they will all dive together to catch the fish. Surprisingly, individuals do not eat with the hunting group, preferring to eat on their own, usually in the early morning or late afternoon.



Red-footed Boobies better back up.

[Sad Panda]

Boobies? Where?




.... Waitasec, it's a bird?

What a rip off!

(And yes, this will be my only contribution to this silly, silly arugement)
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[Luminous]

[Caslynn]

[acidfingers]

The Ansaldo A.300 was an Italian general-purpose biplane built by the Ansaldo company (now part of FIAT) of Turin from 1920 to 1929. It also served as a light bomber, transport, fighter and reconnaissance aircraft, and finally as an advanced trainer, with examples in service as late as 1940. 50 examples were also license-built in Poland at Plage i Laśkiewicz, but were not a success due to bad quality.

Based on Ansaldo's highly successful WWI Balilla and S.V.A scouts, the A.300 was a conventional single-engined two-bay open cockpit biplane of mixed metal and wood-and-fabric construction, powered usually by a water-cooled FIAT A.12bis V12 engine. Most variants had two fixed Vickers guns and one mobile mounted in the rear cockpit. It first flew in 1919.

Early examples were two seaters, but the A.300/3 was a three-seater intended for reconnaissance use, of which around 90 were delivered. The most significant variant was the A.300/4, again mostly three-seaters, which started full production in 1923, just as Ansaldo was absorbed into FIAT. This became the standard multi-role aircraft in the newly-formed Regia Aeronautica and served in Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corfu, Libya and Eritrea.

The A.300 was one of the most numerous aircraft of its time, with the production run of the A.300/4 alone, at 700 units, exceeding the total production of any other type of the 1920s except the Breguet XIX. Despite this, and possibly because it was Italian rather than French or British, it remains one of the least documented contemporary types, certainly the most obscure produced in anything like these numbers.

* Wingspan: 11.24m
* Length: 8.75m

* All-up weight: 1700kg
* Maximum speed: 200 km/h
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[13:09:39] <marlasinger> acid's like a pussy sore, if you keep playing with it it just gets worse.

[Nodus]

The Netherlands (Dutch: Nederland) (IPA: [ˈne:dərlɑnt]) is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Dutch: Koninkrijk der Nederlanden), which consists of the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles, and Aruba. The Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy, located in northwestern Europe. It is bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east. The current borders were established in 1839.

The Netherlands is often referred to by the name Holland. This is not terminologically precise, as the provinces of North and South Holland in the western Netherlands are only two of the country's twelve provinces (for more on this and other naming issues see Netherlands (terminology)).

*snipped due to excessive length and no relation to topic*

[diastres]

Bead knitting
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Bead knitting is a type of knitting in which the stitches are decorated with ceramic or glass beads. Important advantages include (1) the surface and color effects available with beads (and not with yarn) and (2) the longer wear of the beads may lengthen the life of the knitted fabric significantly.

The techniques are described here for beads, but knitting sequins (and other perforated objects) can be done analogously.

[edit] Techniques

The classic approach is to thread beads on the yarn in advance. (The rotational axis of the bead is aligned horizontally.) In this case, the easiest method is to slip the stitch with the yarn (and bead) in front at the position where a bead is desired. The bead will be visible only on the right side of the work. The disadantage of this method is that beads cannot be arranged on top of each other, since the same stitch could have to be slipped multiple times. A second, alternative method is to position the bead on the yarn connecting two stitches, i.e., between two bights. A third alternative method is to knit the stitch with the bead on the bight itself. For consistency, the bead should be positioned on the same leg of the bight. Using this third method, one can make a densely beaded knitted fabric, i.e., one that appears to be all beads, with no knitted yarns visible. It is sometimes difficult, however, to keep the bead on the right side of the fabric; for this reason, the stitches are often twisted, to tighten up the fabric.

A second approach that offers more flexibility is to thread the bead onto the bight, i.e., onto the loop before it is knitted. (The rotational axis of the bead is aligned vertically.) In this case, the beads appears on both sides of the fabric. The chief drawback of this method is that the beads must be larger, since two strands of the yarn pass through the bead. In this approach, it is helpful to make an elongated stitch to fit both the bead and the next stitch.

A third approach is to sew on the beads after knitting. This approach is the least desirable, since it does not protect the yarn as well and since the sewing thread is usually weaker than the yarn.

[edit] History of bead knitting

In the Victorian era, it was popular to knit densely beaded purses using tiny knitting needles made of stiff wire, much smaller (\mathrm{\ll 1 mm}) than the smallest knitting needle available commercially today. Such tiny stitches allow for very intricate patterns.

[sphinx]

[Caslynn]

[diastres]

[Caslynn]

[Broken Kid]

Since people can't seem to approach subjects like this without insulting each other or feeling insulted, and since some folks are posting completely unrelated content, this topic is going to be locked too - at least to let the heat die down. There's nothing productive beyond the first page of this thread, which started off quite well and reasonably.
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President of the Owen Fan Club