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Watch Dr. Jim Porter manipulate a da Vinci surgical robot to build a paper airplane about the size of a penny. At the end, he tries to fling it into the air, again, using only the robot's arms.

via Crunch Gear

The government of the French town of Neuville-en-Ferrain commissioned a statue of Marianne, a traditional symbol of the French Revolution. After protests by the mayor and other residents, the statue was removed for having a little too much up top:

"It was making people gossip," said one town hall employee. "Remarks were made, during weddings for example."

Mayor Gerard Cordon persuaded councillors to approve 900 euros in this year's budget to buy a replacement, a more conventional bust of Marianne modelled on the statuesque French model Laetitia Casta.

The artist who made the rejected bust, Catherine Lamacque, said she gave it outsized breasts deliberately, "to symbolise the generosity of the Republic."

I suspect that had it been a full nude in the Academic tradition, no one would have noticed.

Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: AFP

Canadian artist Dorie Millerson makes sculptures out of lace, such as this streetcar from Toronto. Another cool series in her portfolio called "attachments" takes old sepia toned family photographs and recreates them in lace.

http://www.doriemillerson.com/Portfolio.aspx via Colossal

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Today is the most difficult of all days on which to be a Neatorama author because we must attempt to distinguish between the neat real and the neat fake. Confusing hijinks abound on this day, such as the subscription paywall that our friends at Boing Boing instituted (they had me falling for it for about ten seconds).

My favorite prank is Google's new motion-controlled email program, but you can view roundups of some of the best pranks this year at Flavorwire, Technabob, and Urlesque.

In the basement of Jack Heathcote's five-bedroom home, you can find the largest aquarium in Britain. In measures approximately 13 by 13 by 7 feet and can hold 4,800 gallons when filled to capacity. Heathcote has to clean it by hand (pictured) by diving in with the exotic fish from all of the world that he's collected:

Three of the walls of the tank are the foundation walls of the house and a large section of floor was removed by the bay window to allow access. Downstairs a wall of glass has replaced the brick wall, and behind it are some of the largest fish kept in captivity.

And the collection in the tank - which includes some valuable species - consists of two chainsaw doradids, three 2ft long Pacus, some Pangasius, a Red tail hybrid catfish, two alligator gars, eight enormous stingrays and two Fly River turtles.

They will soon be joined by two silver arowanas, which are more commonly found in the Amazon River Basin.

You can view several large pictures of the aquarium at the link.

Link via OhGizmo! | Photo: Page One

Previously: Arapaimag's Monster Home Aquarium

It'd probably look something like this. Although agitating a range safety officer (RO) is usually a bad idea. You don't want to become the that guy at the range.

Image by Robb Allen using a photo by Oleg Volk.

Are you serious about winning pillow fights? Matthew Borgatti is, so he made this mace-shaped pillow for an upcoming flash mob pillowfight in New York City. He writes:

Surprisingly it took a good yard of cushion foam and two bags of poly-fill to do this one up right and get it nice and spherical. In other interesting news this may be the first dodecahedron I’ve ever constructed.

Link via Super Punch

Remember the drug smugglers' submarine that was captured by Ecuadoran police last year? The 75-foot boat was capable of shipping about 9 tons of cocaine. Jim Popkin of Wired wrote a detailed look at its design after reading a report by the US Navy:

The hull, they discovered, was made from a costly and exotic mixture of Kevlar and carbon fiber, tough enough to withstand modest ocean pressures but difficult to trace at sea. Like a classic German U-boat, the drug-running submarine uses diesel engines on the surface and battery-powered electric motors when submerged. With a crew of four to six, it has a maximum operational range of 6,800 nautical miles on the surface and can go 10 days without refueling. Packed with 249 lead-acid batteries, the behemoth can also travel silently underwater for up to 18 hours before recharging.

The most valuable feature, though, is the cargo bay, capable of holding up to 9 tons of cocaine—a street value of about $250 million. The vessel ferries that precious payload using a GPS chart plotter with side-scan capabilities and a high-frequency radio—essential gadgetry to ensure on-time deliveries. There’s also an electro-optical periscope and an infrared camera mounted on the conning tower—visual aids that supplement two miniature windows in the makeshift cockpit.

You can view several pictures

Link via Nerdcore

Matthew Cusick composes collage portraits and landscapes out of maps, such as the above Red & Blue. Each work at his gallery at the link includes a detail image, demonstrating the remarkable work that Cusick put into selecting map colors and shapes.

Link via Dude Craft

The floods in Pakistan devastated not only the human population of that country, but much of its fauna. Many spiders survived only by crowding into trees, producing pictures like those you see above. Duncan Geere of Wired UK explains:

With more than a fifth of the country submerged, millions of spiders climbed into trees to escape the rising floodwaters. The water took so long to recede, the trees became covered in a cocoon of spiderwebs. The result is an eerie, alien panorama, with any vegetation covered in a thick mass of webbing. (You can see images from the region in the gallery linked below.)

However, the unusual phenomenon may be a blessing in disguise. Britain’s department for international development reports that areas where the spiders have scaled the trees have seen far fewer malaria-spreading mosquitos than might be expected, given the prevalence of stagnant, standing water.

Article and Gallery via Geekosystem | Photo: UK Department for International Development

Previously: Giant Spider Web

R. Luke Dubois sifted through the profiles of 19 million people in the United States on 21 dating websites. He then plotted the words that they used in their profiles the most frequently with their geographic locations. Pictured above, for example, is central Michigan. "Companionship", I think, is Lansing. You can view other maps at the link.

Link via Colossal

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YouTube user BronyVids has been busy mashing up scenes from the web TV series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic with thrilling action films, such as The Dark Knight. At the link, you can view similar videos using Inception and 300 as source audio.

Link

The Spoctocus can neck pinch eight people simultaneously and squeeze itself through the narrowest of Jeffries tubes with ease. This tattoo has been attributed to artist Daniel Limon of Tuscon.

Link via blastr

UPDATE 3/31/11: In the comments, truth points out that deviantART user stablercake may be the original designer of the Spoctocus. Thanks, truth!

Look at what Boba Fett found in his attic. Is it an imitation or an original? How much money do you think that it will fetch?

via Popped Culture

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What has gone wrong? The fish are right there, but protected by some invisible forcefield!

via Ace of Spades HQ | Previously: How to Drive a Cat Crazy