Cut and paste? I made that site for my basic web design class, I haven't had time to go back and make all the elements gell together. I wrote almost the entire thing by hand to learn css and xhtml. I added the flash menu and scripts to use a flickr feed to automatically update the galleries after so it would be a usable site. Anyway it's not done either, but it's far from being cut and paste. I designed it from the ground up as well. Hopefully I can address some of the issues with it in my advanced web design class.
My main goal in using that menu with it was to learn how that flash menu and the actionscript in it worked since it interfaces with html/xml so well. I modified a lot of the actionscript in the flash file to work so that it would have 2 instances of it on the same page, since a lot of the callout function names had to be changed and point to different files and such. I still need to go back into the actionscript and modify a lot of the design elements. Since the entire thing is coded in actionscript, even the visual elements, it's very difficult to understand, it's not a typical flash like file at all where there are graphical elements, which I expect why it's so fast and small.
Adding the javascript to put a html feature in there instead of a flash menu should be pretty interesting, which I will try to do if I get time.
I still don't agree that flash is just being implemented because there's no other solution. There's no reason that the entire web couldn't be flash based. Websites I've seen like the Keio-ensoku site are what inspired me to try to become a web designer. They're all encompassing and engrossing and show the potential of the web. No non flash site I've ever seen has that kind of potential to interact with a viewer, at least not one that doesn't have a huge team of developers that have put thousands of hours into coding it.
When I said copy and paste I was referring just to the flash menu itself as the same menus appear on other sites and appear to be practically identical. I understand what you are saying about changing things in it as I am familiar with mostly actionscript flash files as I have developed quite a few of them.
But if you are already programming in a dialect of ECMAScript fixing (what sounds like) crappy code and the destination is a browser, might as well try javascript out :-D
Because of the limitations of flash, any times I've worked with it professionally it has been to provide, essentially, flash applications that run on desktops, not in web browsers. Usually the intranet sites I work on have to meet accessibility guidelines that flash can't accomodate. Many of the corporate websites on the internet will not use it for anything vital on their internet sites for the same reason.
There isn't actually a reason to exclude disabled folks from being able to view a site. For an individual's site its just their personal preference to exclude people because of their disability. If the page is made well, it can be beautiful and still be 100% accessible to disabled visitors. The key is to learn how to develop the page elegantly.
I hope one of the courses includes making a webpage that looks beautiful as it degrades from a full browser with plugins to a browser with no plugins to a browser with no JS all the way to a text based browser. If you build your sites with that in mind the net result will work on the vast majority of browsers with very little work and will be beautiful and accessible.