Happy Belated Birthday, Douglas Adams!

March 11 would have been Douglas Adams's 61st birthday, had he not died of a heart attack in 2001. His work with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is his most popular work, but everything that he has written involves a heavy hand of humor and whimsy that turned him into a hipster cult phenomenon. Who knows what he would have done had he been alive now?

Shooting Things is Always Fun

January 23 is National Archery Day, which is fitting considering the recent slew of media in which an archer is the protagonist (The Hunger Games, Brave, The Avengers [I'm counting Hawkeye]). These are the different kinds of bow:

• Recurve bow: The tips of the bow curve away from the archer. As the bow is drawn, the curves straighten out, and as the arrow is released the tips return to their curved state. This adds extra velocity to the arrow. They make more noise with one shot. Mostly Native American, East Asian, and Middle Eastern.
• Reflex bow: When unstrung, this bow completely curves away from the archer. The curves are opposite to the way the bow flexes when drawn. Mostly Mongol.
• Self bow: A bow that is made from one piece of wood.
• Longbow: A long self bow, usually over 5 feet long. Most English longbows are traditionally made of yew, though other woods can be used. Mostly from the British Isles, though the Japanese yumi is classified as a longbow.
• Composite bow: A bow made of more than one material. Mostly used by Asiatic nomads, horse archers, and classical Greek and Roman Empires.
• Compound bow: A bow with mechanical aids, usually pulleys at the tip of the limbs, to help with drawing the bowstring. First made in 1966.

The following are various archery activities:

• Bowfishing: Shooting fish with barbed arrows.
• Bowhunting: Shooting animals.
• Clout achery: Shoot at a flag called a "clout". The closer you are to the flag, the more points you get.
• Field archery: Shooting at targets of varying and unmarked distance in rough terrain. In one division called 3D, you shoot at three-dimensional foam animals to simulate bowhunting.
• Popinjay: Use your bow to knock artificial birds off of their perches. The higher up the bird is, the more points it's worth. In Britain there is a Festival of Popinjay in which the archer who severs the string suspending an artificial parrot is awarded the title "Captain Popinjay" for the rest of the day.
• Target archery: Shoot at a target from a marked distance. The color of the band that the arrow goes to determines your point value.

Penguin Fun

Today, January 19, is National Penguin Awareness day! So today you will proceed to be peppered with weird penguin facts that you may not have known.

• Penguins eat snow to get a source of fresh water.
• The name comes from two Welsh terms: the first is "pen", which means head; and the second is "gwyn", which means white. So basically its name means "white head".
• The United States Libertarian Party's unofficial mascot is a penguin.
• The first thing a penguin does when it's born is call out loudly so that its parents learn to associate the voice with their chick.
• A group of penguins is called a colony or a rookery.
• Penguins can jump up to six feet out of the water.
• Penguins first appeared about forty million years ago.
• A prehistoric penguin is believed to have been up to five feet tall.
• Penguin hunt in water, which is where they end up spending about three quarters of their lives.
• The little blue penguin will, oft-times, make its home in someone's garage. While they are a very loud species, New Zealanders are so happy just to have a penguin living in their home that they'll put up with it.
• Penguins get deeper sleep in the afternoon than they do in mornings.