Towel day

I almost missed another day! But, I didn't panic.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. 

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Someone's wrong on the internet!

The latest comic on XKCD contains mistakes that only a pedant would point out... 

The plural of genus is genera, not genuses! Also, the title panther is incorrectly applied to Puma concolor since black forms of this cat, which warrant the title, have never been documented. Finally, tiger is clearly a cooler name than lion.

XKCD and the ocean

The XKCD webcomic has some nice ocean related comics from time to time. The most recent of which seems to have been inspired by James Cameron's excursion to the Challenger Deep. It gives you a nice feel for just how deep his little submarine took him.

My favourite though, is the one below because it accords with my sense that the surface of the sea is so familiar to us, but we have so little understanding of what's going on beneath.

Piracy

Many people were rightly disappointed when Melbourne University cut its Viking Studies course. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is turning the tide against the loss of subjects that teach the art of pillaging on the high seas. They're now offering pirate certificates. Learn sailing, fencing, pistol shooting and archery and you too can be an MIT pirate.

Plankton Deep Dancer

Have you ever wondered what your parents would've named you if they were merfolk? Me neither.

But, if you are now curious, check out the Mermaid name generator.You too, could be called Plankton Deep Dancer.

A little nit-to-pick with the name generator. The first word in a binomial species name should always be capitalised!