Ah, Almanac season. Tomorrow is the second in a string of important deadlines for the next edition of The World Almanac, so I'm churning through final approval of a half-dozen chapters while also trying desperately to chip away at the small mountain of early-draft chapters that has quietly accumulated on my desk (thanks a lot, Sarah, Andy, and Lisa).

But that doesn't mean I don't have time to catch up on one of my favorite blogs, information aesthetics—which drew my attention to today's earlier, rather heavy Superfund link, and also to this more enjoyable chaser, an article on the Science of Boomerangs at Popular Mechanics. Cool time-lapse photos of LED-tipped boomerangs at night, a nice visual explanation of boomerang aerodynamics (a small snippet, at right), and at least one truly terrible pun from Eric Darnell, holder of several boomerang world records:

Darnell has himself set world records for endurance (43 catches in 5 minutes) and maximum time aloft (1 minute and 44 seconds). He has also sold millions of boomerangs. He says he isn’t into the sport for the money, although he admits, “I make many happy returns.”

Groan.

Science of Boomerangs at Popular Mechanics (via information aesthetics, again)