Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast,
Where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice.
I'm your host,
Benjamin Boster.
Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled,
Saka.
Saka is a fictional character in Nickelodeon's animated television series,
Avatar the Last Airbender,
And its sequel series,
The Legend of Korra.
The character,
Created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Brian Konietzko,
Is voiced by Jack DeSena in the original series and by Chris Hardwick in the sequel series.
He is a warrior of the Water Tribe and the son of Chief Hakoda and Kaya.
In the live-action film adaptation,
He is portrayed by Jackson Rathbone,
While in the live-action TV series adaptation,
He is portrayed by Ian Oosley.
In the original series,
15-year-old Saka is a warrior of the Southern Water Tribe,
A nation where some people are able to telekinetically manipulate or bend water.
He,
Along with his younger sister Katara,
Discovers an airbender named Aang,
The long-lost Avatar.
It accompanies him to defeat the imperialist Fire Nation and bring peace to the war-torn nations.
Unlike his companions,
Saka is a non-bender,
But as the show progresses,
He masters sword play and proves himself to be a worthy and intelligent strategist.
Saka uses different weapons,
Such as his boomerang and machete,
And eventually a gensword,
To combat enemies.
In the Avatar Nick Mag Presents first edition issue by co-creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Brian Konietzko,
Stated that Saka was originally designed as a minor figure,
But when his comedian voice actor Jack DeSena brought liveliness to his character,
They began to emphasize this quality.
As a result of his design,
Saka's character is a source of comic relief throughout the series,
Often a victim of visual comedy.
Among various running gags involving Saka are his immersion in viscous substances,
Such as raw sewage,
Slurry,
Phlegm,
Or saliva,
And forgetting that Toph is blind.
Saka also has a tendency to produce or at times laugh at jokes shared by no other character.
In Tales of Ba Sing Se,
Saka's name was written as So Ka,
Where Suo means to search,
Demand,
Ask,
Exact,
Or isolated,
And Ka means to check,
Block,
Or card.
The character for Ka also appears in Katara's name.
According to his sister Katara,
Saka was initially skeptical,
Abrasive,
Sexist,
And immature,
But was always sharp-witted.
Incapable of bending abilities himself,
Saka instead pursues martial arts,
Sciences,
And engineering.
He is intelligent,
Resourceful,
And at times he even proves to be quite scholarly.
However,
He is often clumsy and sometimes mistaken.
Despite his flaws,
He is loving,
Brotherly,
And protective.
He holds little interest in the mysticism of bending and prefers to rely on his strength and wits.
He tends to be rash,
And his arrogance often leads to embarrassment,
As during a haiku contest when,
In his last verse of his song,
He included too many syllables.
Even though Saka finds himself a victim of embarrassment,
He has the capability to apologize and seek resolution to prevent further moments of embarrassment from occurring.
This capability is evident from his sincere apology to the Kyoshi Warriors for his chauvinistic opinions in the fourth episode of Book One.
As an advocate of human carnivorism,
Saka is the main hunter in the group,
Often makes dry-witted jokes or abrasive remarks,
And accordingly once describes himself as the meat and sarcasm guy.
Under the guidance of Sword Master Pyandao,
Saka displays various unorthodox procedures when undergoing his training,
Such that Pyandao relates that though Saka's skills were unimpressive,
He displayed much creativity,
Versatility,
And intelligence.
As a rule,
Most or all of the foregoing characteristics appear as sources of karmic relief.
After the failure of his Fire Nation invasion plan,
Saka attempted to restore his honor by risking his life to rescue his father from a highly secure prison,
Known as the Boiling Rock.
Unusual for an inhabitant of a mystical world,
Saka prefers mechanistic science and is something of a jack-of-all-trades.
He seems naturally adept at creating weapons from any available material and adapting them to various purposes,
As when he used explosives to simulate firebending or optical illusions to help his sister Katara imitate earthbending.
Alongside the mechanist,
Saka devised a system of control for an experimental hot air balloon and partly began the design of waterbending-powered submarines.
Saka also demonstrated advanced mathematics skills and a talent for geometry towards the end of the series,
But is whimsically depicted in the epilogue as a poor draftsman.
In addition to his engineering and strategic skills,
Saka shows a remarkable talent for poetry in The Tales of Ba Sing Se,
Where he competes with a local instructor in a haiku contest and holds a zone at length before mistakenly adding an extra syllable to the end of a haiku.
Saka writes with his right hand but draws with his left hand,
And may therefore be accounted ambidextrous.
As one of the only two non-benders in Aang's group,
With the other being Suki,
Saka is often overshadowed by the bending skills of his friends,
But his skill in martial arts improves as the series progresses,
And it is sometimes he who devises a victorious strategy.
Alongside his trademark boomerang,
Saka is shown wielding a club,
A machete,
A jaw blade,
And eventually a black-shian sword of meteoric iron,
Capable of cutting through solid metal,
Identified as his space sword.
Saka also receives a white lotus-pai showpiece from his master,
The symbol of the secret White Lotus Society,
Notable for disregarding traditional rivalries and hatreds between the nations.
Although most of the series' protagonists have had in-depth interactions with members of the White Lotus,
Saka is the only one to receive this implied invitation.
Saka's character has appeared in three THQ video games for the show,
Which are Avatar the Last Airbender Video Game,
Avatar the Last Airbender The Burning Earth,
And Avatar the Last Airbender End of the Inferno.
Like Aang,
Saka also appears on some Avatar t-shirts sold by Nick,
As well as in Tokyopop's Films comic,
Sometimes referred to as Cinemunga.
Saka was played by Jackson Rathbone in the live-action adaptation The Last Airbender.
His name in the film is pronounced Soka.
Unlike the show,
This version of Saka has a serious demeanor,
With most of his immature and humorous qualities either toned down or removed entirely.
Significant criticism was pointed at the character difference.
Rathbone received the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor for his role in the film.
Saka is played by Ian Oosley in the Netflix remake.
A Boomerang is a character in the film that is a little bit like Saka in a way.
A boomerang is a thrown tool typically constructed with airfoil sections,
And designed to spin about and axis perpendicular to the direction of its flight.
A returning boomerang is designed to return to the thrower,
While a non-returning boomerang is designed as a weapon to be thrown straight,
And is traditionally used by some Aboriginal Australians for hunting.
Historically,
Boomerangs have been used for hunting,
Sport,
And entertainment,
And are made in various shapes and sizes to suit different purposes.
Although considered an Australian icon,
Ancient boomerangs have also been discovered in Egypt,
The Americas,
And Eurasia.
A boomerang is a throwing stick with aerodynamic properties,
Traditionally made of wood,
But also of bone,
Horn,
Tusks,
And even iron.
Modern boomerangs used for sport can be made from plywood or plastics,
Such as ABS,
Polypropylene,
Phenolic paper,
Or carbon fiber reinforced plastics.
Boomerangs come in many shapes and sizes,
Depending on their geographic or tribal origins and intended function,
Including the traditional Australian type,
The cross stick,
The pinwheel,
The tumble stick,
The boomer bird,
And other less common types.
Boomerangs return to the thrower,
Distinguishing them from throwing sticks.
Returning boomerangs fly and are examples of the earliest heavier-than-air human-made flight.
A returning boomerang has two or more airfoil section wings arranged so that,
When spinning,
They create unbalanced aerodynamic forces that curve its path into an ellipse,
Returning to its point of origin when thrown correctly.
Their typical L-shape makes them the most recognizable form of boomerang.
Although used primarily for leisure or recreation,
Returning boomerangs are also used to decoy birds of prey,
Thrown above the long grass to frighten game birds into flight and into waiting nests.
Non-traditional modern competition boomerangs come in many shapes,
Sizes,
And materials.
Throwing sticks,
Valerie,
Or kylies are primarily used as weapons.
They lack the airfoil sections,
Are generally heavier and designed to travel as straight and forcefully as possible to the target to bring down game.
The Tamil valerie variant of ancient origin,
And mentioned in the Tamil Sangam literature,
Purananaru,
Was one of these.
The usual form of the valerie is two limbs set at an angle,
One thin and tapering,
The other rounded as a handle.
Valeries come in many shapes and sizes.
They are usually made of iron and cast from molds.
Some may have wooden limbs tipped with iron or sharpened edges.
The origin of the term is uncertain.
One source asserts that the term entered the language in 1827,
Adapted from an extinct Aboriginal language of New South Wales,
Australia,
But mentions a variant,
Wulmorang,
Which dates to 1798.
The first recorded encounter with a boomerang by Europeans was at Farm Cove,
Port Jackson,
In December 1804,
When a weapon was witnessed during a tribal skirmish.
The white spectators were justly astonished at the dexterity and incredible force with which a bent-edged wadi resembling slightly a Turkish scimitar was thrown by Bunguri,
A native distinguished by his remarkable courtesy.
The weapon,
Thrown at 20 or 30 yards distance,
Twirled round in the air with astonishing velocity and alighting on the right arm of one of his opponents,
Actually rebounded to a distance not less than 70 or 80 yards,
An exciting universal admiration.
David Collins listed Wulmorang as one of eight Aboriginal names of clubs in 1798,
But was probably referring to the Woomera,
Which is actually a spear thrower.
An anonymous 1790 manuscript on Aboriginal languages of New South Wales reported Boomerat as the scimitar.
In 1822,
It was described in detail and recorded as a boomerang in the language of the Tuarau people,
A subgroup of the Daurug of the George's River near Port Jackson.
The Tuarau used other words for their hunting sticks,
But used the Wulmorang as a referring throwstick.
Boomerangs were historically used as hunting weapons,
Percussive musical instruments,
Battle clubs,
Fire starters,
Decoys for hunting waterfowl,
And as recreational play toys.
The smallest boomerang may be less than 10 centimeters from tip to tip and the largest over 180 centimeters in length.
Tribal boomerangs may be inscribed or painted with designs meaningful to their makers.
Most boomerangs seen today are of the tourist or competition sort and are almost invariably of the returning type.
Depictions of boomerangs being thrown at animals,
Such as kangaroos,
Appear in some of the oldest rock art in the world,
The indigenous Australian rock art of the Kimberley region,
Which is potentially up to 50,
000 years old.
Stencils and paintings of boomerangs also appear in the rock art of West Papa,
Including on Bird's Head Peninsula and Kaimana,
Likely dating to the last glacial maximum,
When lower sea levels led to cultural continuity between Papa and Arnhem Land in northern Australia.
The oldest surviving Australian Aboriginal boomerangs come from a cache found in a peat bog in the weary swamp of South Australia.
And date to 10,
000 BC.
Although traditionally thought of as Australian,
Boomerangs have been found also in ancient Europe,
Egypt,
And North America.
There is evidence of the use of non-returning boomerangs by the Native Americans of California and Arizona and inhabitants of South India.
Some boomerangs were not thrown at all but were used in hand-to-hand combat by indigenous Australians.
Ancient Egyptian examples,
However,
Have been recovered and experiments have shown that they functioned as returning boomerangs.
Hunting sticks discovered in Europe seem to have formed part of the Stone Age arsenal of weapons.
One boomerang that was discovered in the Oblazowa Cave in the Carpathian Mountains in Poland was made of mammoth tusks and is believed,
Based on AMS dating,
Of objects found with it,
To be about 30,
000 years old.
In the Netherlands,
Boomerangs have been found in Vlaardingen and Velsen from the 1st century BC.
King Tutankhamen,
The famous pharaoh of ancient Egypt who died over 3,
300 years ago,
Owned a collection of boomerangs of both the straight-flying,
Hunting,
And returning variety.
No one knows for sure how the returning boomerang was invented,
But some modern boomerang makers speculate that it developed from the flattened throwing stick still used by Aboriginal Australians and other indigenous peoples around the world,
Including the Navajo and North America.
A hunting boomerang is delicately balanced and much harder to make than a returning one.
A curved flight characteristic of returning boomerangs was probably first noticed by early hunters trying to tune their throwing sticks to fly straight.
It is thought by some that the shape and elliptical flight path of the returning boomerang makes it useful for hunting birds and small animals,
Or that noise generated by the movement of the boomerang through the air or by a skilled thrower,
Lightly clipping leaves of a tree whose branches house birds,
Would help scare the birds towards the thrower.
It is further supposed by some that this was used to frighten flocks or groups of birds into nets that were usually strung up between trees or thrown by hidden hunters.
In southern Australia,
It is claimed that boomerangs were made to hover over a flock of ducks,
Mistaking it for a hawk.
The ducks would dive away toward hunters armed with nets.
Today,
Boomerangs are mostly used for recreation.
There are different types of throwing contests,
Accuracy of return,
Ozzy round,
Trick catch,
Maximum time aloft,
Fast catch,
And endurance.
The modern sport boomerang,
Often referred to as a boom or rang,
Is made of Finnish birch plywood,
Hardwood,
Plastic or composite materials,
And comes in many different shapes and colors.
Most sport boomerangs typically weigh less than 100 grams,
With MTA boomerangs,
Boomerangs used for the maximum time aloft event,
Often under 25 grams.
Boomerangs have also been suggested as an alternative to clay pigeons in shotgun sports,
Where the flight of the boomerang better mimics the flight of a bird offering a more challenging target.
The modern boomerang is often computer-aided designed with precision airfoils.
The number of wings is often more than two,
As more lift is provided by three or four wings than by two.
Among the latest inventions is a round-shaped boomerang,
Which has a different look,
But using the same returning principle as traditional boomerangs.
This allows for safer catch for players.
In 1992,
German astronaut Ulf Merbold performed an experiment aboard Space Lab that established the boomerang's function in zero gravity as they do on Earth.
French astronaut Jean-Francois Clairvoy aboard Mir repeated this in 1997.
In 2008,
Japanese astronaut Takao Doi again repeated the experiment on board the International Space Station.
Beginning in the later part of the 20th century,
There has been a bloom in the independent creation of unusually designed art boomerangs.
These often have little or no resemblance to the traditional historical ones,
And on first sight some of these objects may not look like boomerangs at all.
The use of modern thin plywoods and synthetic plastics have greatly contributed to their success.
Designs are very diverse and can range from animal-inspired forms,
Humorous themes,
Complex calligraphic and symbolic shapes,
To the purely abstract.
Painted surfaces are similarly richly diverse.
Some boomerangs made primarily as art objects do not have the required aerodynamic properties to return.
A returning boomerang is a rotating wing.
It consists of two or more arms or wings,
Connected at an angle.
Each wing is shaped as an airfoil section.
Although it is not a requirement that a boomerang be in its traditional shape,
It is usually flat.
Boomerangs can be made for right or left-handed throwers.
The difference between right and left is subtle.
The platform is the same,
But the leading edges of the airfoil sections are reversed.
A right-handed boomerang makes a counterclockwise circular flight to the left,
While a left-handed boomerang flies clockwise to the right.
Most sport boomerangs weigh between 70 and 110 grams,
Have a 250 to 300 millimeter wingspan,
And a 20 to 40 meter range.
A falling boomerang starts spinning,
And most then fall in a spiral.
When the boomerang is thrown with high spin,
A boomerang flies in a curve rather than a straight line.
When thrown correctly,
A boomerang returns to its starting point.
As the wing rotates and the boomerang moves through the air,
The airflow over the wings creates lift on both wings.
However,
During one half of each blade's rotation,
It sees a higher airspeed because the rotation tip speed and the forward speed add,
And when it is in the other half of the rotation,
The tip speed subtracts from the forward speed.
Thus,
If thrown nearly upright,
Each blade generates more lift at the top than the bottom.
While it might be expected that this would cause the boomerang to tilt around the axis of travel,
Because the boomerang has significant angular momentum,
The gyroscopic precession causes the plane of rotation to tilt about an axis that is 90 degrees to the direction of flight,
Causing it to turn.
When thrown in the horizontal plane,
As with a frisbee,
Instead of in the vertical,
The same gyroscopic precession will cause the boomerang to fly violently,
Straight up into the air,
And then crash.
Pass-catch boomerangs usually have three or more symmetrical wings,
Whereas a long-distance boomerang is most often shaped similar to a question mark.
Maximum-time aloft boomerangs mostly have one wing considerably longer than the other.
This feature,
Along with carefully executed bends and twists in the wings,
Helps to set up an auto-rotation effect to maximize the boomerang's hover time in descending from the highest point in its flight.
Some boomerangs have turbulators,
Bumps or pits on the top surface,
That act to increase the lift as boundary layer transition activators,
To keep attached turbulent flow instead of laminar separation.
Boomerangs are generally thrown in unobstructed open spaces at least twice as long as the range of the boomerang.
The flight direction to the left or right depends upon the design of the boomerang itself,
Not the thrower.
A right-handed or left-handed boomerang can be thrown with either hand,
But throwing a boomerang with the non-matching hand requires a throwing motion that many throwers find awkward.
The following technique applies to a right-handed boomerang.
The directions are mirrored for the left-handed boomerang.
Different boomerang designs have different flight characteristics and are suitable for different conditions.
The accuracy of the throw depends on understanding the weight and aerodynamics of that particular boomerang and the strength,
Consistency and direction of the wind.
From this,
The thrower chooses the angle of tilt,
The angle against the wind,
The elevation of the trajectory,
The degree of spin and the strength of the throw.
A great deal of trial and error is required to perfect the throw over time.
A properly thrown boomerang will travel out parallel to the ground,
Sometimes climbing gently,
Perform a graceful,
Anti-clockwise circular or teardrop-shaped arc,
Flatten out and return in a hovering motion,
Coming in from the left or spiraling in from behind.
Ideally,
The hover will allow a practice catcher to clamp their hands shut horizontally on the boomerang from above and below,
Sandwiching the center between their hands.
The grip used depends on size and shape.
Smaller boomerangs are held between finger and thumb at one end,
While larger,
Heavier or wider boomerangs need one or two fingers wrapped over the top edge in order to induce a spin.
The airfoil-shaped section must face the inside of the thrower and the flatter side outwards.
It is usually inclined outwards from a nearly vertical position to 20 degrees or 30 degrees.
The stronger the wind,
The closer to vertical.
The elbow of the boomerang can point forwards or backwards,
Or it can be gripped for throwing.
It just needs to start spinning on the required inclination in the desired direction with the right force.
