This article is classified "Partly real, partly fictional"
What will you do if you don't know where you are and where do you want to go? (Maybe you do know where do you want to go, but you have got absolutely no idea what direction to go to find that desirable place.) A common idea is to find the North Star at the end of the small bear and never lose it. But, what if it's morning and no stars are around (though they are still hanging out there, of course - they are just somebody else's problem), or what if it's very cloudy and you don't know how to fly above the clouds (though another article in the Guide may teach you how)? Well, first of all... DON'T PANIC (if you do panic, read the large friendly letters on the front cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide and relax). You can always wait until it's dark and look for the North Star then. However, Murphy's Law says that it's going to be a cloudy night even though the whole week was crystal clear. The following method is based on the fact that every hitchhiker must have a digital watch (although any other watch will do, if it points to the right hour). The technique goes something like this: Draw a circle in the sand/ground/water (depends on where you've found yourself), stick a stick (that's what sticks are for) in the middle of it and look at the stick's shadow. Now, pretend the shadow is the hours hand of a big analog clock (as big as the circle you drew), and pretend that it's pointing to the current hour (displayed on your digital watch, although any other watch will probably suffice). Now comes the tricky part... Divide the circle into 12 equal sectors (just as if it was a real analog clock) and find 12 o'clock (PM or AM? It doesn't matter because it's an analog clock - right?) according to the hour the shadow is pointing to. Based on which sector the shadow is, determine where the 12 o'clock mark should be (remember that the shadow is supposed to be the current hour). Ready for the surprise? The line between the 12 o'clock line and the shadow of the stick points to the NORTH. (This line is the line that divides the angle between 12 o'clock and the current hour in half.) This method is very accurate and never fails (well, on Earth, anyway). The best way of verifying it is to keep walking to the direction your angle divider points until you get to a very cool place called the North Pole; you'll never miss it (it looks like a huge freezer with furry humanoids who live in smaller freezers called igloos). If you feel a strange feeling, don't panic - it's just your ears dropping off because you didn't believe this article in the Guide. How do I know it's the North Pole and not the South? Well, if you didn't fall down it must be north because the South Pole is up-side-down. I think you'd be best off to believe me and thus avoid all these troubles. -- GOOD LUCK -- By the way, you can always verify this method by reading the compass you must have if you are an experienced hitchhiker...