Penguins are an excellent food source for many animals in Antarctica, such as leopard seals and killer whales, but people shouldn’t eat them!

Under the Antarctic Treaty, birds and mammals are protected. The United States passed a law called the Antarctic Conservation Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from harming birds such as penguins. As for taste, our guess is that they would taste oily and fishy, as their diet consists of krill, which are shrimp-like animals in the ocean.

The only examples known of where humans ate penguins were in some of the early explorations of the Antarctic. Since there are also penguins in Africa, South America, New Zealand and other warmer places, it is possible that people who lived there ate these birds at some point. We don’t know anyone who has tasted penguin, but we would think that it would taste like fish, not chicken! Since these birds eat fish, squid and krill, their meat would probably have lots of marine oils and taste to it!

Is it illegal to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct” any animal on the Endangered Species Act (ESA) list. some species of penguins are endangered and hunting them is therefore forbidden. Unfortunately, Emperor Penguins are still not on the list.

Over the years, the Center for Biological Diversity has filed petitions to list penguin species as threatened or endangered. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducted status reviews for those species. After delays, the agency protected only 8 penguin species, and denied protection for the remaining ones, including the emperor penguin.

In November 28, 2011, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a legal petition seeking Endangered Species Act protection for emperor penguins threatened by global warming. Emperors are the most ice-dependent of all penguin species, threatened by the loss of their sea-ice habitat as well as declining food availability wrought by the warming ocean off Antarctica. Their populations are declining because of global warming and some colonies have entirely disappeared.

KosherKit is already powering a few of our Kosher apps, including Jewish Days, and we’re happy to share this framework with other Kosher developers.

The framework contains:
KKHebrewCalendar class, which convert Hebrew dates to Gregorian and vice versa, and
KKDateFormatter class, which designed to format Hebrew dates into formatted dates (either in Hebrew or English)

Checkout https://github.com/kosher-penguin/KosherKit for more information

Pinchas was a little confused after watching Happy Feet Two in the theater. We really enjoyed seeing Penguins dance on the big screen, however it raised some questions about the penguin species and their roles in this movie.

While it was obvious that Mumble, Gloria and Erik (they are all one big happy penguin family) were emperor penguins, we weren’t sure of the rest. The main Penguin colony is named “Emperor-land” after “emperor penguins” and you can recognize their bright-yellow ear patches, which is unique to emperor penguins.

When Eric and his friends run away, it looks like they encounter another colony of Adelie Penguins. Ramon, played by Robin Williams is one of these Adelie Penguins. About half the size of Emperor Penguins but much more numerous. This species breeds in Antarctica, like the Emperors, but not in the same places – Adelie penguins nest on rocky beaches where there is no sea ice

Lovelace, the dramatic and showy guru of the Adelie colony with a six-pack ring around his neck is a Rockhopper Penguin. A little smaller than the adelies, rockhoppers are divided into three subspecies: southern, northern, and eastern. None of them breed on the Antarctic continent: rockhopper colonies exist in the Falkland Islands, Argentina and Chile, and on islands in the south Atlantic, in the southern Indian Ocean, and near New Zealand. Rockhoppers breed in huge colonies, in rugged gullies near both deep ocean water and a fresh water source.

But seeing The Mighty Sven, played by Hank Azaria, really turned our heads.

It looks like Sven is half Penguin, half parrot. Sven has the body of a penguin, with a nose and feet of a parrot. In one of the scenes, Sven also confess that he’s not a real Penguin and he’s originally came from Africa. Above all that, Sven can fly?!? We still trying to figure that out.

If you haven’t seem Happy Feet Two yet, go see it, we think it’s a great movie!

We’re releasing an awesome update to Jewish Days today! We’re adding a calendar view in addition to the existing holiday list view. now you can see all the Jewish holidays in a easy and familiar calendar view.

If you still don’t have Jewish Days installed on your iPhone or iPad, check it out, it’s only $0.99.

Jewish Days in the App Store

The iPad support in three20 is pretty much nonexistent, and the TTSplitViewController is buggy, to say to the least.

Pinchas was able to hack his way and use MGSplitViewController. We published a sample project on github.com that uses the MGSplitViewController class. This sample project powers our flag app Jewish Days.

So if you’re also struggling with iPad split views in your three20 project, try our sample project.

https://github.com/kosher-penguin/three20-splitview-example

As an added bonus, you can use the iOS 3.1 support branch, which removes the TTSplitViewController and references to iOS 4 classes from https://github.com/kosher-penguin/three20/tree/ios-3.1-support

We’re releasing a big update to Israel Days today with the feedback we got from the users:
- Weekday was added
- Option to pick the calendar in export view
- Fixed crash issues with devices
- Hebrew dates appears in full Hebrew mode
- Option to include School Vacations

And in Hebrew:
- נוסף יום בשבוע
- נוספה אופציה לבחור את לוח השנה בייצוא מועדים
- תוקן קריסה במכשירים עם שפה שונה מעברית או אנגלית
- תאריכים עבריים מופיעים בעברית מלאה
- אופציה לתצוגת חופשי לימודים

Israel Days – חגי ישראל in the app store

In Antarctica, penguins use all of their resources to stay warm. In the Antarctic winter, penguins face temperatures that may drop to -22°F. And as if that wasn’t enough, penguins face winds up to 125 miles per hour.

Emperor penguins are used to dealing with extreme weather. Each year they complete their march inland from the sea to a place on the permanent ice shelf. There, they will stay for more than two months waiting, sometimes in blizzard conditions, for their eggs to hatch.

Although they try to choose a location that is somewhat protected from the wind maybe by a cliff or an iceberg, they still face weather conditions that are difficult for people to even imagine. In addition to the below-freezing temperatures and the wind, emperor penguins also have to deal with other hardships including no food, no shelter, and days with only a few hours of sunlight.

A penguin’s first line of defense is its feathers. Penguins have overlapping feathers that seal in the warmth. They can puff up their feathers for an even warmer effect. They also have a layer of wooly down at the base of their feathers. The black color of the feathers on their backs helps, too, by absorbing heat from the sun.

Penguins also have a thick layer of fat that acts as insulation for their bodies. The fat layer may be over an inch thick before they begin their months-long fast. In addition to keeping them warm, their fat layer also serves as an energy supply for the penguins. Penguins will lose most of their fat by the end of their time of fasting.

Our latest app, Israel Days – חגי ישראל was released to the app store this week, and it already made it to #1 place in the Israeli app store!

Israel Days offers a simple and convenient way to browse the Israeli holidays with a full native Hebrew interface. The app contains all Israeli holidays from 2009 to 2016, with the ability to export then to the device’s calendar.

Some users had complained that the Israel Days app contains “non-jewish” holidays, such as the New Year Eve. While we agree the new year is not a Jewish holiday, it’s definitely a holiday getting celebrated in Israel, both by Jewish and Christian people. For those who don’t celebrate these days, you can disable the “General Holidays” from the settings page.

Anyway, get your free copy while it’s free. Israel Days – חגי ישראל in the App Store!

The commandment to keep Shabbat as a day of rest is repeated many times in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. The commandment is usually expressed in English in terms of refraining from the doing of work on Shabbat.

Like any other electrical appliances, iOS devices are bound by similar restrictions on Shabbat. Operating an iOS device, such as an iPad or iPhone , may break the laws of the Shabbat.

Intentionally creating sparks is prohibited as igniting a fire. While the usage of the iPhone doesn’t close any electric circuits, it does increases the existing current of the device. However, some Rabbis and many other authorities permit this.

Writing and erasing is also prohibited on Shabbat. One might be concerned that the acts of writing and erasing are performed, since one’s actions on the iPhone keyboard impact what is displayed on the iphone’s display.

In some cases, the iPhone may be a lifeline in the event of an emergency, in which case, the laws of Shabbat are suspended, and a life-saving phone call can be made.