June 25th Links

• The basic New York City egg and cheese sandwich, a staple of any hangover recovery program, is paired with another local favorite, pastrami. This is a sandwich that basically dares you to go out and get drunk just to have an excuse to eat one the next morning. [link]
• Most nutritional variables do not show any significant difference between these two areas whereas a significant difference was found with respect to pastoralism (P = 0.0001), physical activity estimated by the average slope of the territory in each municipality (P = 0.0001), and average daily distance required by the active population to reach the usual workplace (P = 0.0001). [link]
• "The best solution is to leave cowbirds eggs alone," says Steve Rothstein, Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has researched the effects of cowbird parasitism on endangered species. "It's a natural process and we shouldn't attach human values about killing or being sneaky to the natural world." [Audubon]
• Unless you're a "the juice is worth the squeeze" type of person, you shouldn't own one of these. The prices have gone nuts even on the most reasonable ones. Rusty parts cars are $10k. Even a tool kit to replace yours that's going missing can cost thousands. A spark plug tool? $800. They're abhorrently expensive to fix if you can't do it yourself. A full engine rebuild from a reputable shop will cost you at least $15k. [Jalopnik]
• On August 8, 1964, a pair of commercial pilots in a Cessna 150 flew low over the crater. After crossing the rim, they could not maintain level flight. The pilot attempted to circle in the crater to climb over the rim. During the attempted climb out, the aircraft stalled, crashed and caught fire. It is commonly reported that the plane ran out of fuel, but this is incorrect. Both occupants were severely injured but survived their ordeal. A small portion of the wreckage not removed from the crash site remains visible. [Wiki]
• Among the perks of being a bank is the privilege of holding an account with the central bank. Unavailable to individuals and nonbank businesses, central bank accounts pay higher interest than ordinary bank accounts. Payments between these accounts clear instantly; banks needn't wait days or even minutes for incoming payments to post. On top of that, central bank accounts are pure money—economically equivalent to dollar bills—meaning they are fully sovereign and nondefaultable no matter how large the balance. By contrast, federal deposit insurance for ordinary bank accounts maxes out at $250,000—a big problem for institutions with large balances. The time has come to end this special privilege of banks. [link]
• We sit down for dinner, and I ask if he remembers the first big purchase he made when he started making money. He rolls another joint that he first passes to me and then to Waldman. He wants me to know it wasn't a Ferrari, but a house for his mama. "My mom was born in a fucking holler in eastern Kentucky," says Depp. "Her poor fucking ass was on phenobarbital at 12." [Rolling Stone]
• For 20 minutes I stared at the grassy field down the steep embankment in the center of the cloverleaf, quickly filling up with water and forming a trash-filled pond, just saying to myself, "If I had a fucking Hummer, I would crank the wheel hard alee, drive down this grassy embankment, through that puddle, and up the grass to my exit ramp, visible from my perch here. And there's nothing anyone else could do about it." It's not like the cops could have followed me if they wanted to; a Crown Vic would be swallowed whole in there. [link]
• The ability for a given gauge block to wring is called wringability; it is officially defined as "the ability of two surfaces to adhere tightly to each other in the absence of external means." The minimum conditions for wringability are a surface finish of 1 microinch (0.025 μm) AA or better, and a flatness of at least 5 μin (0.13 μm). [Wiki]
• The urban/suburban/rural gradient in obesity is definitely noticeable. When I was in SF in March, I was struck by how thin everyone was on average - it reminded me of Europe. (I'm sure the walking helps, but I imagine a lot of it is selection effects for youth/wealth/intelligence: I also noticed fewer old people.) I've also noticed interesting temporal patterns at Walmart - people during the day and weekdays seem fatter and shorter than people at night or weekends, and of course, the clientele at Whole Foods are even taller and thinner. [Gwern]
• Yet, after all, the dimensions of our earth and its time of rotation, though, relative to our present means of comparison, very permanent, are not so by physical necessity. The earth might contract by cooling, or it might be enlarged by a layer of meteorites falling on it, or its rate of revolution might slowly slacken, and yet it would continue to be as much a planet as before. But a molecule, say of hydrogen, if either its mass or its time of vibration were to be altered in the least, would no longer be a molecule of hydrogen. If, then, we wish to obtain standards of length, time and mass which shall be absolutely permanent, we must seek them not in the dimensions, or the motion, or the mass of our planet, but in the wavelength, the period of vibration, and the absolute mass of these imperishable and unalterable and perfectly similar molecules. [Maxwell]
• The presence of dark energy in our universe is causing space to expand at an accelerating rate. As a result, over the next approximately 100 billion years, all stars residing beyond the Local Group will fall beyond the cosmic horizon and become not only unobservable, but entirely inaccessible, thus limiting how much energy could one day be extracted from them. [arxiv]
• "I've never seen the labor market this tight," said Scott Murphy, chief operating officer for Dunkin' Donuts U.S. "We spend a lot of time training people and a month later they walk out the door." Dunkin' conducted focus groups with former employees to pinpoint the mundane tasks that made them want to leave and geared automation around that. [WSJ]
• The Santa Barbara Courthouse is home to a rare Seth Thomas model 18 tower clock built and installed in 1929. Beginning in 2009, the clock has undergone a meticulous restoration by members of NAWCC Chapter 190 in Ventura, California. Under the direction of Mostyn Gale, the clock was completely disassembled and restored. Until then the clock had labored unloved and unseen in a locked "storage room" in the clock tower. [link]
• The second design feature we see in this clock design of Huygens is the concentration of mass at the bottom of the pendulum. While the mass itself does not contribute to the period of the pendulum (after frictional forces are overcome), the length of the pendulum certainly does, and this length is measured from the pivot point to the center of mass of the pendulum. [link]