Category: Informative

How to Set the Table, and Why: The Short Course

From The New York Times (2002):

Traditionally, of course, a proper table is covered with a cloth. Tablecloths originated in Rome and represented wealth and dignity during the Medieval period. Damascus in Syria produced the best cloths, called damask, like my family heirloom. Centuries ago, several tablecloths were laid one on top of another, each to be removed after a course. This practice is still followed today in some cultures, in North Africa, for example. Then in early 18th century England, very fine wood tables were meant to be shown off, so doilies, named for D’Oyley, a London draper who is said to have invented them, came into use. These in turn became place mats.

On to the plates. The plate is the flat dinner plate, which evolved from wooden trenchers, which were in turn preceded by slabs of stale bread.

The plate is then flanked by knife and tablespoon on the right and usually two forks on the left. Utensils are placed to make picking them up and using them efficient and simple. The knife should be turned so the blade edge is on the left, next to the plate, a consideration dating from when knives were razor sharp. The forks, a larger dinner fork and a smaller salad fork, are placed in order of use from the outside in. In France the forks and spoons are usually turned so the tines and bowls face down.

How big are the states?

The 50 states that make up the United States have drastically different sizes. The largest state, Alaska, for example is about 425 times bigger than the smallest, Rhode Island. The three largest states, Alaska, Texas and California make up about 30% of the entire country!

It is also interesting to note that due to sea erosion, the states along the coasts are slowly shrinking in size with one exception – Hawaii. Due to volcanic activity, Hawaii is actually increasing in size; Kilauea Volcano has been erupting since 1983 and has added almost one square mile of new land to the state since then.

The above from the Wise Geek, which has an interesting chart.

First posted last year.

TV Prices Falling

“If you’re in the market for a new flat panel TV, you may be tempted to get ready to pull out your credit card (if you have any credit left). In the next few weeks, LCD and plasma set prices are due to plummet.”

The Bits Blog has more.

50-inch plasma HD TVs under a grand!

The Administration just makes shit up

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

Forbes.com

Labor Day

The first observance of Labor Day is believed to have been a parade of 10,000 workers on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City, organized by Peter J. McGuire, a Carpenters and Joiners Union secretary. By 1893, more than half the states were observing a “Labor Day” on one day or another, and Congress passed a bill to establish a federal holiday in 1894. President Grover Cleveland signed the bill soon afterward, designating the first Monday in September as Labor Day.

Who Are We Celebrating?

154.5 million

Number of people 16 and older in the nation’s labor force in May 2008, including 82.6 million men and 71.9 million women.

Our Jobs

Americans work in a variety of occupations. Here is a sampling:

          Occupation
Number of
employees
Teachers
7.1 million
Hairdressers, hairstylists and cosmetologists
778,000
Chefs and head cooks
345,000
Taxi drivers and chauffeurs
333,000
Firefighters
288,000
Roofers
269,000
Pharmacists
247,000
Musicians, singers and related workers
170,000
Gaming industry (gambling)
111,000
Tax preparers
104,000
Service station attendants
90,000
Logging workers
88,000

28%

Percentage of workers 16 and older who work more than 40 hours a week. Eight percent work 60 or more hours a week.

4

Median number of years workers have been with their current employer. About 9 percent of those employed have been with their current employer for 20 or more years.

$42,261 and $32,515

The 2006 annual median earnings for male and female full-time, year-round workers, respectively.

US Census Press Releases

The Social Security Act

. . . was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on this date in 1935.

My parents are receiving Social Security payments. Should I be worried that their monthly checks will be cut and that I will have to make up the difference?

No, there are no plans to reduce benefits for current retirees. In fact, benefits will continue to grow annually with inflation. Even without any changes, current benefits are expected to be fully payable on a timely basis until 2041.

I’m 35 years old in 2007. If nothing is done to change Social Security, what can I expect to receive in retirement benefits from the program?

Unless changes are made, at age 69 in 2041 your scheduled benefits could be reduced by 22 percent and could continue to be reduced every year thereafter from presently scheduled levels.

I’m 26 years old in 2007. If nothing is done to change Social Security, what can I expect to receive in retirement benefits from the program?

Unless changes are made, when you reach age 60 in 2041, benefits for all retirees could be cut by 22 percent and could continue to be reduced every year thereafter. If you lived to be 101 years old in 2082 (which will be more common by then), your scheduled benefits could be reduced by 25 percent from today’s scheduled levels.

Should I count on Social Security for all my retirement income?

No. Social Security was never meant to be the sole source of income in retirement. It is often said that a comfortable retirement is based on a “three-legged stool” of Social Security, pensions and savings. American workers should be saving for their retirement on a personal basis and through employer-sponsored or other retirement plans.

Is there really a Social Security trust fund?

Yes. Presently, Social Security collects more in taxes than it pays in benefits. The excess is borrowed by the U.S. Treasury, which in turn issues special-issue Treasury bonds to Social Security.

More informative Q&A about Social Security.

Bisexual Species: Unorthodox Sex in the Animal Kingdom

The following begins a story at Scientific American:

Two penguins native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male.

Robert Gramzay, a keeper at the zoo, watched the chinstrap penguin pair roll a rock into their nest and sit on it, according to newspaper reports. Gramzay found an egg from another pair of penguins that was having difficulty hatching it and slipped it into Roy and Silo’s nest. Roy and Silo took turns warming the egg with their blubbery underbellies until, after 34 days, a female chick pecked her way into the world. Roy and Silo kept the gray, fuzzy chick warm and regurgitated food into her tiny black beak.

Like most animal species, penguins tend to pair with the opposite sex, for the obvious reason. But researchers are finding that same-sex couplings are surprisingly widespread in the animal kingdom. Roy and Silo belong to one of as many as 1,500 species of wild and captive animals that have been observed engaging in homosexual activity. Researchers have seen such same-sex goings-on in both male and female, old and young, and social and solitary creatures and on branches of the evolutionary tree ranging from insects to mammals.

Speed of sound

You see the sky rocket explode, but the boom doesn’t come for seconds. The lightning flashes, but the thunder is moments behind. The reason, of course, is that sound moves much, much, much slower than light.

Light is so fast — 186,000 miles per second — that everything we can see on Earth, we see almost instantaneously. Sound, however, travels at just 1,125 feet per second (more or less, depending on temperature, altitude, humidity). The source of the sound doesn’t need to be very far away for us to sense the lag.

Rule of thumb, it takes just less than 5 seconds for sound to travel a mile. If lightning flashes, count the seconds until you hear the thunder to calculate how far away it struck.

A bolt of lightning can be over five miles in length, have temperatures of 50,000 degrees F., and contain 100 million volts.

In 2007, 45 people were struck and killed by lightning in the U.S.; hundreds of others were injured.  Of the victims who were killed by lightning:

• 98% were outside
• 89% were male
• 30% were males between the ages of 20-25
• 25% were standing under a tree
• 25% occurred on or near the water

The reported number of injuries is likely far lower than the actual total number because many people do not seek help or doctors do not record it as a lightning injury.  People struck by lightning suffer from a variety of long-term, debilitating symptoms, including memory loss, attention deficits, sleep disorders, numbness, dizziness, stiffness in joints, irritability, fatigue, weakness, muscle spasms, depression, and an inability to sit for long.

National Weather Service

That’s funny, I don’t remember being struck by lightning and I have all those symptoms. Oh wait, including memory loss.

92nd Street Y on iTunes

New York City’s 92nd Street Y has been serving community interests for more than 133 years. And, now — thanks to iTunes U — it brings its programming to a really large community. For example, “92Y: George Carlin,” just one of the many programs available from 92Y: Online, lets us spend some time with Judy Gold and George Carlin, the renowned comedian who died this week.

92Y Online [iTunes]

Others include Steve Martin, Michael Pollan, Paul Krugman, Sydney Pollack, David Simon (The Wire), Kurt Vonnegut.

Just askin’

You are driving a cement truck and you realize the brakes have failed. You can hit — and no doubt kill — the four people jaywalking in front of you, or swerve and kill one person on the sidewalk.

What do you do?

There are four people in your hospital near death in need of organ transplants — heart, liver, kidney, whatever. There’s a perfectly healthy individual in the waiting room with all those organs.

Can you kill the healthy individual to harvest the organs and save the four?

What’s the difference between the two cases?

Edison, Make Way for the L.E.D.s

In case you didn’t know it, Thomas Edison’s invention, in use for more than 100 years to illuminate virtually everything, is quickly heading for the exits. What will eventually take its place is the light-emitting diode (L.E.D.) bulb, made up of tiny light sources the size of a head of a pin that use a fraction of a regular light bulb’s electricity, produce little heat, and last for tens of thousands of hours of use.
. . .

L.E.D.’s are not widely used today because of their high cost: An L.E.D. bulb can run as high as $90. Even if they would save money in the long run, few people are willing to spend that much up front.

But costs will come down, and when they do, expect to see the end of what is in essence an interim technology: the compact fluorescent bulb. Fluorescents, while using much less power than incandescent light bulbs, are sometimes too bulky, often can’t be dimmed and produce light that is less pleasing than incandescents.

Bits

Most interesting factoid of the night, so far

“In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works.”

From Up and Then Down, a very interesting article in last week’s New Yorker about elevators, how they work, how they fail — and the man trapped in one for 40 hours.

NewMexiKen used to work on the ninth floor of a building with particularly poor elevators. We used to argue over whether the close door buttons did anything, or if they just seemed to because the neurotics pushed the buttons about the time the door closed anyway.