Study Links Sleep Deprivation, Obesity reports on an unusual finding:
Those who got less than four hours of sleep a night were 73 percent more likely to be obese than those who got the recommended seven to nine hours of rest, scientists discovered. Those who averaged five hours of sleep had 50 percent greater risk, and those who got six hours had 23 percent more.
I think it’s time for my beauty rest.
In Smoothbore Musketry, Larry Irons shares all sorts of tidbits on the topic, with an eye to wargaming. He presents some coldblooded calculations:
At the Battle of Blenheim (1704) the British with five battalions attacked the French fortified positions along a front of 750 yds. The French had approximately 4,000 fusiliers deployed along 900 yds. The French opened fire at 30 yards with a single devastating volley causing 33 percent casualties to the British attacking force. This came to approximately 800 casualties. Therefore 20 percent of the French rounds were effective. If we assume that 15 percent of the French muskets misfired, this gives an effective rate of 23 to 24 percent of those muskets that actually fired.At the Battle of Fontenoy (1745) five British battalions with a total strength of 2,500 men, less a few hundred men due to French artillery fire, let loose a volley at 30 yards against an attacking force of five French battalions. The British volley caused 600 casualties to the French. This would mean that the British muskets were hitting with an effective rate of 25 percent.
At the Battle of Minden (1759) Hughes estimates that the effectiveness of musketry by both British and French was less than two percent per volley. In this battle the French and British engaged at much longer ranges, 100 to 150 yards. At the Battle of Albuera (1811) a French divisional column attacked the British position. The British muskets averaged a two-percent effectiveness rating at that battle at a range of 100 to 150 yards. However, at the same battle on the French left flank, the average effectiveness was about 5-1/2 percent per volley for both sides. Hughes concluded that at Albuera the actual effectiveness dropped off rapidly with range between 30 and 200 yards. He also stated that smoke on the battlefield often obscured the aim of the shooters, which would lower the effectiveness dramatically.
From To the Point of No Returns:
In 1940 the instructions to the Form 1040 were about four pages. Today they are more than 100 pages, and the form itself contains more than 10 schedules and more than 20 worksheets. The complete tax code totals about 2.8 million words — about four times longer than “War and Peace” (and considerably harder to parse).
An amusing suggestion:
Rather than repealing the alternative minimum tax, as many have urged, Congress should repeal the regular income tax.
(Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.)
Tax Reform Agenda for The 109th Congress summarizes alternative tax plans, including a consumption-based tax system:
However, economists know that a consumption-based tax system need not look like a VAT or a sales tax. It can appear very much like an income tax. All that is really necessary is that saving be entirely exempted from taxation. If that is the case, then all that remains is consumption. Hence, the burden of taxation will necessarily fall on consumption even though consumption is not taxed directly.
[...]
The principal virtue of a consumption-based tax system is that it is much less burdensome to the economy than an income tax raising the same revenue. That is because saving, investment and risk-taking are especially critical to growth.
You may already know that improperly low tire pressure drops gas mileage and hurts handling. I was not aware of this solution. From Fill ‘Her Up… With Nitro:
In a tire filled with compressed air, the oxygen molecules tend to “migrate” through the wall of the tire over time. That’s why, when you open the garage to check on your aunt’s dust-covered 1980 Pontiac the tires are often flat.But nitrogen molecules migrate 3 to 4 times more slowly than oxygen, so tires stay properly inflated longer. There are other benefits. Nitrogen retains less heat than oxygen and therefore allows tires to run cooler.
While nitrogen is dry and benign and will not combine chemically with other materials (the metal in tire rims, for instance), compressed air contains trace amounts of water and the oxygen tends to combine with other materials, causing rust and corrosion. If you were to see the inner face (the part enclosing and sealing the inside of the tire) of some fancy aluminum wheels you would be surprised at how corroded they become due to oxidation.
Tour de France bicyclists fill their tires with nitrogen. So do NASCAR, Indy and Formula One racing teams, over-the-road truckers, some fire departments and the U.S. military.
The Art and Science of Hurling (from Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics Chapter 3 — Applications) explains (one facet of) why a bow “throws” an arrow faster than you can throw one by hand:
The bow is probably the first mechanical device invented to achieve projectile speeds faster than those attainable by throwing. Energy supplied by the human arm is stored in the bow limbs while the bow is drawn. The stored energy is then released as the kinetic energy of the arrow. This is a very efficient process since a large fraction of the stored energy gets converted into the motion of the arrow. Compare shooting an arrow this way and throwing it by hand. In both cases its is the arm muscles that provide the energy. When you simply throw the arrow you also “throw” the arm. Since the arm is much more massive than the arrow it gets the lion share of the energy.
If you’ve studied elementary physics, you “know” that a bullet fired straight up comes straight down — and it comes down as fast as it went up. In a vacuum. On earth, air resistance has quite an effect. From What happens when a bullet is fired straight up?:
Hatcher describes one experiment with the 150gr M2 Ball bullet fired vertically. When it came back from vertical (round trip time was about 42.9 seconds) it left only a 1/16 inch dent in a soft pine board that it happened to hit. (Not exactly what it would do at 2700f/s, eh?) Based upon this and similar tests Hatcher concluded that the impact velocity was about 300 f/s, which from additional testing appears to be the terminal velocity (the maximum free fall velocity which is limited by air drag on the body in question) of that bullet falling from any height in the atmosphere. (If I remember correctly from my limited parachuting experience the terminal velocity of a falling person is somewhere around 130 mph or about 200 f/s.)What does not substantially change, even at extreme range, is the rotational speed of the bullet that was imparted by the rifling (around 300k rpm) since the effect of air drag on the rotational velocity in negligible. Thus the gyroscopic action, once the projectile is stabilized, tends to keep the bullet oriented in the same direction, thus the base first (well ok, original position trailing end) return. It is interesting that this was not commonly known until just before WWII. The British had lots of dud antiaircraft rounds that all came back base down, or more correctly oriented to the same elevation as shot from the gun. BTW, this is what raises hob with traditional long range small arms ballistics. With lots of elevation on the bore (past 2,000 or so yards) at the far end many bullet are actually falling sideways and all frontal air drag algorithms are out the window.
Must Schools Fail? looks at a number of books on the gap between white and black academic performance:
For his study Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb, John U. Ogbu, a Nigerian-born anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who died unexpectedly last year, investigated the high school in Shaker Heights, Ohio, trying to understand why middle-class black students did far less well than middle-class whites. Ogbu, who has reported similar findings for over thirty years, lists in this most recent book the familiar claims about black students, claims that he found largely accurate. They put pressure on one another not to ‘act white’ by doing well in school. They do not work as hard in school as white students from economically similar families. Black students watch TV and socialize with friends more than whites do. More black students than whites come to class unprepared and are more disruptive. Black students spend much more time at after-school jobs. Many think grades are unimportant because they can go to college on athletic scholarships. When given the opportunity to take more academically challenging courses in high school, they frequently decline.
I find the differences between low- — pardon, working- — and middle-class families more interesting:
Annette Lareau, who has observed middle- and working-class children, writes in her book Unequal Childhoods that middle-class children today are encouraged from an early age to negotiate with their parents over what to wear or eat, to question adult statements if they seem implausible, and to interact with adults as equals. Children from the white middle class are expected, for example, to describe their symptoms to pediatricians.
Also, middle-class kids have a busy schedule full of structured activities:
These activities also promote teamwork and easier relations with strangers. The working-class children Lareau observed mostly stayed in their neighborhoods, playing games only among themselves.
More:
Middle-class parents were more likely to encourage children to figure out problems for themselves. Working-class parents were more likely to tell them what to do. Lareau’s middle- and working-class parents both encouraged their children to read, and parents from both classes read aloud to their children when they were young; but middle-class parents were more likely to read themselves, thus showing the importance of reading by their own behavior. Moreover, Lareau’s middle-class parents more frequently intervened in schools when they felt it in their children’s interest to do so. In high school, as John Ogbu observed, middle-class white parents are aggressive in guiding their children’s decisions on curriculum, while Ogbu’s black parents and Lareau’s working-class parents are not. Indeed, in many ways, Ogbu’s middle-class blacks are similar to Lareau’s working-class whites in attitudes toward education.
Denis Dutton looks at Literary Darwinism and why humans are obsessed with story-telling in The Pleasures of Fiction.
Joseph Carroll, in his new Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature, explores a species that:
is highly social and mildly polygynous, that displays concealed ovulation, continuous female receptivity, and postmenopausal life expectancy corresponding to a uniquely extended period of childhood development, that has extraordinary aptitudes for technology, that has developed language and the capacity for peering into the minds of its conspecifics, and that displays a unique disposition for fabricating and consuming aesthetic and imaginative artifacts.
According to Carroll, human behavior fits into seven “behavioral systems”:
Carroll makes the case that ?Authors are people talking to people about people,? and uses a passage from Pride and Prejudice to illustrate:
For example, he cites the episode in which Mr. Collins introduces himself to the Bennett household in a letter that is read by the family. This letter is, as Carroll nicely describes it, ?an absolute marvel of fatuity and of pompous self-importance,? and much is revealed in how mother, father, and the Bennett sisters react to it. The excessively sweet-tempered older sister, Jane, is puzzled by it, though she credits Mr. Collins with good intentions. The dull middle sister, Mary, says she rather likes Mr. Collins?s style. The mother, in her typical manner, only reacts to it opportunistically, in terms of a potential advantage in the situation. It is up to Elizabeth and her father to see clearly what a clownish performance the letter represents: their understanding marks an affinity of temperament and a quality perceptiveness the others lack. But what Carroll?s analysis makes clear is that there are two more people ? not fictional characters, but actual human beings ? who are in on the agreement between Mr. Bennett and his second daughter. These two further individuals are also members of their ?circle of wit and judgment.? First, there is Jane Austen, the author of Pride and Prejudice. And second, there is you, the reader of Pride and Prejudice.
As Billionaires Run Amok on TV? points out, Terry Southern wrote satire way ahead of its time:
Southern, the legendary novelist, journalist and screenwriter, died back in 1995, way too soon for him to savor the exquisite pleasure — or perhaps the hideous pain — of seeing one of his most outrageous comic ideas come to life as the latest craze in reality TV, which is, of course, sadistic billionaires tormenting money-grubbing weasels.
[...]
Back in the ’50s and ’60s, Southern was famous, the author of “Candy,” a comic porn novel, as well as the screenplays of such classic movies as “Easy Rider,” “The Loved One” and, best of all, the brilliantly demented Cold War comedy “Dr. Strangelove.” Southern had a dark, sardonic wit and he traveled in the hippest of circles, hanging out with the Rolling Stones, Allen Ginsberg and Lenny Bruce. He was so cool the Beatles put his face on the cover of their “Sgt. Pepper” album.In 1960, Southern published a novel called “The Magic Christian,” the comic tale of Guy Grand, a billionaire who amuses himself by staging elaborate pranks that cause people to reveal how much they’re willing to degrade themselves for money.
In the book’s most famous scene, Grand buys a building in downtown Chicago, demolishes it and builds a gigantic vat perched atop a huge gas heater. He fills the vat with 300 cubic feet of manure, urine and blood purchased from the Chicago stockyards. When this hellish cocktail is nice and hot, he stirs 10,000 $100 bills into it and puts up a sign that reads “FREE $ HERE.”
And then … well, people will do just about anything for money, won’t they?
The Onion‘s latest Infograph looks at some of the other recent discoveries in paleontology, besides the 40-inch-tall humans and feathered T. Rex relatives, including these two:
Conquistadors in the Old and New World explains why 15th-century Spain had a ready supply of adventurous young warriors willing to travel overseas and conquer Indian lands:
1492 was perhaps the most momentous year in all of Spainish history. Under the leadership of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, Spain was united for the first time in 800 years and the last of the Moors had just been sucessfully defeated at Granada. In this same year under the urging of Torquemada, master of the Inquisition, an edict had been issued expelling the Jews from Spain. In addition, after six long years of waiting around the periphery of the royal court, Christopher Columbus had finally been given permission to set sail westward to search for the riches of the east Indies. The Conquistadors who followed in the footsteps of Columbus, were unique products of Spanish histroy which led up to this moment in time. As a breed of men Conquistadors were not new to Spain — indeed they had been part of her culture for almost 800 years. Until 1492 Spain had been constantly at war since 711 AD. In that year Islamic hordes swept out of north Africa from across the Gibralter straits and within seven years had conquered all but the northwest coastal region and marched on across the Pyranies into France where they were finally stopped. The Moorish invaders conquered in the name of the Prophet and in spite of much bloodshed brought to Spain the culture of the Middle east. Their knowledge of irrigation methods opened up arid lands for agriculture andeducation, mathmatics, science and the arts flourished.
[...]
This fervent religious crusade of Christian against Moslem had taken 800 years to complete and the centuries of constant fighting had created a pool of soldiers and a mounted nobility that were little more than warlords. These men born to the saddle and the sword and acustomed to booty and living off the land, still burnedwith the wild religious fervour that had led to the victory over the Moors. When in 1492 the last battles had finally been won, conquistadors of the Spanish crusade were suddenly unemployed. These were men with little to lose and much to gain by adventuring in the New Worlds encountered by Columbus.
A German Lesson for Remaking Iraq notes that the East Germans were “handed the West German legal system, the West German political system and the West German civil service on a plate” — and they still weren’t happy:
The lesson of the East German transition after 15 years should, in other words, be phrased as a warning: Even if it is possible to get every political and economic element right, even if it is possible to avoid violence entirely, the psychological transition to liberal democracy from a regime ruled by fear is one that takes at least one generation, if not two. Few people are able to walk from a closed society into an open one without self-doubt and discomfort. Few people find it easy to readjust their thinking overnight, even if they want to. Few people are able to look at themselves in the mirror, tell themselves that the first few decades of their lives were all a bad mistake, and go out and start living new lives according to new rules. It was no accident, a wise teacher once told me, that God made the Israelites wander in the desert for 40 years before bringing them to the promised land: That was how long it would take them to unlearn the mental habits of Egyptian slavery.
At 50, TV dinner is still cookin’:
It began as a solution to that All-American holiday problem — what to do with the leftover turkey. But executives at C.A. Swanson & Sons weren’t talking about just the remainders of the family meal. They were talking 520,000 pounds of poultry.The Omaha, Neb., frozen food company had overestimated the demand for and undersold its 1953 Thanksgiving supply. Having insufficient warehouse facilities to store the overage, brothers Gilbert and Clark Swanson loaded the turkeys into 10 refrigerated railroad cars, which had to keep moving to stay cold.
As the turkeys traveled from Nebraska to the East Coast and back again, the Swanson brothers handed their staff a challenge — make good of this “fowl” situation.
Enter Gerry Thomas, a company salesman. Visiting the food kitchens of Pan American Airways in Pittsburgh, he caught sight of the single-compartment aluminum trays the cooks used to keep food hot. Thomas requested a sample, then spent his flight home designing a three-compartment tray that was a step up from the serviceman’s mess kit. He decided his design might be just what Swanson needed to sell off that turkey.
Back in Omaha, Thomas presented a turkey dinner-filled tray to the Swanson brothers. Then he suggested tying the dinners to the nation’s latest craze, television. Packages were designed to resemble a TV screen, complete with volume control knobs — and the TV dinner was born.
Swanson didn’t actually invent the frozen dinner. That can be credited to (or blamed on) Clarence Birdseye, who in 1923 invested $7, purchased an electric fan, buckets of brine, and some ice, and invented a system of packing and flash-freezing waxed cardboard boxes of fresh foods.
But it was that packaging — the compartments for individual servings — that put Swanson on the frozen food map.
Originally, the peso was the Spanish dollar, one of the strongest currencies in the world:
The Spanish dollar or peso (literally, ‘heavy’) is a silver coin which was minted in Spain after a Spanish currency reform in 1497.Thanks to the vast silver deposits that were found in Mexico (for example, at Taxco and Zacatecas), and to silver looted from Spain’s possessions throughout the Americas, mints in Mexico and Peru also began to strike the coin. Millions of pesos were minted over the course of several centuries. They were among the most widely circulating coins of the colonial period in the Americas, and were still in use in North America and in South-East Asia in the 19th century. They had a value of one dollar when circulating in the United States. During the US Civil War the US Government first issued paper money backed by Spanish dollars.
The coin is roughly equivalent to the silver thaler issued in Bohemia and elsewhere since 1517. The German name ‘thaler’ was adopted in English as ‘dollar’, referring to all such coins.
The peso nominally weighed 550.209 Spanish grains, which is 423.900 troy grains or 27.468 metric grams, .93055 fine: so contained 25.560 grams fine silver. Its weight and purity varied significantly between mints and over the centuries.
The peso had a nominal value of 8 reales (‘royals’). The coins were often physically cut into eight ‘bits’, or sometimes four quarters, to make smaller change. This is the origin of the colloquial name ‘pieces of eight’ for the coin, and of ‘quarter’ and ‘two bits’ for twenty five cents.
Spanish silver (unlike paper Mexican pesos) kept its value:
The Spanish eight reales coin was set at a weight of 423.9 grains (27.47 grams) of .9305 fine silver. From that date the coin only depreciated some 4.4% over the next 250 years!
Fascinating:
Spanish dollars were made legal tender in the United States by an Act of February 9, 1793, and were not demonetized until February 21, 1857. Testaments to the importance of these coins continue in that “two bits,” “pieces of eight” and “picayune” have become part of the American vocabulary. Also, it is interesting to observe that when the New York Stock Exchange opened in 1792 rates were reported in terms of New York shillings which were valued at eight to the Spanish milled dollar, hence changes were reported in eighths. Amazingly, over two hundred years after adoption of the decimal system, stock and security price variations [were] still reported in eighths!