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Food for Thought

So, what would the sky look like if Arcturus, Sirius, Alpha Centauri, Vega or Polaris replaced our Sun?

If Arcturus were put in place of the Sun it might look something like this at sunset, which would last over 50 minutes to set, cause it’s, you know, some 25 times larger than our Sun.

White-hot Sirius A would blaze in our daytime sky. 1.75 times the size of the #Sun and 26 times as luminous, we’d all be fried if Sirius stood where the Sun is.

This is AlphaCentauri , comprised of three stars, two stars slightly more massive and luminous than the Sun located roughly, 4.4 light years away. The third star (to the left) is Proxima Centauri, a dim red dwarf and third member of the system.

The star Vega—25 light years from Earth—rotates so rapidly it’s oval shaped instead of spherical. Vega measures 2.7 times the Sun’s diameter along its equator and is 36 times brighter than the Sun. The sight would make you go blind quickly. Earth would also be roasted in the heat.

Polaris, also known as the North Star is a supergiant 2,500 more luminous than the Sun and 45 times its size. What an eyeful we Earthlings would have if Polaris were our sun. Wouldn’t have eyes to enjoy it though. Rigel, the left foot of the constellation Orion, would provide a similar view. with the same results. In order for Rigel to provide a planet the same degree of light and heat as we receive on Earth, the planet would need an orbit so large it would take 2000 years to complete one revolution around the star.

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Soldering is Not My Strong Suit

Almost all of the audio gear I’ve bought off eBay over the past few years was stuff that was originally sold elsewhere than the US. That being said, they came with built-in multi-voltage selectors and those funky European plugs. Yes, they also came with US adapters, but I think those are fugly.

I could just have cut the ends off and wire and screwed on some US plugs, but those things are even uglier than the adapters. So I bit the bullet and bought power cords with the proper plugs molded onto the ends and popped the covers on my gear thinking it would be a relatively easy matter of replacing the cords.

Maybe if I did electronic repair for a living and had the necessary skill set, but I do not. Yes, I safely completed the task (nothing sparked or smoked when I powered everything back on and they still work) on the three pieces of equipment that I swapped the cords on, but after doing this I honestly think the soldering process is 50% skill and 50% black magic voodoo. Not to mention you need three hands. I mean, it looks so easy when someone else is doing it…

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Even Though I Now Own My Dream Turntable…

I admit I still have a soft spot in my heart for the much less advanced SL-1600. After lusting over my high school buddy’s SL-1300 for years, I finally scraped up enough money to buy my own—only to be greeted by the news it was no longer available and had been replaced with the 1600. The 1600 proved to be a much better table than the 1300, so I wasn’t disappointed once I started using it.

I gave it to my sister when I got a 1300Mk2 a few years later.

After I’d ditched all my vinyl—and turntable—in the late 80s, when I decided to get back into it in the mid 90s, I returned to a 1600 because the 1300Mk2 was initially unobtainium to me. (There was no eBay; I bought it at a used stero equipment store in Berkeley and the 1600 was the best Technics deck they had available.)

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“Why the Bubble?”

This was a question Ben asked me the other night. I didn’t have a definitive answer other than to say it was a carryover from the original 1200 that preceded this, unofficially referred to as the Mk1. (To be honest I wasn’t 100% sure the original 1200 had this, so I had to do some sleuthing and verified that indeed, yes, it had the same bubble.)

But why?

Chatting with my friend John (who used to repair these things for a living) cleared it all up. The original 1200—and indeed the 1100 which preceded it—were sold in two versions: one with a pre-mounted Technics tonearm, and one that allowed the customer to mount a 3rd-party tonearm of their choice. Since those arms came in a variety of sizes and configurations, the bubble was to allow for their varying heights. Why not make the whole dust cover higher? Probably cost.

The 1200Mk2 was never available without a Technics arm (although there are a number of after-market mods that allow you to do that if you’re so inclined), so I was correct that it was simply a way for the Technics designers to pay homage to the previous generation. When these Mk2 tables first appeared on the scene in 1979, I hated the bubble—and was, in fact, not overly impressed with any aspect of the 1200, being wrapped up as I was in fully automatic operation and digital readouts—but over the years I’ve come to appreciate it’s funky aesthetic and can’t imagine it not being there.

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If Getting That Sleep Were Only So Easy…

After thirty years of intensive research, we can now answer many of the questions posed earlier. The recycle rate of a human being is around sixteen hours. After sixteen hours of being awake, the brain begins to fail. Humans need more than seven hours of sleep each night to maintain cognitive performance. After ten days of just seven hours of sleep, the brain is as dysfunctional as it would be after going without sleep for twenty-four hours. Three full nights of recovery sleep (i.e., more nights than a weekend) are insufficient to restore performance back to normal levels after a week of short sleeping. Finally, the human mind cannot accurately sense how sleep-deprived it is when sleep-deprived.

written by Matthew Walker PhD, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

(via themedicalstate)

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