Thursday, April 27, 2006

The List

Here's the list of memorable places I've eaten pizza from (in no particular order):


1. Pepperoncino's (5th Ave)
2. Patsy's (118th & 1st)
3. Patsy's (11th & University)
4. Totonno's (26th & 2nd)
5. Totonno's (81st & 2nd)
6. Totonno's (Coney Island)
7. Ray's (2nd & 94th)
8. John's (44th & 8th)
9. John's (Bleecker)
10. Bleecker Street Pizza (7th Ave)
11. No. 28 (near Bleecker)
12. DeMarco's (was on Houston, CLOSED)
13. Joe's (near Bleecker)
14. Abitino's (Bleecker)
15. Lombardi's (Spring St.)
16. Una Pizza Napoletana (12th & 1st; CLOSED)
17. Waldy's Wood-Fired Pizza (6th Ave.)
18. Luzzo's (1st Ave)
19. Nick's (94th & 2nd)
20. Nick's (Queens)
21. Sac's Place (Astoria)
22. Grimaldi's (Dumbo)
23. Angelo's (57th & 6th)
24. Di Fara (Midwood)
25. Franny's (Flatbush)
26. 5th Ave Pizza (5th & Union St.)
27. La Villa (5th Ave)
28. Anthony's (7th Ave)
29. Li'l Frankie's (1st Ave)
30. Gino's (Washington Ave)
31. Nino's (Franklin Ave)
32. Vinny Vincenz (1st Ave)
33. Monty's (Montague St.)
34. Two Boot's (Bleecker)
35. Two Boot's (Grand Central)
36. 33 (23rd & 8th)
37. Fornino's (Bedford Ave, Williamsburg)
38. La Pizza Fresca (20th & Broadway)
39. Graziella's (Vanderbilt Ave & Dekalb Ave)
40. Famiglia (Crap. Don't ever eat pizza from here.)
41. Lazzara's (38th b/t 7th & 8th; Square pie)
42. Serafina (somewhere in Midtown)
43. Celeste (Amsterdam Ave b/t 84th and 85th)
44. The Alligator Lounge (Metropolitan Ave., Williamsburg)
45. Pizzatown (5th Ave., Park Slope)
46. Isabella's Oven (Grand St., LES; CLOSED)
47. Dean's (85th St. & Broadway, UWS)
48. Lucali (Henry St., Carroll Gardens)
49. Toby's Public House (South Slope/Sunset Park)
50. South Brooklyn Pizza (Court St. & 3rd Pl., Carroll Gardens)
51. Co. (24th & 9th)
52. Kesté (Bleecker)
53. Artichoke Basille (14th & 1st)
54. Pizza Mezzaluna (W. Houston; MacDougal)
55. Motorino (Graham Ave., Williamsburg; CLOSED)

56. Motorino (East Village)
57. Rose & Joe's Bakery (Astoria)
58. Rizzo's Fine Pizza (Astoria)
59. The House of Pizza & Calzone (Carroll Gardens)
60. Tomato & Basil (Park Slope)
61. Paulie Gee's (Greenpoint)

Plus a number of other corner slice shops that dot the cityscape.

To do list:



Best Pizza
Totale
Olio e Piú
South Brooklyn Pizza (Manhattan)
Artichoke Basille's (Westside)
Rose & Joe's Italian Bakery
Donatella's
Roberta's
San Marzano
L&B Spumoni Gardens
Arturo's
Leonardo's
+ more!

My current top 10 (in order):


  1. Di Fara (excruciatingly long waits for works of edible art)
  2. Motorino (wood oven, crisp and tensile crust, delicate buffalo mozzarella— and excellent gelato!)
  3. Grimaldi's (coal oven perfection, quality pepperoni, and root beer)
  4. Anthony's (homemade cheese, amazingly delicious crust like fresh bread)
  5. Nick's (wood-fired, crust quality varies, excellent pepperoni, all in the exotic locale of Queens)
  6. Artichoke Basille (the square. really. it's that good. crisp, rich, oily.)
  7. Totonno's (the most consistently made pizza, paper thin crust, smokey coal oven)
  8. Pizza Mezzaluna (wood-fired, Neapolitan-inspired)
  9. Lombardi's (America's first licensed pizzeria)
  10. La Villa (the DOC is wood-fired new york-italianess; bonus!: delicious house salad)




Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Cigarettes and Pollution

Below are some statistics I looked up. I don't have anything to compare cigarette pollution to yet (except for the segment from the Italian Institute for Higher Health), but I'll see what I can come up with. I think my math is right, but I welcome corrections.

According to a study conducted by the the Italian Institute for Higher Health, three smouldering cigarettes produced a 10-fold increase in air particles compared to those produced by an idling 2002 Ford Mondeo turbo diesel with a two-litre engine, fuelled with low-sulphur diesel. (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6312)

The mean average of milligrams of CO per cigarrette is 11.5mg (taken from data corresponding to 103 different kinds of cigarettes, a sampling of the statistics found here: www.ftc.gov/reports/tobacco/1998tar&nicotinereport.pdf , a Federal Trade Commission report).

Estimated number of cigarettes smoked in U.S. in 2005 by the U.S.D.A.: 389 billion
Estimated number of cigarettes produced in the world in 2004: 5.662 trillion

Approximately 4.5 million kilos or 9.9 million lbs of carbon monoxide released into the atmosphere via smoking in the U.S. (11.5mg x 389,000,000,000 / 1,000,000 = # of kilos x 2.2 = # of pounds).

The 465 billion cigarettes smoked in the United States in 1998 translates to a total of 176,250,000 pounds of discarded butts in one year in the United States alone.
(http://www.longwood.edu/cleanva/cigbutthowmany.htm)

The average diameter of a cigarette is approximately 10mm or 1cm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette). One football field is approximately 110m x 50m (http://www.ncaa.org/champadmin/football/football_field.gif). If you stood each cigarette on end, like a chimney stack, you would need 55 million cigarettes1 to cover an entire football field. It would take about 7,072 football fields, or slightly over 15 square miles2, to house all of the cigarettes produced in the U.S. Now imagine those cigarettes burning.

1. 110m = 11000cm; 50m = 5000cm;(11000cm*5000cm)*(1 cigarette / 1cm^2) = 5.5x10^7 cigarettes

2. 1m = 0.000621371192 miles; 110m = 0.06835083112 miles; 50m = 0.0310685596 miles; 7072*0.06835083112 miles*0.0310685596 miles = 15.017829547194793606144 miles^2

Sunday, April 09, 2006

from nature.com

Puzzle of leaping liquid solved
Physicists explain how shampoo streams can bounce.

Philip Ball

Dutch researchers believe they have cracked the physics behind a mysterious bouncing behaviour of liquids, first seen more than 40 years ago.

British engineer Arthur Kaye first noticed this weird phenomenon in 1963, while experimenting with a mixture of obscure organic liquids. When he poured his viscous mixture on to a surface, the down-going stream would suddenly throw up a jet that merged with the incoming stream.

Continued...


Videos of the phenomenon.