Reubens, pretzels, tropical storm names

In case you missed it, more Jimmy gold: the evolution of the 'Mom dance'.

Babcock Dairy store has a Reuben sandwich special this week. Reubens are the pretty much the only instance where i actually like swiss cheese and Russian or thousand island salad dressing, so i was pleased to be included in a lunch meeting with Holly, Rup, Bryan and these sandwiches (and hey, we talked about Bryan's project, so it was actually on the level). The topic came up as to the unique name of Reubens; were they named for someone? Googled it, and the answer is that there are two claims. One involves an Earl-of-Sandwich-esque scenario, where a guy in 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska named Reuben Kulakofsky was playing poker with some buddies, got hungry, and came up with the sandwich. One of his buddies owned a hotel, and liked the sandwich enough to put it on the menu there. (i like this version.) The other version regards Arnold Reuben, owner of Rueben's Delicatessen in New York, and the story is that he came up with a sandwich to cheer up a theater lady named Anna Selos, who claimed it was the best sandwich she'd ever eaten, so he put it on the menu as a Reuben special. Wikipedia reports a lot of variations, including one made with fish (Grouper).

A second topic of conversation involved the origins of pretzels. i'd looked this up once, and it was that monks made them, to look like folded hands, as treats for kids. Curiously, at the time of re-googling it, the wiki entry currently reads " There are numerous accounts on the origin of the looped pretzels, as well as the origin of the name; most agree that they have Christian backgrounds and were invented by Karoushtefor Stark. According to The History of Science and Technology, by Bryan Bunch and Alexander Hellemans, in 610 AD "...Karoushtefor invents pretzels as a reward to children who learn all of the lines from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". He calls the strips of baked dough, folded to resemble arms crossing the chest, 'pretiola' ("little rewards")". However, no source is cited to back up these details. " Perfect.

The NYTimes recently posted an article regarding barefoot-running related-injuries.

Every month or so, a group of us has breakfast together, and i  usually send out the announcement emails. To keep things interesting, i try to include some sort of random information, and the recent email included the notice that Madison was under winter storm warning for a storm called Saturn. The question came, who names these things? Apparently the Weather Channel has decided to name seriously disruptive winter storms in a semi-nerdy manner, to the chagrin of a few meteorologists. The meteorologists are taking the tact that only hurricanes/tropical storms get names, and naming other storms will only confuse the general public. i personally doubt this due to timing and location; a hurricane will never hit Wisconsin, particularly in winter. However, the Weather Channel admits that the first named storm spiked traffic to their website, and so subsequent namings might be viewed as a publicity stunt. An additional cool random fact is that tropical storm names are recycled every 6 years, retiring them only when the storm was a particularly deadly/costly one.