Every commuter train that departs from New York City — about 900 a day — leaves a minute later than scheduled. If the timetable says 8:14, the train will actually leave at 8:15. The 12:48 is really the 12:49.

In other words, if you think you have only a minute to get that train — well, relax. You have two.

The phantom minute, in place for decades and published only in private timetables for employees, is meant as a grace period for stragglers who need the extra time to scramble off the platform and onto the train.

“If everyone knows they get an extra minute, they’re going to lollygag,” explained Marjorie Anders, a spokeswoman for the Metro-North Railroad. Told of this article, Ms. Anders laughed. “Don’t blow our cover!” she said.

Entirely hidden from the riding public, the secret minute is an odd departure from the railroad culture of down-to-the-second accuracy.

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The minute was originally known as “gate time,” dating to the days when gates were used to block off the ramps that lead down to the platforms. (The gates are still occasionally used at Grand Central.)

At the publicly posted departure time, the gates would be closed; those who had already made it through would have a minute to climb onto the train.

The practice gradually extended to trains to Long Island and New Jersey that start in Pennsylvania Station and the Long Island Rail Road’s Brooklyn terminal.

For instance, [Casey Arasa, Penn Station's terminal manager] suggested, judging by the number of lost karate gis, interest in the martial arts and being properly uniformed for them is booming in the suburbs. Yoga, too — at least according to all the dropped mats — remains quite popular. But trend spotting gets more difficult when the items are bizarre ones, and there are certainly plenty of those.

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All told, the lost and found collects more than 10,000 items a year (with a 50 percent return rate) and stores them for as long as 40 months on numerous cluttered shelves in a dingy warehouse space that is just around the corner from the men’s room. Lost cellphones are kept in plastic bins, according to their model (and with their ringers blissfully off). Cash, of course, is stored separately, and the fact that $19,892 has been returned so far this year suggests that people probably aren’t as grasping as you thought.

The biggest lessons of the lost and found appear to be: a) suburban women have a hard time keeping hold of their purses, and b) Long Islanders are waterproof, since why else would they leave behind so many nice umbrellas? Sub-lessons might include the fact that many commuters are technophobes (there are currently more than 60 laptops in the lost and found) and that, judging by how many Touristers are missing, a good piece of luggage just isn’t as valuable as it used to be.

Another thing you may not know is that the framed print of, say, the East River bridges that you accidentally left behind last year on the morning train to Babylon now hangs on the wall of the lost and found, which is furnished by commuters’ dropped objects. There is even a modest lending library of lost books that indicate the Long Island mindset: “Be a Real Estate Millionaire,” “Gross Anatomy,” “Blue Highways,” by William Least Heat Moon and Joe Torre’s inside-the-clubhouse tell-all.

See also, for comparison’s sake, the MTA lost and found (from 2006); prosthetic limbs there, too.

Manhattan prosecutors on Thursday accused the Luchese crime family of infiltrating the Buildings Department, saying that three of the family’s associates found jobs as building inspectors and that others in the family, including top bosses, committed a wide range of crimes.

In all, six building inspectors were accused of taking bribes to grant building permits, expedite inspections and overlook building violations. The three inspectors said to be Luchese associates were also accused of more traditional mob-related offenses, including bribery, gambling, drug trafficking, extortion and loan sharking.

More than 150 stations on the numbered subway lines, including the heavily trafficked Nos. 1, 4 and 6, will be providing the information by December 2010; in some stations the clocks will be running even earlier, according to a recently released Metropolitan Transportation Authority document.

In the timeless realm of the underground, where anguish can mount with each passing trainless second, this amounts to something of a revolution.

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Although New Yorkers became familiar with the technology after its debut on the L line in 2007, that train, which snakes through Williamsburg out to Canarsie, carries only a fraction of the city’s overall ridership (though it does carry a high proportion of its well-heeled hipster set). The No. 6 train, on the other hand, handles 700,000 rides a day, more than the entire Chicago rail system.

After spraying disinfectant, Sosa poured a sandy material akin to kitty litter to soak up the scabbed-over puddles of blood. After scraping up and disposing of the material, he breaks out a mop, then a high pressure steamer to clean the smaller splashes of blood around the kitchen.

Gospodarski, who has been a paramedic for nearly three decades, said he started his career working the Queens District Attorney’s Office, founded Bio-Recovery when he noticed that there were no companies in New York City that provided cleanup services after nasty incidents and instead, made the victim’s family, or landowners, pick up the pieces. Bio-Recovery is one of only a few companies based in NYC that specializes in cleaning up the aftermath of crime scenes and death.

Gospodarski said the city takes the official position that they can’t refer anybody to a private company due to conflict of interest. “The city can hire a tow truck, but they can’t hire somebody to clean up your husband or your child and make you deal with it.”

Don’t miss the charming video at the link . . .

“It’s a mathematical problem, it’s a geometric problem, and it’s a real physical problem as well,” said Professor Jasna Brujic, a physicist who led the team that solved the query.

Johannes Kepler, the 17th-century scientist, had originally come up with a conjecture to solve the problem based on the gumballs being perfectly round, of equal size, and packed as tightly as physically possible.

Only in the last decade had scientists shown Kepler’s 400-year-old conjecture was probably right — using calculations that required high-speed computers.

Now, Brujic’s team, in a paper just published in the science journal Nature, takes things a step further — by giving a way to calculate the number of gumballs in a jar if they are of varying sizes.

The complicated formula boils down to this: It’s easiest to figure the answer if you start from the perspective of one gumball and check how many other gumballs touch it.

The team concluded that if you know the proportion of gumballs of each different size, you can figure out statistically how many are in the jar.

And two, never, ever, ever allow anyone to be able to use a headline like “REP. CAROLYN MALONEY APOLOGIZES FOR USING ‘N WORD’,” even if you are just repeating what someone else told you.

Here’s another reason to hate rats: Their pee could kill your dog.

Health officials and pet owners in North Brooklyn are on the alert after a report last week that two dogs may have died from leptospirosis, a disease that can be passed on to canines through water tainted by rat or mice urine.

The city’s Department of Health said this week that the cases in Brooklyn are only suspicious for leptospirosis, and are still under investigation.

The Daily News said a six-year-old rat terrier called Parker died within days after romping at one of the dog runs in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, particularly muddy and wet after June’s heavy rains. The dog’s owner, Aaron Goodman, said the his sweet pup stopped eating, turned yellow and ultimately suffered severe kidney failure, according to the report.

For the past two days, visitors to a park in Staten Island’s Fort Wadsworth section have stumbled upon a gory mystery — a mutilated animal, possibly a dog or a goat, wrapped in a white sheet.

Parkgoers found two such animals in Von Briesen Park yesterday and this morning, city Parks Department officials confirmed.

The discovery has sparked speculation of ritual sacrifice and cult activity, and has led one Port Richmond woman to douse part of the ground where one animal was found with holy water, in an attempt to ward off what she believes is an evil presence.

Several alluded to Santeria, which blends elements of Yoruba, an African religion, with Catholicism and involves animal sacrifice in some of its rituals.

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“This is not good, doing this,” said Nancy Kelcho of Port Richmond, who was walking her Scottie, Tara Lynn, this morning when a friend pointed out the mutilated animal. “This is evil. I just pray to God to take away the evil spirits.”

Ms. Kelcho, a firm believer in the supernatural, chanted prayers this afternoon as she sprayed holy water on the ground, and at one point gasped, “Evil! Evil! Evil!”

Though Ms. Kelcho said she was certain the animal she saw was a dog, Parks spokesman Phil Abramson said both animals are believed to be goats.

Location Scout: Arthur von Briesen Park.

Cops arrested Toure Mahamadou, 25, Sadabe Sekou, 39, and Latil Serge, 21, all of Newark, whose truck allegedly continued 37 bundles worth $5,550 when sold to recycling centers.

“I wasn’t scared when they pulled the knife,” [Milton Williams Supermarket manager Milton] Rivera said.