Why does Union-Find have time complexity O(N + M lg* N) with the "log star N"?
Check out the analysis of path compression in Union-Find by Seidel and Sharir "Top-Down Analysis of Path Compression", SIAM Journal of Computing 34:3 (2005), pp 515-525. Somewhat heavy going, the result you cite is a step on the way to the best-possible bound by their method.