Todd Hoff

I'm doing the usual tomatos, cucs, zucs, spinach and lettuce, but thought I'd add some blackberry canes and start a vermiculture bin this year. - Ken Morley

The Whole Seed Catalog on the newsstand is interesting. http://www.rareseeds.com/store... - Thomas Page

Let me recall at this point Nietzsche’s statements regarding classic and romantic art. He identified two types or orders of each. There is the romanticism of true power that shatters contemporary forms to go beyond these to new forms; and there is, on the other hand, the romanticism that is unable to achieve form at all, and so smashes and disparages out of resentment. And with respect to classicism likewise, there is the classicism that finds an achievement of the recognized forms easy and can play with them at will, expressing through them its own creative aims in a rich and vital way; and there is the classicism that clings to form desperately out of weakness, dry and hard, authoritarian and cold. The point I would make— and which I believe was also Nietzsche’s— is that form is the medium, the vehicle , through which life becomes manifest in its grand style, articulate and grandiose, and that the mere shattering of form is for human as well as for animal life a disaster, ritual and decorum being the structuring forms of all civilization. Campbell, Joseph (2011-03-11). Myths to Live By (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) (pp. 48-49). Joseph Campbell Foundation. Kindle Edition. - Todd Hoff

"Amazingly, Drebbel’s thermostat-equipped furnace functioned according to modern feedback control concepts, in which a sensor detects changes in the output of a system and then modifies the input to correct for those changes and bring the system back to its original state. Did Drebbel know he had created a feedback loop? “He sort of did, but he didn’t articulate it,” says Hall. “Call it embedded knowledge.” Drebbel never publicly described the mechanical underpinnings of his circulating oven, possibly to protect his product. Back then, nothing like real patent or copyright law held sway and plagiarism was rampant. Secrecy was standard alchemical practice in any case, as all the important transmutation formulae were encoded in arcane symbols." - Todd Hoff

I'll get around to it soon but I'm SO behind on my TV shows. - Starmama

Still love the movie. The book creates such a concrete world that I easily suspended disbelief. But I noticed this time through the book that it gave very little in the way of description. What the movie did for dune was give it such a visually rich and consistent world that I again suspended disbelief. I do see his point in two major cases. - Todd Hoff

For some reason, I can't stop at Hobbit 2 (Electric Boogaloo). I *have* to see Smaug get shot down. After that I may walk out, because IIRC form the book, the battle afterwards was pretty much an afterthought with most of the action offstage. - MoTO Boychick Devil

"One of the things I find amazing about cities in Europe is the way that ancient walls and buildings--whether Roman, Iron Age, or Medieval--have become part of the modern urban fabric. There are three ways that ancient architecture is manifest in modern cities. First, whole buildings have survived, and they continue to be used." - Todd Hoff

"A research team from MIT has revealed a new mathematical link between temperature, material thickness and electrical resistance, which appears to be valid for all superconductors." - Todd Hoff

"Scientists have developed a technique that can recreate a 3D map of the cells that were firing in a mouse’s brain a few hours before it died, giving them a high-resolution picture of what was going on in the mouse’s head during life—in this case, when it met a member of the opposite sex. The team of researchers published their results yesterday in the journal Cell Reports." - Todd Hoff

So it's persistent memory, after all. - Eivind

:( - Amit Patel

It was certainly much warmer in Norway than I anticipated. Folks here say there is definitely a warming trend. - Jenny H.

"Walter soon learned that his newly acquired photographs were actually Photochroms, which he began collecting in earnest. Now, just some of the North American portion of his collection is the subject of a new 612-page, 15-pound, $200 Taschen book, co-authored by Walter and Arqué, called An American Odyssey: Photos from the Detroit Photographic Company 1888–1924. Showcasing  of Walter’s horde, American Odyssey is packed with hundreds of Photochroms and Phostints (the brand name for the Detroit Photographic Company’s Photochrom postcards), as well as their black-and-white source images, which were taken by such esteemed late-19th- and early-20th-century American photographers as William Henry Jackson, Lycurgus Solon Glover, and Henry Greenwood Peabody. Together, these photographers cataloged the natural and man-made marvels of the continent, bringing their cameras from the great cities of the Northeast and Upper Midwest to the mountains and deserts of the still-wild West." - Todd Hoff

Heard her on the radio, wow! - Todd Hoff

Are you the maker or the tool? - Todd Hoff

"ForFreedom Caravan is an expanding living unit especially designed for urban couple in the need of a short break. The flowing caravan form is aimed at creating stability and fuel economy. Due to its compact size, this caravan is easy to handle and connect to your car. Take a look at the interior. It has been designed for easy personalization with modern style to easily adapt to its owner lifestyle. It might look small from the outside, but is actually pretty spacious inside." - Todd Hoff

"‘…the forensic demolition of the hypothesis that saturated fat is the cause of cardiovascular disease is impressive. Indeed, the book is deeply disturbing in showing how overenthusiastic scientists, massive conflicts of interest, and politically driven policy makers can make deeply damaging mistakes. Over 40 years I’ve come to recognise which I might have known from the beginning – that science is a human activity with the error, self-deception, grandiosity, bias, self-interest, cruelty, fraud, and theft that is inherent in all human activities (together with some saintliness), but this book shook me.’ The amazing thing, to me, is not the Richard Smith has finally realised the diet-heart hypothesis is a complete crock. The amazing thing is that it still holds sway, despite the fact that it was never based on anything other than the propaganda of a power-mad egotist (Ancel Keys). Any evidence that saturated fat, or any other fat consumption, causes heart disease has always been weak at best, more usually non-existent, or just flatly contradictory." - Todd Hoff

"Wind turbines that look like trees. What an innovative and clever idea. It’s not often we see technology that could change the world, though it is becoming more common as technologies advance and people share more information on new design and tech. This wind turbine combine the elegance of nature finest evolutionary energy and gas converters (namely trees) and has created a beautifully simple way to generate electricity while also getting rid of the common aesthetically unpleasing 3 bladed wind turbines that dot the landscape and windy fields of the world." - Todd Hoff

If they made a version with fruit bats, I'd be all over that. - Ken Morley

This is really cool! I want one (or two)! - Jenny H.

"Immune system defects are at the center of aging and a range of diseases. Here, we show that prolonged fasting reduces circulating IGF-1 levels and PKA activity in various cell populations, leading to signal transduction changes in long-term hematopoietic stem cells (LT-HSCs) and niche cells that promote stress resistance, self-renewal, and lineage-balanced regeneration. Multiple cycles of fasting abated the immunosuppression and mortality caused by chemotherapy and reversed age-dependent myeloid-bias in mice, in agreement with preliminary data on the protection of lymphocytes from chemotoxicity in fasting patients. The proregenerative effects of fasting on stem cells were recapitulated by deficiencies in either IGF-1 or PKA and blunted by exogenous IGF-1. These findings link the reduced levels of IGF-1 caused by fasting to PKA signaling and establish their crucial role in regulating hematopoietic stem cell protection, self-renewal, and regeneration." - Todd Hoff

"Beth Moon, a photographer based in San Francisco, has been searching for the world’s oldest trees for the past 14 years. She has traveled all around the globe to capture the most magnificent trees that grow in remote locations and look as old as the world itself." - Todd Hoff

Stunning! - Todd Hoff

"The random darknet shopper.  A bot with a budget to randomly purchase items on darknet sites.  It had a budget of $100 in bitcoins to spend every week.  Here's what it bought.  BTW, the law is fairly squishy on bots that break the law.   Here's a Hungarian passport it bought.  --> This is an automated way to grief a specific individual (CEO, Judge, etc.)." - Todd Hoff

"Barricelli believed in intelligent design, but the intelligence was bottom-up. “Even though biologic evolution is based on random mutations, crossing and selection, it is not a blind trial-and-error process,” he explained in a later retrospective of his numerical evolution work. “The hereditary material of all individuals composing a species is organized by a rigorous pattern of hereditary rules into a collective intelligence mechanism whose function is to assure maximum speed and efficiency in the solution of all sorts of new problems.… Judging by the achievements in the biological world, that is quite intelligent indeed.” - Todd Hoff

Not sure how this follows. - Todd Hoff

It's the word "meaning" that throws me. I would have gone with "complexity". - Ken Morley

"Consider that the 15 hottest years on record have all come since 1997. Or that this will be the third straight decade to break the mark for global temps. And that it’s been 358 months since the planet had a cooler-than-average month, and more than 100 years since we last had a record-cold month. LOOKING BACK AT 2014 AND AHEAD TO 2015 Monday Fate of Earth’s Ice Comes Further Into Focus Tuesday Ocean Warming: Probing a Blue Abyss Wednesday U.S. at Brink of Turning Point in Energy Thursday Climate Change’s Calling Card in 2014: Heat Friday Climate Change's Evolving Role in Extreme Weather   None of this should come as a surprise. As the world warms, record heat is climate change’s calling card. As a new year turns over, a number of signs point to 2015 following in this year’s toasty footsteps. This includes the possibility of a weak El Niño further raising global temperatures and clues from coral reefs indicating a heat spike could be looming in the near future." - Todd Hoff

"No other image, in my opinion, so succinctly captures the skyrocketing fortunes of America's super-rich than the chart below, included in an October working paper by economists Emmanuel Saez, of the University of California Berkeley, and Gabriel Zucman, of the London School of Economics and Political Science (who you may know as some of Thomas Piketty's favorite academic bandmates). In 2012, the top 0.1 percent of households lay claim to 22 percent of U.S. wealth, up from about 7 percent in 1979. Or, as I put it when I wrote about a rough draft of their findings in April, one-thousandth of the country now owns more than one-fifth of its wealth." - Todd Hoff

old men grown comfortable in their position and privilege. Comfort is the enemy of change. Comfort is easy. It is a good meal and nights in a warm bed. Anything that challenges that is seen as dangerous. - Todd Hoff

“Don’t be afraid of your future,” Nigel said earnestly. “You have principles. Stick with them, but don’t think that you can fight fair to achieve them. Make the deals, build alliances with anyone who’ll support you, walk away from people when it’s convenient or they’ve outlived their use. Because, trust me, your opponents will use those same skills to bury you. That’s the game. The only game. Play it well, and you can achieve miracles. - Todd Hoff

“I doubt any system that won’t reveal its purpose, that only offers promises of a better tomorrow. - Todd Hoff

it’s conservative and sliding down the decadence decay curve. - Todd Hoff

"On today’s show, I spoke to Rick about the long road from proscription to prescription; where the previous generation of psychedelic advocates went wrong and what’s going right this time; how psychedelics might work to assist psychotherapy for PTSD, severe anxiety, drug and alcohol addiction, and other conditions; and how that model differs from conventional psychopharmaceutical approaches. Also Rick talks about his own psychedelic experiences and why mind-altering drugs can be so life-altering." - Todd Hoff

Interesting point is the 60s movement failed by defining themselves by what they were against, counter culture, instead of what they were for. - Todd Hoff

"With Alibaba's recent IPO on NYSE (instead of Hong Kong or China), the "one-share, one-vote" corporate governance standard has once again been challenged. Alibaba's choice follows a trend by high-profile US tech companies, such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Zynga, in going public with dual-class share structures. Institutional investors and their representatives, including CII, CalPERS, and ISS, have voiced opposition to dual-class structures. But some companies, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and even Berkshire Hathaway, have long had dual-class share structures that conferred control to a concentrated set of owners. Stock pyramids and cross-ownership structures render a similar effect. Abroad, controlled family-owned businesses or holding groups are the norm." - Todd Hoff

"Winners of the grand prize at New York's Green Business Competition, they plan to start construction of the 12,000 square-foot greenhouse this fall and yield their first harvest early next year. The project, with an estimated cost of $1.4 million, will be powered by 2,000 square-feet of solar panels and will capture rainwater for irrigation. In fact, the project's energy-savings potential even garnished them a $400,000 grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. "We are trying to demonstrate that sustainable, urban agriculture can be economically viable in the city," said the company's greenhouse director, Jennifer Nelkin, 30." - Todd Hoff

"To further improve upon the efficiency of cooking, we have to take a closer look at where the greatest energy losses are incurred. For electric hobs and microwaves, the most significant waste of energy can be attributed to power conversion losses. Converting fossil fuels or biomass into electricity produces an energy efficiency level of 20-45% depending on the power plant, which explains why electric stoves are among the least efficient cooking devices. Gas stoves have the largest heat transfer losses of all modern cooking stoves. Picture: Ashley Bischoff @ Flickr. The second most significant energy loss for electric stoves, and the most important one for all other cooking stoves, occurs during the transferral of heat from the cooking hob to the food in the cooking vessel. Not all heat produced by the fire reaches the cooking pot, and heat is lost through the walls and lid of the pot, as well as through escaping steam." - Todd Hoff

Reminds me of this: http://inhabitat.com/rocket-... - Spidra Webster

Many dishes depend on relatively precise temperature control, which you can't achieve with cooking vessels that have a lot of thermal inertia... - Andrew C (✔)

We've done the thing where you put the turkey on high for a while in the oven and then turn off the heat. It works well. Though I understand what you are saying andrew, we just don't do a lot of that kind of cooking :-) And cool link Spidra. I was curious why it seems we haven't seen much innovation in cooking technology. - Todd Hoff