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

"As it is, temperatures elsewhere around the globe have been more than making up for the cooler year across Canada and the United States. So much so that there have already been five months this year that topped their respective charts for warmest month on record - May, June, August, September and October. The trend has been so clear that forecasters have been calling it since August, saying, "If 2014 maintains this temperature departure from average for the remainder of the year, it will be the warmest year on record."" - Todd Hoff

Glad I live in this year's blue. Heat & hot water is included in my rent. Air conditioning is not. - April Russo (FForever!)

It looks like climate change denial actually has a cooling effect, though. Maybe the rest of the world should follow the example of the American heartland. - Eivind

"The very rich often live in expensive houses, but that’s not where most of their wealth is. In fact, for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, only about 9% of their total net worth is tied up in their home. That’s compared to 63% for the broad middle class. That’s among the revealing findings of research, released earlier this month, from Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University who studies the wealth distribution. His work analyzed the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances to peek into the widely differing portfolios of the wealthiest 1%, the next 19%, which can be loosely thought of as the upper-middle class (though the top of this range is getting very wealthy as well), and the middle 60%, or the broad middle class." - Todd Hoff

"Each Level of a Crater Garden Creates it's Own micro-climate, allowing you to grow Out Of area Plants that normally wouldn't survive.   The Pond at the Center of a Crater Garden Creates a Water supply for the entire garden.  Rainwater runs down the crater to be Stored in the pond.  Overtime, the pond charges the groundwater, and then wicks moisture into the surrounding plants.  This Drastically cuts down ON Water Needs." - Todd Hoff

Nice design - Todd Hoff

"This is hot because it suggests that a ‘memory trace’ was not stored in the form of synapses. Rather, it suggests that the sensory neuron itself has a memory of how many synapses it ought to be forming – with the actual synapses being merely an expression of this memory. This is pretty radical: it amounts to saying that the location of memory is not in the synapses, but (probably) in the cell nuclei of presynaptic neurons." - Todd Hoff

"Now, a team of Chinese scientists have discovered the most outlandish strategy yet: some bacteria transform fungi into worm-killers. Fungi aren’t known for their speed or mobility, but around 200 species have evolved ways of killing nematodes nonetheless. They use traps, including sticky nets and microscopic lassos made of single coiled cells. Once they ensnare a worm, they grow into it and digest it from the inside out. These fungi aren’t always killers. One of the most common and best-studied species—Arthrobotrys oligospora—usually feeds on decaying vegetation. It only produces its deadly traps when nematodes are around. Two years ago, one team of scientists showed that it knows when to do this because it can smell its prey, detecting chemicals that the worms can’t help but produce." - Todd Hoff

Did anyone else think, Korea did it, or that a lie? - Todd Hoff

"SCIENCE & TECH4 Future Cities Lit by Beautiful Bioluminescent Trees By Maxwell Morgan A laboratory at Stony Brook University, working with designer Dann Roosegaarde, has developed a glowing plant by merging luciferin–which is the chemical that enables fireflies to glow–with a simple plant. The result is a plant, in dirt, that glows. Naturally. And it is awesome. Roosegaarde, a self-described designer/artist/architect from the Netherlands, pronounced his vision for the future of technology incorporation at the 2014 SXSW in Austin, Texas." - Todd Hoff

"TORONTO — She's literally one in a million. The remains of a child, laid to rest more than 1,500 years ago when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt, was found in an ancient cemetery that contains more than 1 million mummies, according to a team of archaeologists from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The cemetery is now called Fag el-Gamous, which means "Way of the Water Buffalo," a title that comes from the name of a nearby road. Archaeologists from Brigham Young University have been excavating Fag el-Gamous, along with a nearby pyramid, for about 30 years. Many of the mummies date to the time when the Roman or Byzantine Empire ruled Egypt, from the 1st century to the 7th century A.D. [See photos of the million-mummy cemetery]" - Todd Hoff

"Dick’s work is full of androids, simulacra, existential questions, alternate realities, characters who cannot know themselves. “The Man in the High Castle,” which takes place in an America divided between Germany and Japan after the Axis Powers won World War II, revolves in part around a character who has written a novel imagining an Allied victory; his 1977 novel “A Scanner Darkly” involves an undercover cop whose consciousness has been so severed by a psychotropic drug called Substance D that he has begun spying on himself. The point, of course, is that reality is nothing but a construct, a mass hallucination, consensual or otherwise. If that no longer seems a particularly radical notion, we have Dick to thank for that — “our own homegrown Borges,” in Ursula K. Le Guin’s phrase, for whom existence remains elusive, if apprehensible at all." - Todd Hoff

I've loved everything I've read by him. - Jenny H.

He was amazing. - Todd Hoff

Fave Dick moment: Goes to a convention in Canada and tells everyone he feels that we are living in a matrix. In the 70's. 'Nuff said. - Harold Cabezas

"Climate change is bad for commercial oyster and mussel growers. But until recently, researchers weren’t sure exactly how rising CO2 levels and the resultant ocean acidification—reduced pH—harmed the farmed bivalves. This week (December 15), researchers proposed an answer: it’s all about saturation state. In a paper published in Nature Climate Change, scientists from Oregon State University and state agencies reported that the larvae of Pacific oysters and Mediterranean mussels have a hard time forming their calcium carbonate shells as the surrounding seawater’s saturation state falls. Saturation state is a measure of how corrosive the seawater is to the shells that the larvae make as they grow, and as CO2 increases in the atmosphere, saturation state drops. A lower saturation state means more corrosive water. “Biological oceanographers have speculated that early life stages of marine organisms might be particularly sensitive to ocean acidification, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown for most species,” David Garrison, program director in the US National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research through an ocean acidification competition, said in a statement. “This research is an important step in being able to predict, and perhaps mitigate, the effects of ocean acidification on coastal resources.”" - Todd Hoff

Yep. A very troubling harbinger. :( - Jenny H.

The oysters in this study are imported from Japan not native to the Pacific North West. The average PH of the ocean water they come from is naturally more alkaline "8.5 PH" than the waters off the coast of Oregon "8.1 PH." The larval die off which occurred is actually due to up welling. Oregon's natural oysters indigenous to the area are thriving. The aquaculture farms that have relocated the larval stage of the imported oysters to Hawaii are not experiencing die off. http://www.kgw.com/story... - Eric Logan

Better than my results, by far :D - Jennifer Dittrich

Oh, I love the idea of the larger leaves holding everything down! I will definitely have to try that. - Jennifer Dittrich

She’s a bent twig, but she’s not broken. She can weather the storm and come out on the other side. - Todd Hoff

Am I satisfied? Satisfaction is a palliative - Todd Hoff

“Love,” Asa said, “is like a pigeon shitting over a crowd.” “How so?” “Where it lands hasn’t got much to do with who deserves it. - Todd Hoff

Empathetic silence is one of the most underused weapons in the world. - Todd Hoff

"Researchers from the OpenWorm project have successfully mapped all the connections between Caenorhabditis elegans’ 302 neurons and managed to simulate them in software. Scientists published the first map of the worm's synaptic connections, or connectome, in 1986 and a refined draft in 2006. The brain of the roundworm has just 1000 cells, of which only 302 are neurons with 7,000 connections or synapses." - Todd Hoff

The freaky zone. - Todd Hoff

Sit Ubu, sit. - Eric - Final Countdown

"A farm is not a continuity business until it provides two salaries. Do you know how long it takes you to do things on your farm?  That type of time and motion analysis is important. Farmers aren’t exempt from knowing about and running the business. Consider task oriented jobs for employees versus time oriented jobs for employees.  Performance oriented pay versus just showing up. Joel’s Rule on Farmers Markets:  If you aren’t making $2000 per market you should be doing something else with your time.  If you aren’t making that much you might be better off spending that time creating your own marketing. You may not want to house all farm business within the same business entity. YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO IT ALL.  There are people out there that love doing things you don’t do. Put people into positions that that gravitate to, doing what they love, and what they are good at. Consider commission based pay for the sales staff. Joel uses memorandums of understanding that including the clause of everyone agreeing not to litigate.  Multiple enterprises is leveraging.  It allows you to duplicate and multiple your resources base without you having to do more work. It is a coordinated effort.  Everything has to fit. Always think how do you value add. The hard part in marketing is getting the first sale." - Todd Hoff

If you're still using live trees for Christmas you're not much of an environmentalist. :) - Eric Logan

In the US we have xmas tree farms, so deforestation isn't an issue. The goose feather trees look a little funky http://www.ebay.com/itm... - Todd Hoff

"To archaeologist Jim Chatters, co-leader of the Hoyo Negro research team, these are all indications that the earliest Americans were what he calls “Northern Hemisphere wild-type” populations: bold and aggressive, with hypermasculine males and diminutive, subordinate females. And this, he thinks, is why the earliest Americans’ facial features look so different from those of later Native Americans. These were risk-taking pioneers, and the toughest men were taking the spoils and winning fights over women. As a result, their robust traits and features were being selected over the softer and more domestic ones evident in later, more settled populations. Chatters’s wild-type hypothesis is speculative, but his team’s findings at Hoyo Negro are not. Naia has the facial features typical of the earliest Americans as well as the genetic signatures common to modern Native Americans. This signals that the two groups don’t look different because the earliest populations were replaced by later groups migrating from Asia, as some anthropologists have asserted. Instead they look different because the first Americans changed after they got here." - Todd Hoff

"That seems to be an emerging theme. It appears to be the story not just at Paisley Caves but at Monte Verde and the Friedkin site in Texas as well. In each of these cases people seemed to have been settled in, comfortable with their environment and adept at exploiting it. And this suggests that long before the Clovis culture began spreading across North America, the Americas hosted diverse communities of people—people who may have arrived in any number of migrations by any number of routes. Some may have come by sea, others by land. Some may have come in such small numbers that traces of their existence will never be found. " - Todd Hoff

"The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) found microbes living 2,400m beneath the seabed off Japan. The tiny, single-celled organisms survive in this harsh environment on a low-calorie diet of hydrocarbon compounds and have a very slow metabolism. The findings are being presented at the America Geophysical Union Fall Meeting. Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert, from the California Institute of Technology, who is part of the team that carried out the research, said: "We keep looking for life, and we keep finding it, and it keeps surprising us as to what it appears to be capable of."" - Todd Hoff

"In an unusual sight in California's Sierra Mountains, surfers paddled out on Lake Tahoe, taking advantage of the high winds and big waves brought by the massive storm that began pummeling the northern part of the state on Thursday. The "Pineapple Express" storm, so called for its point of origin near Hawaii, is the strongest storm to hit the northern and central parts of the state in six years. It brought some travel disruption and property damage with it, but Tahoe's surfers were quick to make the most of the unusual weather system." - Todd Hoff

Heard some of the news reports here in Sacramento about it. If there weren't already SURF TAHOE shirts in existence, I'm sure there are now. - Corinne L

"Their analysis showed that a number of other droughts in California's history had less precipitation than the one the state is currently experiencing. However, the most recent drought stood out because of how exceptionally hot it was compared to other droughts over the past 1,200 years. Even when they accounted for errors associated with combining the different data sets, they saw that "what's really different is the record high temperatures," Griffin said. "That kind of knocked my socks off, I wasn't expecting that result," he said. The "hot drought" was worse because the heat drew more moisture from the soil into the atmosphere, according to Griffin. For every 1 degree Celsius increase in air temperature, the atmosphere's capacity to retain moisture increases by 7 percent, as defined by the Clausius-Clapeyron equation." - Todd Hoff

So worst means a combination of dryness + high temperature. That's what makes now unique. - Todd Hoff

"The Great Recession is officially over, but Americans are still 40% poorer today than they were in 2007, the year before the global financial crisis. The net worth of American families — the difference between the values of their assets, including homes and investments, and liabilities — fell to $81,400 in 2013, down slightly from $82,300 in 2010, but a long way off the $135,700 in 2007, according to a new report released on Friday by the nonprofit think-tank Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. “The Great Recession, fueled by the crises in the housing and financial markets, was universally hard on the net worth of American families,” the report found." - Todd Hoff

I wonder how that compares to other nations. Not that I doubt the figure at all but many other countries have economies in worse shape than ours post-crash and some of them have imposed austerity measures. - Spidra Webster

Like everything mediated one has to wonder if these prices are really market driven or if they are simply set to maximize revenue? - Todd Hoff