Todd Hoff › Likes

"So in July 2011, Vuick banned anyone under six, citing it as the best decision he’s made. “I’ve gotten an overwhelming response from people all over the world, and it’s a thousand to one in favor of what we’ve done. Every day a customer seeks me out to thank me for the policy, or someone writes to tell me they wish a restaurant near them would institute this policy. Business is up and it’s even helped me get some staff I wouldn’t have otherwise attracted.” Some restaurateurs have a different strategy, like Allen Routt, chef and co-owner of The Painted Lady in Newberg, Ore., where children are not banned, but guests are encouraged to leave children under seven at home due to the length of the meal (around three hours) and the mature menu (a multi-course tasting menu). “My restaurant isn’t for some adults, and it’s not for some children,” admits Routt. “But banning children seems like a knee jerk reaction. We are raising the next generation and if we can expose children to manners and... more... - Eric - seven eleven from Bookmarklet

I think it's fine for fine-dining restaurants to ban kids, especially under a certain age. I know not all kids misbehave or are loud (my cousin was always super quiet and polite), but a long wait for food and a setting that isn't intended for kids can test their patience. - Heather

"Hero knows over forty commands to assist me! He loves to retrieve objects for my like envelopes, pens, my crutches, etc. He also turns off the lights, opens doors, and he pulls me in my wheelchair up ramps! I couldn’t have gone to college without him!" - SteVe C from Bookmarklet

They switched it up at the end. They ruined a perfect ending. - Todd Hoff

While it is a rather different show than it was seasons 2-5, I still think they've done a great job with it. I hope they can keep it going that way for 2 more seasons. - DAMMIT, MR. NOODLE

"The Minoans, considered the first advanced civilization in Bronze Age Europe, left behind massive building complexes, stunning artwork and hieroglyphs—but few clues about their origins." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

Update on nature.com: Minoan civilization was made in Europe http://www.nature.com/news... - Maitani

I never cease to be amazed at how remarkable a process metamorphosis is. Then I start thinking about the more limited forms of change in mammalian species, like the transition from being in the womb to being in the outside world, or the remodeling of various organs in both physiological and pathological states and I'm reminded about how similar and connected all species are. - Victor Ganata

"So I went to Bret Victor’s session, arriving about fifteen minutes after he’d begun. There was an animated fish on the screen, and a worm on a hook, and sometimes bubbles, and sometimes a little wheel (that I later learned was a timing element). Bret was demoing the most recent iteration of his Dynamic Pictures research. The idea, as I understand it (and my understanding of it is just beginning, so this is all memory, exploration, interpolation, and probably full of mistakes and gross oversimplifications), is that math is not only about language, as in an abstract set of symbols, either mathematical symbols or programming code. Instead, math is also about geometry, visual representation that can move and be acted upon directly through a UI that nevertheless asks the user to think abstractly about what’s happening “concretely” in the visual representation one is manipulating." - Amit Patel from Bookmarklet

"The session was mesmerizing and so … different … that I had a very strange sensation as I tried to take it in. I felt at the very edge of my zone of promixal development. That is, I could understand what Bret was saying as he was saying it, but that cognitive bubble was very small, so small that I found myself with no extra resources for deep metacognition. At the same time, I also... more... - Amit Patel

The video is here: http://vimeo.com/64895205 ; I haven't watched yet. - Amit Patel

"You might not think it to look at them, but prairie dogs and humans actually share an important commonality -- and it's not just their complex social structures, or their habit of standing up on two feet (aww, like people). As it turns out, prairie dogs actually have one of the most sophisticated forms of vocal communication in the natural world, really not so unlike our own." - esther from Bookmarklet

After more than 25 years of studying the calls of prairie dog in the field, one researcher managed to decode just what these animals are saying. And the results show that praire dogs aren't only extremely effective communicators, they also pay close attention to detail. - esther

Nice! - Yvonne

I'd really like to build something like this, except that I'm not very knowledgeable about gardening. I used to help my grandmother with her (50+ years ago) but didn't take any notes! Also, I'm guessing it's important that they be reasonably level, so I'd have to terrace my back yard a bit more. Maybe one box per terrace or something. - Jkram|ɯɐɹʞſ

The great backyard landscaping project of 2013 continues. - Kevin (aka ThreadKilla) from email

"Los Angeles-based student, Madeline Sharafian has created a delightful short film for her second-year film as part of her studies at CalArts. The beautiful film is about a clever and loving dog who takes care of his depressed and exhausted owner by making sure he eats well. The dog also helps him avoid kitchen accidents such as cutting his finger or leaving the fire turned on for too long. According to Sharafian, "I wanted to make something that focuses on how meaningful it is to make food for someone you love. My family's lives practically revolve around cooking for each other, so it's a theme that I'm deeply attached to. I hope you enjoy it!"" - Brent Schaus from Bookmarklet

Gracias. - Brent Schaus from iPhone

"The hamburger, assembled from tiny bits of beef muscle tissue grown in a laboratory and to be cooked and eaten at an event in London, perhaps in a few weeks, is meant to show the world — including potential sources of research funds — that so-called in-Vitro meat, or cultured meat, is a reality." - Amit Patel from Bookmarklet

and they're going to call it "soylent..." #iforget - WarLord

No blueberries yet but we have some pretty nice strawberries. - Todd Hoff

Strawberries are pretty great. - Marie

I'm not a coffee drinker, but I could see how those syrups might cause a problem. - Shannon - GlassMistress

another personal secret: when making Turkish coffee, add a tab of Mexican-spiced hot chocolate (eg. Ibarra) during the third boil-off. - Adriano

"Have you ever noticed that almost every barn you have ever seen is red? There’s a reason for that, and it has to do with the chemistry of dying stars. Seriously." - Victor Ganata

Correlation is not causation. I think I shall raise White Dwarf rabbits in my red barn. - Greg GuitarBuster

YAY! - Gimminy

Sweet! - Jim #TeamMonique

Yes. Mostly Cristo's. - t-ra: not givin up

sometimes? my own. :P - Hieronymous Boosh

I sometimes think humans are wired to focus on the negative. It seems like you are more likely to hear someone say "man, you wouldnt believe the day I had" and have the description be of its trials and tribulations and not its positives. I have an FB friend who is lovely in person but all she ever posts on FB is how terrible things are. If you knew her only from FB you'd think she was all doom and gloom but she really isnt ... I have a hard time not reminding her how good she's got it sometimes. - Shannon - GlassMistress

"This object was in common use in medieval libraries, even though very few survive today. It’s a bookmark - and a smart one for that matter. As with our own bookmarks, it tells you where you are in the book: the rope was attached to the binding and placed between two pages. The reader subsequently pulled down the marker along the rope to the line where he had stopped reading. Since an open medieval book often presented four text columns, the reader then turned the disk to indicate in which column he had left off. In this case we read “4” in medieval Arabic numerals - the column on the far right. So this tiny piece of parchment marks it all: page, column and line. That’s what I call smart. Source unknown, likely 13th or 14th century." - Amira from Bookmarklet

We got game 3. - Starmama from FFHound(roid)!

Come out to play...ay. - DJ Stevie Steve

:-D - Starmama from FFHound(roid)!

The Oregon Medicaid study was not *designed* to determine if current treatments of hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes are effective. We know from vast countless other studies that, yes, keeping blood pressure, LDL, and glucose levels/HbA1c in control decreases your mortality risk. The n of this study is insufficient to either prove or disprove this. - Victor Ganata

No, we do know from other studies that people *do* forego preventive and routine care if they can't afford it. What most people don't do is forego catastrophic care. (Which is why the idea of shopping around for a surgeon to take care of your ruptured appendicitis or a cardiologist to keep you from dying from your anterior wall MI is absurd.) - Victor Ganata

"Much of the crew just got back from Lucene Revolution. It was an incredible experience to hang out with the cream-of-the-crop of the Lucene/Solr community. It continues to be clear that modern applications of all stripes are increasingly driven by search as the primary UI component. Users of these applications expect rich interactivity. And because search is becoming smarter and smarter, search is becoming the centerpiece for interacting with big data and complex applications." - Sean McBride

sort Solr (*, documents, experts, organizations, publications, topics, websites) by importance - Sean McBride

Makerbot has released an inspiring video about how a group of hackers built 3D-printed hands for children and adults who are missing fingers or entire hands. The project aims to take the cost and complexity associated with hand prothesis out of the process. It is working. - Johnn Luevanos

"Janhunen (Finnish Meteorological Institute) is the developer of the electric sail concept soon to be tested by the ESTCube-1 satellite, which launched last night aboard a Vega rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. [...] The ESTCube-1 satellite, the work of Estonian students testing out Janhunen’s ideas, uses a long wire that maintains a steady electric potential as its means of interacting with the solar wind. [...] ESTCube-1’s tether is a 50 micrometer wide, 10 meter long wire made out of four strands of aluminum that will gradually be deployed from the satellite in a process that could take as much as a week. Once deployed, the tether will be charged and variations in the satellite’s rotation rate will, if all goes well, reveal the interactions between it and atmospheric ions. But future electric sails will soon be deploying longer wires." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Assuming the concept passes its initial muster, we can look forward to upsized missions using tethers up to 20 kilometers long, deploying as many as a hundred of these from a single spacecraft. This is the design that, in computer simulations, yields potential speeds of 100 kilometers per second, fast enough to get a payload into the nearby interstellar medium in about fifteen years.... more... - Mark H

#mapmeme - April Russo

Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show. Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center. - Eric from Bookmarklet

"This is why Orphan Black, the new sci-fi television show from BBC America works so well. Orphan Black is the story of an orphan (Sarah, played by Tatiana Maslany) who witnesses the suicide of another woman (Beth) who looked just like her. Sarah assumes her identity and her problems soon escalate and unravel from there. Well, that is what it is like on the surface. Her journey reveals something far more complex and sinister: other women who also look just like her as well. Are they related, or clones, or something else? The show gets to the heart of the matter quickly and is thankfully not afraid to do so." - Kevin (aka ThreadKilla) from Bookmarklet