firehose

On Friday at ADX, the Portland Made collective celebrated national Manufacturing Day with a party featuring remarks from Earl Blumenauer, Jules Bailey, and Nick Fish, followed by a presentation of a survey taken and analyzed by Charles Heying, Ph.D, who you likely remember as the author of Brew to Bikes: Portland’s Artisan Economy. (The survey was based on Portland Made members responses, along with supplemental data from RefUSA.)

Part of an ongoing effort to create metrics that account for the economic impact of the city's small manufacturers—metrics that can attract investment and influence legislation—here are some highlights:

• 83% of enterprises have been in operation 10 years or less, 63% five years or less.

• Three have been in operation for 30+ years and produce 90% of revenues and 70% of jobs: "The lesson is not to ignore the numerous small young enterprises but to nourish them. Two (2) of the three (3) large enterprises, that have such an outsize impact, were started in small studios by founders trained in the arts, with a passion for their craft and the ability to turn that passion into something substantial."

• "When enterprises reach the threshold category of $500,000-1 million in revenues, they make a dramatic shift from part time to full time employees. Below that revenue threshold, the balance between part time and full time employees is roughly equal. Above the threshold, the ratio of full time to part time is fiveto one (5:1)."

• "Respondents reported very positive revenue growth with an average of sixty-one percent (61%) cumulative for the last three years... Enterprises with revenues of $50-100,000 report nearly doubling of size over the last three years."

• "As expected, PMC members rely on local markets, with forty six [percent] (46%) of sales generated in Portland and another sixteen percent (16%) from the Northwest. But surprisingly thirty percent (30%) of reported sales came from the US outside the Northwest, and eight percent (8%) were international.

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There are essentially two elements—calcium and magnesium—in very specific proportions that make the water in the New York metro area unique.

Fortunately, the ratio of those two ingredients to other minerals also happen to be ideal for baking crispy-on-outside-chewy-on-the-inside New York-style bagels, as they help to strength the glutens in the dough.

That was the conclusion reached by Josh Pollack, a bagel baker and entrepreneur in Denver, Colorado, who recently designed a process to recreate New York City’s legendary water some 1,700 miles away from the source, and is now using it in his Mile High City shop, Rosenberg’s Bagels.

“It’s mainly New York’s watershed program that’s the difference,” he says of the initiative that protects the region’s natural water sources, enabling local utilities to minimally-process the city’s drinking water. “They don’t use a sediment filter for their water, so a lot of the minerals that come from the reservoirs, as a result of those watershed protections, are still in the water.”

It’s all about the total dissolved solids (TDS) in the water, Pollack says, which is a measure of all of the combined substances in a given water sample. All of the elements in water affect the baking process in some way, but it’s the proportions of each element to the others that really make a difference in gluten strength. Those ratios also tend to be very local, differing not only from city to city, but also neighborhood to neighborhood. As a result, Brooklyn water might have a different TDS than Manhattan water, based on the treatment facilities serving each. (City-wide water reports can vary widely as a result, as most will simply report on the average TDS over a large area, rather than calling out these local fluctuations.)

Pollack, a New Jersey native, spent nearly a year sending water samples from across the NYC metro area back to Colorado State University for testing in order to narrow down the specific elemental differences. He then contracted with a local filtration company to build his shop a system that would reintroduce the necessary minerals, in the proper proportions, into his metro Denver tap water.

As of now, the actual proportions involved and the workings of the system are proprietary, but according to research conducted at the National Institutes of Health, New York’s water supply contains about 13.5 mg of calcium per liter, far lower than the national average of 50.6 mg/L. The TDS ratio for calcium and magnesium in New York’s water supply is about 1 to 5.

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It isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, says Dr. Jim Self, manager of the Soil, Water, and Plant Testing Lab at Colorado State University. In fact, the water supplies in Colorado and New York are already similar, as they are both mountain-fed.

“A lot of the water [in New York City] is coming down from the Catskills to the city so that water should be fairly pure to start with,” Self says. “The pH is slightly more acidic, whereas Denver water tends to be more alkaline, but it’s not by much.”

Pollack isn’t alone in this quest. The Florida-based Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Co. chain, founded in 2008, bases its own recipes on similarly “reconstructed” New York-style water at its 19 US restaurants, all located far, far away from the Brooklyn.

Still, Pollack insists there’s more to it than just science.

“It’s not just the water that makes a good bagel,” he says, “but it’s a number of things that have been done the same way for almost 200 years. You can take one of the processes out; you can take the water out, and keep everything else true to the tradition and still have a really awesome bagel. But if you take out the water, and the oven that they traditionally use, you’re not going to get the same bagel.”

We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com. 

Blunders renew questions about Biden's discipline U.S. News & World Report WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden's recent verbal blunders have rekindled lingering questions about his ability to serve as commander in chief. Twice in two days, Biden had to apologize to key U.S. allies in the fight against Islamic State ... and more »

New submitter operator_error writes with a story at the L.A. Times that echoes some previous research on the relative risks of hand-held vs. hands-free phones by drivers, and comes to an even grimmer conclusion: In many cars, making a hands-free phone call can be more distracting than picking up your phone, according to a new study from AAA and the University of Utah. In-dash phone systems are overly complicated and prone to errors, the study found, and the same is true for voice-activated functions for music and navigation. A companion study also found that trying to use Siri — the voice control system on Apple phones — while driving was dangerously distracting. Two participants in the study had virtual crashes in an automotive simulator while attempting to use Siri, the study's authors reported. In response, Toyota said the study did not show a link between cognitive distraction and car crashes. "The results actually tell us very little about the relative benefits of in-vehicle versus hand-held systems; or about the relationship between cognitive load and crash risks," said Mike Michels, a Toyota spokesman. Meanwhile, many states treat hand-held devices very differently from hands-free ones; in New York, for instance, both texting and talking on a hand-held mobile phone are put in the same category, while talking on a hands-free device is covered only by more general distracted driving laws. If the Utah study is correct, maybe that's backwards. (And some evidence suggests that phone use in cars is not quite the straightforward danger that it's sometimes presented as, despite the correlation of phone use with accidents.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

capricornwholovesdanger:

misattributed quotes makes janeway judge you.

remember: look shit up! it’s free! 

Mother Jones published a story on cognitive scientist Steven Pinker’s new book The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. In the book, Pinker uses a scientific approach to take down some of the most commonly accepted writing commandments:

Unlike past sages of style, Pinker approaches grammar from a scientific perspective, as a linguist. And that’s what leads him to the unavoidable conclusion that language is never set in stone; rather, it is a tool that is constantly evolving and changing, continually adding new words and undoing old rules and assumptions. “When it comes to correct English, there’s no one in charge; the lunatics are running the asylum,” writes Pinker in The Sense of Style.

Indeed, Pinker notes with amusement in the book that in every era, there is always somebody complaining about how all the uncouth speakers of the day are wrecking the Queen’s English. It’s basically the linguistic equivalent of telling the kids to get off your lawn. Why does this happen? “As a language changes from beneath our feet, we feel the sands shifting and always think that it’s a deterioration,” explains Pinker on the podcast. “Whereas, everything that’s in the language was an innovation at some point in the history of English. If you’re living through the transition, it feels like a deterioration even though it’s just a change.”

Pinker already gets ten points for defending Star Trek from grammar reactionaries:

Do split infinitives. For Pinker, the idea that you cannot split infinitives—for example, the classic complaint that Star Trek was wrong to describe the Starship Enterprise’s mission as “to boldly go where no man has gone before”; it should have been “to go boldly” or “boldly to go”—is “the quintessential bogus rule.”

“No good writer in English has ever followed it consistently, if you do follow it it makes your prose much worse,” Pinker explained on Inquiring Minds.

Indeed, according to Pinker, this is a rather striking case in which the alleged prohibition seems to be mostly perpetuated by urban legend or word of mouth. It doesn’t even seem to be seriously asserted as a rule by any supposed style experts. “This rule kind of levitates in mid-air, there’s actually no support even from the style manuals,” adds Pinker.

Read more.

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Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Since 2009, Longreads has thrived as a service and a community thanks to your direct financial support. Without Longreads Members’ contributions, it’s possible we would have had to shut down after just a couple years.

Now, here we are in 2014, with a global community of more than half a million readers. In April, Longreads joined the Automattic / WordPress.com family, which meant that the Longreads Member dues were no longer necessary to keep our four-person team going.

This also meant that we could finally make good on our original intention for the Longreads Membership—which was for 100% of your contributions to go directly to independent publishers and writers.

So that’s what we are announcing today: The Longreads Membership is now a great big digital story fund, financed with your generous support. The more Longreads Members who join, the more contributions we gather, the more stories we’ll help fund.

WordPress.com Is Now Matching Your Contributions

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Our goal is to create a sustainable membership with a large enough base that it will fund reporting and writing at rates that are competitive with the best print magazines in the world. (We’re not there yet, but we’re getting closer every day.)

Current Members, Here's How You Can Help

Help us spread the word by sharing your Member status on Twitter.

What You Fund, and What You Get as a Longreads Member

Members’ contributions will help fund Longreads Exclusives from other publishers, and it will also fund original work—interviews, reported narratives, history, essays, and more. You’ve already seen many of our Longreads Exclusives—a memoir from songwriter Lucinda Williams and Radio Silence, Kiera Feldman’s look at the Oral Roberts family dynasty for This Land Press, Jessica Gross’s in-depth interview with Caitlin Moran, and Jeff Sharlet’s Instagram essay. See more stories here.

In addition to Members funding our Longreads Exclusives, we also like to send you special surprises along the way: Members this year received a special tote bag and stickers as a small token of our thanks. We’re planning even more perks for the coming year.

The Longreads Member Mission

There are a lot of companies putting big money into storytelling right now, which is great, but in many cases there’s no real model backing it. We believe reader-financed storytelling is the most sustainable long-term approach for guaranteeing quality on the Internet. And we believe the Longreads Membership has a very real chance of succeeding to help fulfill this need.

Join us today. We recommend $3 a month or $30 a year, but you can give even more if you like. Together we’ll create a true model of sustainability for independent publishers and writers around the world.

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Original Source

Original Source

Liberian healthcare workers still plan to stage a go-slow, or work slowdown, to press demands for hazard pay on the front line of the Ebola epidemic, a union leader said on Monday.

In his remarks, Jindal said the nation should spend approximately 4 percent of its gross domestic product on defense spending — a move he said would cost American taxpayers roughly $80 billion in additional spending. Asked about balancing cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, Jindal said that "Defense comes first."

orgyincamelot:

And finally, a few parting words from Frodo:

importantbirds:

Ziggy Startiel birbing it up on couch.

Ground Control the Majore Tomme put the hairpiece on adn put the ahirpece on groump control and HEEEERE AM I SITTING ON THE TINGKAN FAAARE ABOVE THE MOOON

gailsimone:

8bit-tardis:

SPACE TREKS

THESE ARE THE VOYAGES OF THE STARPRISE ENTERSHIP

It’s five year exploration, to do missions to strange new life, civilized worlds. 

To go to where no man has gone boldly!

humansofnewyork:

"If they raise the subway fare one more time, I’m going to explode. I’m making nine dollars an hour. I walk home three hours from work every day to save that $2.50, because that’s a half gallon of milk for me and my daughter. And every time they raise the fare, they have a ‘hearing.’ But they aren’t hearing anything. It’s a fucking joke. If you go to one of those ‘hearings,’ every single person stands up and says: ‘Don’t raise the fare.’ Then they raise it anyway. Oh man, it burns me up. ‘We need the money,’ they say, ‘America is hurting.’ That’s bullshit! If I see one more TV program bragging about multimillion dollar homes I’m gonna scream. How about a fucking TV program that shows me if there is anywhere in this city that I can fucking afford to live anymore. I’m sorry, but it’s burning me up."

dduane:

The Castello Plan: an early map of Lower Manhattan (this version of it redrawn in 1916)

architecturia:

Classification of Go lovely art

greg-pak:

.@Victor_Ibanez_R, doing what he does so well!

stormsanctum:

Storm preview by Victor Ibañez 

me when I get a text from saucieshares

angeladeane:

FRIDAY

coopercinno:

#humerus

the-adebisi-wombosi-identity:

An ex-police commander who oversaw the torture of more than 100 black men in Chicago police custody walked out of federal prison Thursday, after serving just three and a half years of his sentence.

Jon Burge left the minimum-security prison in North Carolina to report to a halfway house in Florida until his sentence officially runs out in February of 2015, the Chicago Tribune reports.

After the 66-year-old was convicted in 2011 of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about police torture, several members of the Chicago City Council called for a reparations fund of $20 million — roughly the amount Burge and his “midnight crew” of detectives have cost Chicago taxpayers over the years in legal defense fees and settlements alone. Aldermen renewed those calls on Thursday, saying it’s time for the city to “make amends.”

Anthony Holmes was one of the victims Burge personally tortured — with methods including electric shock — into giving a confession to a murder he says he didn’t commit. Holmes, who is now pushing 70, spent 30 years behind bars as a result and has yet to see any compensation because the statute of limitations on the torture has run out.

"At least he’s got a pension," Holmes said of Burge, according to DNAinfo Chicago. "We came out of there with nothing."

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan tried to strip Burge of his $4,000-a-month police pension, but couldn’t overrule a police pension board vote.

As Burge prepares to start his life again as a free man, In These Times took a look at how much the disgraced commander has cost taxpayers through the years

Source

He should not be free he should rot in prison white men give corrupt white pigs a pass every fucking time. I have not one damn thing nice to say about this racist king ogre pig of a sloppy boss hog but know that he is the worst and one of the main reasons I smell bacon and we’ll leave at that.