‘Books and Barbers’ combines learning and mentoring | WTVQ

Alexus Larson, multi-media journalist reports, It might not seem like books and barbers would go together, but at Prince Cuts Barbershop it’s the perfect pair.

Photo: Screenshot from Books and Barbers Video

An elementary school teacher thought of the books and barbers idea.

He noticed some students didn’t have a good male role model in their life and he wanted to change that.

“I’ve always wanted to start up a program just to have support for kids,” said Simon Vanderpool, elementary school teacher.

It didn’t take long for books and barbers to be in business...

Once kids make it to the barbershop, they get to pick out a book they want to read to the barber.

Kids get to keep the book and get barber shop will give them three dollars and sticker on their way out.
Read more... 

Source: WTVQ

Bookstore and restaurant ‘Bad Animal Books’ opens Wednesday downtown | Lifestyle - Santa Cruz Sentinel

Elaine Ingalls, News Reporter- Santa Cruz Sentinel suggests, Co-owners aim for a Dionysian experience complete with wine, food and books.

Andrew Sivak and Jess LoPrete are reflected in a light fixture at Bad Animal Books, their new full-service restaurant and independent bookstore on Cedar Street in downtown Santa Cruz that opens Wednesday.
Photo: Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel

In a world where a Wi-Fi password is one of the first thing a store customer asks for, the new downtown Santa Cruz bookstore Bad Animal Books is going for a Dionysian “pleasure experience” with wine, California-French cuisine, antiquarian books — and no Wi-Fi.

“In the digital age, we think it’s really important to rediscover respect for the book as a physical object and something beautiful that deserves to be preserved and valued for an object,” said co-owner of Bad Animal Jessica LoPrete.

Co-owners and residents of Bonny Doon, Jessica LoPrete and Andrew Sivak met when LoPrete was on the high school debate team and Sivak was her coach. They reconnected at Claremont McKenna College when LoPrete was studying philosophy as an undergrad and Sivak a Master’s degree in cultural studies. With a shared love for entertaining, good wine and books, they became business partners and opened a combined bookshop and restaurant.

Bad Animal Books will primarily sell used books, but will also offer new material. Customers won’t experience buyer’s remorse, according to Sivak, because the books will be priced to beat the internet. The store will also buy books from the public for cash or trade...

Todd Parker, former sous chef at Manresa in Los Gatos, and other members of the kitchen staff will prepare classic French dishes with a California twist, such as rabbit pâté, rye Parisian gnocchi, mussels with fava beans and a French caramel tart. Ingredients are local, from farms and farmers markets within 100 miles of Santa Cruz. Sivak said the dishes are wine-centric and meant to be shared. The natural wine the store serves is on the wild side: it’s fresher, brighter and more expressive, according to LoPrete. They are low intervention wines made by small production farmers using organic and other methods with little additives, she said. The bar will also carry beer, cider, and a small selection of nonalcoholic beverages.

With a focus on the humanities, a bar and restaurant and competing prices, LoPrete and Sivak believe they will stand out. The bookstore will sell classic and modern literature, philosophy, memoir, art history, theology and more. Inventory is from buying people’s libraries, library sales, thrift and antique shops and from Logos. 
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Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel

10 New Books We Recommend This Week | Book Review - New York Times

Follow on Twitter as @GregoryCowles

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times by Gregory Cowles, Senior Editor, Books. 

People are, like, complicated, you know? I am large, the poet wrote; I contain multitudes. Sometimes it seems as if all of literature exists just to drive home that point, which can be vexing (when it applies to our loved ones) or reassuring (when it applies to our own messy selves). Either way, the complexity of humans underlies a whole lot of relationships and therapy sessions — and books, which are kind of our deal around here. This week we recommend George Packer’s biography of Richard Holbrooke, as complicated a human as ever served in the State Department, along with Aaron Bobrow-Strain’s account of an undocumented Mexican immigrant (she’s complicated) and, speaking of therapy, the analyst Lori Gottlieb’s reflections on her patients and her own time on the couch. There are also a few novels, a collection of Gabriel García Márquez’s journalism and a powerful look at the pervasive problem of domestic violence.
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Source: New York Times    

Elif Shafak’s 10 Favorite Books | One Grand Books - Vulture

Bookseller One Grand Books has asked celebrities to name the ten titles they’d take to a desert island, and they’ve shared the results with Vulture. Below is novelist Elif Safak’s list.

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Check out Elif Shafak’s ten favorite books.

Elif Shafak, the most widely read female novelist in Turkey, has published 17 books, including the bestselling novels The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, and Three Daughters of Eve.
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Source: Vulture

Houston book events: May 19-25 | Books - Houston Chronicle

Put these Houston book events on your calendar: May 19-25.

Sujata Massey:

Will sign and discuss “The Satapur Moonstone,” 6:30 p.m., Murder By The Book, 2342 Bissonnet; 713-524-8597 or murderbooks.com.

Rodrigo Hasbun:

Will sign and discuss “Las Palabras,” 7 p.m., Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet; 713-523-0701 or

brazosbookstore.com.

TUESDAY

Gray Malin: Will sign and discuss “Gray Malin: Italy,” 6-8 p.m., Biscuit Home, 1614 Westheimer; graymalin.com.

Celeste Ng: Will sign and discuss “Little Fires Everywhere,” 7 p.m., tickets $17, include a paperback copy of the book, St. Paul’s United Methodist

Church, 5501 Main;

brazosbookstore.com.

Read more...

Source: Houston Chronicle

AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning | Artificial Intelligence - Datamation

Deep learning is a subset of machine learning, which is a subset of artificial intelligence. Each of these emerging technologies is reshaping IT across virtually all sectors, says Cynthia Harvey, Writer and Editor.

AI, machine learning and deep learning are each interrelated, with deep learning nested within ML, which in turn is part of the larger discipline of AI.

Since before the dawn of the computer age, scientists have been captivated by the idea of creating machines that could behave like humans. But only in the last decade has technology enabled some forms of artificial intelligence (AI) to become a reality.

Interest in putting AI to work has skyrocketed, with burgeoning array of AI use cases. Many surveys have found upwards of 90 percent of enterprises are either already using AI in their operations today or plan to in the near future.

Eager to capitalize on this trend, software vendors – both established AI companies and AI startups – have rushed to bring AI capabilities to market. Among vendors selling big data analytics and data science tools, two types of artificial intelligence have become particularly popular: machine learning and deep learning...

Artificial Intelligence 'Contains' Machine Learning and Deep Learning 
Computers excel at mathematics and logical reasoning, but they struggle to master other tasks that humans can perform quite naturally.

For example, human babies learn to recognize and name objects when they are only a few months old, but until recently, machines have found it very difficult to identify items in pictures. While any toddler can easily tell a cat from a dog from a goat, computers find that task much more difficult. In fact, captcha services sometimes use exactly that type of question to make sure that a particular user is a human and not a bot.

In the 1950s, scientists began discussing ways to give machines the ability to "think" like humans. The phrase "artificial intelligence" entered the lexicon in 1956, when John McCarthy organized a conference on the topic.
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Source: Datamation

Machine learning explained | Machine Learning - InfoWorld

Martin Heller, contributing editor and reviewer for InfoWorld explains, Machine learning systems create models from data. Because they learn from experience, you can improve their performance with training. 

Photo:Thinkstock

What is machine learning? 
Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that includes methods, or algorithms, for automatically creating models from data. Unlike a system that performs a task by following explicit rules, a machine learning system learns from experience. Whereas a rule-based system will perform a task the same way every time (for better or worse), the performance of a machine learning system can be improved through training, by exposing the algorithm to more data.

Machine learning algorithms are often divided into supervised (the training data are tagged with the answers) and unsupervised (any labels that may exist are not shown to the training algorithm). Supervised machine learning problems are further divided into classification (predicting non-numeric answers, such as the probability of a missed mortgage payment) and regression (predicting numeric answers, such as the number of widgets that will sell next month in your Manhattan store).

Unsupervised learning is further divided into clustering (finding groups of similar objects, such as running shoes, walking shoes, and dress shoes), association (finding common sequences of objects, such as coffee and cream), and dimensionality reduction (projection, feature selection, and feature extraction)...

Neural networks and deep learning 
Neural networks were inspired by the architecture of the biological visual cortex. Deep learning is a set of techniques for learning in neural networks that involves a large number of “hidden” layers to identify features. Hidden layers come between the input and output layers. Each layer is made up of artificial neurons, often with sigmoid or ReLU (Rectified Linear Unit) activation functions.

In a feed-forward network, the neurons are organized into distinct layers: one input layer, any number of hidden processing layers, and one output layer, and the outputs from each layer go only to the next layer.
Read more... 

Source: InfoWorld

Microsoft to train 15,000 people on artificial intelligence by 2022 | Ai Technology - CNBCTV18

• The training will revolve around technologies including data science, Machine Learning (ML), Cloud and data engineering among others.  
• In order to create consistent standards for AI skills, Microsoft will be the founding member of GA's AI Standards Board which will later be joined by other industry-leading companies at the forefront of AI disruption.

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Software major Microsoft has decided to train and certify 15,000 workers on Artificial Intelligence (AI) skills by 2022, in partnership with education provider General Assembly (GA) by IANS.

The training will revolve around technologies including data science, Machine Learning (ML), Cloud and data engineering among others.

"According to the World Economic Forum, up to 133 million new roles could be created by 2022 and to address this challenge, Microsoft and GA will power 2,000 job transitions for workers into AI and ML roles in year one and will train an additional 13,000 workers with AI-related skills across sectors in the next three years," the company wrote in a blog post on Friday.

In order to create consistent standards for AI skills, Microsoft will be the founding member of GA's AI Standards Board which will later be joined by other industry-leading companies at the forefront of AI disruption...

As part of the partnerships, together, the organisations will establish an AI Talent Network to source candidates for hire and project-based work.

GA will leverage its existing network of 22 campuses and the broader Adecco ecosystem to create a repeatable talent pipeline for the AI Talent Network, the post added.
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Source: CNBCTV18 

Google Doodle Celebrates Persian Mathematician, Poet Omar Khayyum | World - NDTV

With a doodle, Google celebrated the birth anniversary of Omar Khayyam, the first mathematician to give a general method for solving cubic equations, as NDTV reports.

Google Doodle paid tribute to the mathematician Omar Khayyam
Photo: google.com

Today's Google Doodle celebrates the birth anniversary of Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet Omar Khayyam. The Iran-born mathematician was known for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations...

He is known for his work on the theory of parallels and geometric algebra. He was the first mathematician to give a general method for solving cubic equations. His methods were sufficient to geometrically find all real roots of cubic equations.
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Source: NDTV

Free 'Statistics Facts and Snacks' Summer Workshop for High Schoolers | UK Happenings - UKNow

High school students interested in learning about statistics and related careers are invited to participate in the 2019 "Statistics Facts and Snacks workshop," offered by the University of Kentucky Center for Clinical and Translational Science, June 5 to 7 from 9 a.m. to noon. 

Photo: Getty Images

Students in any grade level may participate, and no statistics or computer science experience is required. Snacks will be provided. 

This hands-on workshop will explore the fun of data analysis through basic statistical techniques taught using R, a free statistical programming language. Students will also learn about what a statistician does and what the requirements are to pursue higher education in statistics. The workshop will include visits from expert statisticians in a variety of different statistical careers, and students will have the opportunity to chat with them about their background and work life.
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Source: UKNow