Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Found in my attic: The Internet! The whole thing!
Poking through an old footlocker, I found this 1995 book, the second edition of The Whole Internet User's Guide. Such nostalgia! 1995 was the year the online world really entered public attention. I had started writing a second column for the Nashua Telegraph called...
Dartmouth’s stinky ‘corpse flower’ is set to bloom again
From Dartmouth News Service: At Dartmouth a rare corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum or titan arum) named Morphy is getting ready to bloom at the Life Sciences Greenhouse on campus. Once in bloom, the enormous plant will have a pungent odor that has been compared to...
Oddly, early voting doesn’t seem to increase election turnout
New Hampshire doesn't allow early voting - you can't cast a ballot before election day unless you're going to be out of town or unable to make it to the polls - and yet we consistently have one of the highest election turnout percentages among similar states, as I...
Why doesn’t aquaponics (growing plants and fish at the same time) work better?
Years ago I helped a friend of a friend with a backyard aquaponics system – in which plants are grown in water rather than soil and fish live in the water. I was entranced. It seemed almost magical, with the poop from the fish feeding the plants to create both...
To train A.I., Dartmouth tries using the Bible – lots of Bibles
(The first thing I thought of when I read this was Asimov's short story "The Last Question") By David Hirsch, Dartmouth News Service: In search of inspiration for improving computer-based text translators, researchers at Dartmouth College turned to the Bible for...
NH historical marker for the creator of cool murder-scene dioramas
As we await approval of my proposal for a historical marker honoring BASIC (the holdup right now if finding a good location on a state-maintained road), let's note an excellent addition to the program: The N.H. Division of Historical Resources announced that a New...
Deciding who parks in “green” parking places is complicated
When I go into Boston I drive to one of the distant subway stations and take the train, because who wants to park in Boston? I generally go to Alewife at the end of the Red Line because it has a massive (if not well maintained) parking garage. For years there were a...
In Cuba, those old American cars share the road with Chinese electric motorcycles
I recently got back from a 10-day trip in Cuba, a place I'd never been. (Despite what I'd heard it is quite easy for Americans to visit there, assuming you can survive a nation with nary a McDonalds, Coca-Cola or Dunkin Donuts to be found.) The most interesting geek...
Dartmouth group offers fix for that scary computer chip security flaw
By Joseph Blumberg, Dartmouth News: Dartmouth computer science graduate students are applying their research techniques to fundamental security flaws recently found in nearly every computer chip manufactured in the last 20 years. Until new designs are implemented, an...
Should we save this gorgeous ash tree? It’s not an easy decision
This is the story of a massive, gorgeous tree that will die before long, the fact that we could save it but probably won’t, and the way that thousands of people, perhaps including you, are facing this same choice. “It’s a hard decision,” is how Ethan Belair, the UNH...
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