Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire

Fresh New Hampshire strawberries in November; yeah, right. Wait – that’s “Yeah, right!”
By UNH News Service: DURHAM – Researchers with the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of New Hampshire have succeeded in quadrupling the length of the Granite State’s strawberry growing season as part of a multi-year research project...

When you’re a reporter and you see a weird house, you get to find out why it’s weird
I commute past a really odd-looking house in the town of Hopkinton. In summertime news can get slow, making it hard to fill the paper at times. So let's find out about the house! That's what I did: The story is in the Monitor, and you can read it right here.

State’s biggest paper ends online comments: Censorship? Long overdue? Do emojis count?
(This story appeared in the July 6 Monitor. As of this writing, all the comments posted at the end of it are thoughtful, well-written and in complete paragraph form. Go figure.) This week’s decision by the New Hampshire Union Leader to end readers’ ability to post...

Rise up, geeks, and demand that baseball be more like the Coriolis effect!
This column is for geeks, who like innovative ideas that upend stodgy old industries, so to celebrate Fourth of July wanted to come up with an idea that will upend something traditionally American. Since mom and apple pie are fine as they are, I decided to upend...
As the electric system morphs, negative power prices are happening in NH
Dave Solomon of the Union-Leader wrote about the fact that negative pricing for electricity is starting to be seen in New Hampshire during low power-usage times, part of a trend caused in part by renewables (especially solar and wind): A 2014 change in the energy...
Vermont is charging ahead with blockchain, at least on paper
Blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin and other crypto-currencies, holds at least as much promise as bitcoin does for changing business and finance (although actually taking advantage of that promise is proving trickier than expected). The state of Vermont has...

Somewhere in N.H. is halfway between equator and North Pole – just don’t ask exactly where
(This is my column from the June 26 Monitor - and boy, was it fun to report and write) This is the story about one of New Hampshire’s roadside historical markers – actually, two of them that say the same thing – and how they’re not quite accurate for interesting...

Many small airports are struggling as general aviation stagnates
I got my pilot's license many decades ago at a Tennessee airport so small that you had to buzz the runway once before landing, to scare off the deer, but I haven't flown since Reagan was president. But I remain interested in what is known as general aviation, so I was...

Did you miss Science Cafe Concord? Let’s go to the video …
Concord TV records every monthly Science Cafe Concord, broadcasts it and posts an edited version online. Here's their take of the most recent cafe, about citizen science. Check it out!
Why would coders’ income alter depending on whether they use tabs or spaces?
I do not write software, but I am fascinated and/or perplexed about the weirdest claim I have encountered in a long time: This survey that says programmers who use tabs to indent their code make less money than coders who use spaces: Indeed, the median developer who...