Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Police alerted to ‘internet game similar to geocaching’
The Wilton, N.H., police are darned if they're going to stoop to using brand names in their police log, as reported in this week's Milford Cabinet: July 8: Police responded to Pleasant Street for a report of someone riding up and down the street, stopping constantly...
If mountain lions were here, we wouldn’t hit deer with our cars so much
Mountain lions have not returned to New Hampshire on their slow movement east (despite what some folks think), but maybe we should help them come back. Why? To get rid of some of these $%^#!! deer. Our coupled deer population models and socioeconomic valuations...
Fisher (not fisher cat) population is down in NH – but why?
The moose is New Hampshire's iconic mammal, but in some ways that mid-sized member of the weasel family known as the fisher (not fisher cat - it's not a cat; although it doesn't fish either so the name makes no sense) is just as iconic. It's mysterious and dangerous...
Sierra Leona and Chile “What are the roundest and least round countries, Alex?”
I'm preparing some future columns, including one on the surprisingly interesting question of the length of New Hampshire's coastline, so I was delighted to spot, via BoingBoing, a sort-of-related analysis about which countries in the world are the most and least round...
Mexico village uses fireflies to lure tourists, and thus avoid logging
This week I wrote about the appeal of fireflies in my Monitor column - and talked about it with Peter Biello of NHPR - so I was delighted to see a story in the Guardian about how a rural cooperative in Mexico is using them as a lure to tourists, which makes them...
Internet trolls get worse, not better, when they lose anonymity
Like many people, I've long thought that getting rid of anonymity is a way to improve online discourse. If people know that it's actually me who is responding to somebody then I'm less likely to call them a dunderhead, or so the thinking goes. The thinking, alas, may...
Blockchain isn’t going to show up in Vermont government any time soon
There's a great bit of tech nostalgia in the Burlington Free-Press's story today about why Vermont agencies haven't started using blockchain for government documents, as is allowed under a unique state law: As recently as this year, the Secretary of State's office was...
Are firefly populations crashing? We don’t know – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry
I've heard a lot of news reports in the past few months that say firefly populations are crashing, like honeybees are, so I figured I'd check into it for my Monitor column. The answer, according to Tufts University biology professor Sarah Lewis (she's literally...
Certainty about NH mountain lions shows why humans are always arguing
There's an interesting quote in a Concord Monitor story today about people who are sure they have seen mountain lions in New Hampshire, from a woman responding to New Hampshire Fish & Game's desire for actual evidence before they agree that animals which haven't...
Can you raise livestock in the woods? UNH is experimenting
By UNH News Service: Seeing cows graze in a forest may be an uncommon site in New England but at the Organic Dairy Research Farm at the University of New Hampshire, heifers soon will be dining among the trees. Researchers with the NH Agricultural Experiment Station...
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