Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
A vegetarian follows a cute pig from birth to slaughterhouse
I am not a vegetarian but I sympathize with them - my red meat consumption has fallen to almost nothing through culinary inertia and the fact that Indian vegetarian meals are awesome - so it has been interesting to watch a vegetarian colleague do a series of stories...
The neatest office in Concord is inside a fire tower – sort of
The best part of being a reporter is that when you see something interesting, you have an excuse to poke your nose into it. So when I wondered about this weird bright-green cupola sitting on top of one of the downtown office buildings in Concord, I got to find out...
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...
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