This social media stuff raises interesting questions. A good friend of mine died this year, and after much debate his friends and family are turning his Facebook page into a memorial, as Facebook allows - it’s a site  that only current “friends” can see, and where his information can never be altered. We made this move after some spammer got into his site and sent us all messages from him, months after his death. Many folks were quite freaked out …

Spotted via Braniac.

We will now demonstrate the difference between a blog and a newspaper. I saw the press release about this yesterday but wasn’t able to do any actual, you know, reporting (e.g., figure out the different technologies). In the old days I’d be in trouble, but now I can … just link to the Xconomy story!

Research by Cornell on the threat to our Ash trees.

Earle Rich            Mont Vernon, NH

At last, 4G has come to Boston, and I feel like a man who’s gotten a shirt for Christmas. I’m grateful, of course, but I was expecting something a bit more exciting.

He says the upgraded T-Mobile 3G (with HSPA+) is a reasonable alternative, but that speeds and devices need to improve to make a big difference.

Harlan Spence, lunar specialist and director of Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space will discuss NASA’s latest mission to the moon, while Tom Estill of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center will be on hand for various “lunar activities.”

There will also be a ton of moon viewing through the center’s Celestron 14″ Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope in the rooftop observatory.

It’ll also feature various other family stuff, including a presentation of Tonight’s Sky planetarium show highlighting the moon.

The cost is $9 Adult, $6 Child (3-12), $8 Student/Senior. Free for Members. It takes place Saturday, Sept. 18 from 6-10 P.M.

Maine remains the region’s wind-power leader of course, with three major (over 20 MW) facilities running and a few more in the works. NH still has just one, with a N-of-the-N proposal in the works. Details on my alternative-power Google Map here.

• ADDENDUM: Massachusetts Supreme Court says the state can override local opposition to the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound. Globe item here.

Part of the program was a demonstration of our knot tieing skills. We were all lined up and told to tie various knots on command. One of the first was to tie a bowline. I didn’t know how to do it, so just stood there and fumbled. I didn’t do much better on any of the others. I still have a vivid memory of wishing I was somewhere, anywhere else and that these people could never see me again as such a loser.

An elderly friend of the family, Pop Warner, was watching with my dad. After the show and in my presence, he really tore into my father for allowing such basic knowledge to be withheld from me. Tieing proper knots, especially from a family of lobster fishermen, was an essential part of life. My father never did take on that responsibility, but Pop Warner and a couple of other mentors along with the scouting book gave me what I needed to get through life. 

Later, in Navy boot camp, I was able to help other recruits with basic knots to help them pass the weekly tests. I’ve had a lot of rigging experience since then. I’ve never had a load get away or something fail because of  I didn’t know how to tie a proper knot. That experience with the scouts was never repeated.

Earle Rich      (Ready to face the public again)               Mont Vernon, NH

I did at least pretend my column was journalism by interviewing a physician, whose advice was echoed by some comments in this blog: If it’s muscle-related, as it is 80-85 percent of the time, then keep moving as much as you can.

This is a common scenario: Turning organic products into liquid fuel is difficult. Here in Nashua, we’re still waiting for our biodiesel plant to start up - as I noted in April (time to check into it again, I think), the plant will turn waste fat from restaurants into diesel, and is awaiting various permits.

granitegeek.org is the most informative site since the creation of the cake

I take that as a real compliment.

Calico lobsters are one of the rarest of miscolored lobsters. A blue lobster is one in a million and a yellow or orange is one in 30 million, said Diane Cowan lobster scientist and the founder of the Lobster Conservancy in Friendship. Calicos are even rarer. Only albinos are rarer, though just how rare is anyone’s guess.

Cowan said discolored shells are a genetic trait. In her 25 years of research, she has only seen two or three calicos, presents to her from local fishermen.

Personally, I’m holding out for a paisley lobster.

That drop prompted speculation that the fall was the result of the recession–a notion supported by an analysis of data from 25 states that was released in April by the Pew Research Center. The report found that states that tended to suffer most from the recession had the biggest declines in births.

The number of babies born in the U.S. was an estimated 4.136 million last year, down from 4.25 milllion the year before and about 4.4 million the year before that.

Hunting and development wiped out wild turkeys from New Hampshire a century ago. A few dozen birds were imported from New York state to the Keene area in the mid-1970s, and  in the past decade the population has exploded. It is probably the most successful wildlife restoration program in New England in recent decades.

The spring hunting season is well established, with 3,667 gobblers killed over the four-week season this May; the fall season is smaller, it seems to be growing, too.

I’m not a hunter, by the way, but I am a supporter of hunting. There are certainly some beer-guzzling hunting slobs who act like jerks and endanger other people, but overall the hunting community knows at least a much about wild areas, and works at least as hard to keep them wild, than the environmental community.

After all, a guy cautiously creeping through New Hampshire woods at dawn in a cold October drizzle is more attuned to Mother Nature than somebody like me thinking positive thoughts about animals and trees while snoozing in bed.

I then went to the local Rite Aid in Milford to pick a prescription for eye drops. As I had to wait a few minutes, I sat down and used the free blood pressure tester. The reading, 30 minutes after the first reading was 149/94.

If I only used this tester, I would be very concerned about my health.

I’m just saying, if a simple test like this seems way over your usual test, get a second test from another, more respectable agency. Free tests like this are good as long as there are regular calibrations done on the equipment. I knew this was wrong, someone else could get more than a little worried.

Earle Rich            Mont Vernon

part of Cameron Wake's UCS ad

Cameron Wake, a glaciologist who has for years been the most prominent voice at UNH in regards to the reality of climate change, is one of three scientists featured in a new advertising campaign by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The ads depict scientists as kids talking about what things in the natural world made them become scientists.

Part of Wake’s ad is shown above - the other two ads have the scientists depicted as grubby children, but Wake gets to be a teenager in a convertible VW bug, next to what looks like a ’60s-era Cameron Diaz clone. The text says in part: “In high school I was a romantic—and I still am. Faraway places have always filled me with wonder. I get to mountaineer my way to new discoveries. My research on Arctic glaciers has revealed how our world is warming like never before.”

Here’s the ad campaign. Here’s an NY Times article about it, which notes that the campaign is designed in part to defray lingering images from the Climategate email brouhaha. If you don’t believe that image lingers, check the comments on my Telegraph column this week about climate change. (The column, by the way, concerns a report co-written by Wake.)

SIDE NOTE: This item from Boing Boing (read it here) notes that this is the 35th anniversary of the first major scientific paper predicting climate change from CO2 buildup. It’s a good response for those who trot out the tired “back in the 70s they warned about global cooling!” comment.

The last two days have seen the first sustained rainfall of this dry, hot summer, so mosquitoes should start flourishing again.

From the laymen’s point over view, the interesting thing about this bland-looking songbird is its parenting: All males and females take multiple partners, and males share the job of bringing food to several nests. the species is both polygamous and polyandrous at once and, unusually for songbirds, males have overlapping territories. They’re sort of like a giant commune.

This odd arrangement is designed to maximum parental support for offspring in a tough environment, but even so the bird’s populations have plummeted. One problem may be warming climate, which brings hardwood trees further up mountains (Bicknell’s Thrush likes evergreens) - and when you’re on a mountaintop already, it’s hard to escape uphill.

Read the article here.

No hard word about when Clearwire, or AT&T or Verizon, will bring 4G north of the border.