LTV

No, this has nothing to do with a lesbian television network. It has to do with lobsters. I just finished reading The Lobsterman by Alec Wilkinson in the New Yorker (he had called to talk to me about writing the Goings on About Town section of the magazine and couldn't help making a plug for himself while we chatted). It's a good read about a fisherman / scientist named Ted Ames who won the MacArthur award this past year for work he has done regarding the Gulf of Maine, and the threatened Cod population. Importantly, a lot of his research was based on oral histories from older fishermen. For me- raised on Jello Biafra's hatred of specialists- this makes me very happy- unfortunately,Mr Wilkinson didn't spend much time talking about this distinction and how it may have affected Ames' having won the ($500,000) award.

Anyway, at the University of New Hampshire professor Winsor H. Watson III and his students have discovered, by making time-lapse videos of lobsters, that lobsters are much smarter than people who think about how smart lobsters are, thought. A bunch of the videos are online at the UNH site and I'd suggest watching : Video of larger lobster chasing away smaller lobsters entering the trap and chasing a smaller lobster out of the trap. It's both mine and Alec's favorite video on the site.