The chasm between reality and the world of technology

As if people needed more reasons to walk around staring at their phones, along comes "Pokemon Go" – a game for smartphones that has rocketed to the top of the charts that track the sales of phone apps.

It’s a modern-day scavenger hunt based on the Nintendo brand of video and trading-card games that first came out in the 1990s, and it has apparently taken the country by storm.

The good news: It has people out walking around, which is not the worst thing in the world.

The bad news: Not all of them are paying attention. There are widespread reports that people have been injured playing the game, including motorists who crashed because they were watching their phones instead of the road.

And in California, rescue personnel this week rescued two men who fell off a crumbling sandstone bluff as they attempted to "capture" Pokemon characters on their phones.

"I think people just need to realize this is a game," Sgt. Rich Eaton of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department told the Los Angeles Times. "It’s not worth your life. No game is worth your life."

That should be obvious, but apparently it’s not for that segment of the population that seems to get farther away from reality the deeper they get drawn into technology.

Another terrorist attack in France makes us wonder

France has been struck by yet another act of apparent terrorism, the latest in the city of Nice, where a man intentionally drove his truck into a crowd that was celebrating Batille Day (France’s equivalent of our Fourth of July), killing at least 84 people.

Nice is the latest city to be visited by terror, joining the likes of Orlando, Paris and, well, a collection of tragedies that is becoming too numerous to even follow.

There was a time when it was possible to differentiate between those places where attacks were likely and those where the chances of being a victim of terrorism were remote. And when attacks happened in unexpected places, people were shocked.

But we now live in a post-9/11, post-Sandy Hook world, a time when the lines between popular destination and terrorist target are increasingly blurred.

Everybody knows the next attack is coming and, unlike a generation or two ago, we also know it could happen here. Will we continue to be shocked if it does?

Board caught in squeeze in search for a superintendent

The process by which the Nashua Board of Education arrived at a choice for an interim superintendent to lead the district for the next year has not exactly been a smooth one.

The board’s first three candidates all fell by the wayside.

Board members then dug deeper into the candidate pool and came up with Cornelia Brown, who most recently headed up an educational organization in Maine.

The board voted 6-3 to hire Brown at an annual salary of $154,000 and an annual housing allowance of $10,000. The three board members who voted against the hiring all cited the salary, which is more than outgoing Superintendent Mark Conrad was making.

Those board members who questioned the salary were right to do so. At the same time, the board was under a fair amount of pressure to fill the vacancy, so it’s understandable that they paid more than some taxpayers would have liked to get a viable candidate.