If George Bailey (“It’s a Wonderful Life”) was in banking today, would he be handling bitcoin?
Fans of bitcoin in New Hampshire can now buy the digital currency the old-fashioned way – by walking into a local bank branch and writing a check. BitQuick, a Chicago-based cash for bitcoin startup, says that people can now buy the cyber-currency from other BitQuick...
read moreThe good stuff is redacted from bids for Mass. Clean Energy RFP
If you're a real New England energy financing wonk, you'll want to pore through the bids for the Massachusetts Clean Energy RFP, to see who submitted - but note that all the good stuff (like money) is redacted. Here it...
read more
Are any of your home network-connected devices harboring malware? You sure?
Many of you reading this have in the past year or two allowed a spy or a bad guy to settle happily into your home, using it as shelter for unpleasant activities. But unless you’re a lot tech-ier than me, it’s hard to realize this, and harder still to stop it. IoT...
read moreThe Lawnchair Astronomer looks at the Perseids and, of course, the eclipse
Gerry Descoteaux is a New Hampshire astronomy fan I have known for 26 years - although I'm not sure we've ever actually met in person, come to think of it. I was an editor at the Nashua Telegraph when he started writing his monthly Lawnchair Astronomer column in 1990,...
read more
A place (maybe the only one in NH) where you park backwards at an angle
There are certain topics that get everybody riled up – politics, religion, which way to hang the toilet-paper roll. And parking. Especially parking. Everybody hates parking but everybody wants more parking, and they want it a specific size and shape. It’s risky to...
read moreBirth dearth addendum: It would be OK if we just used less, but …
In response to my column last week celebrating (despite the many drawbacks) a global trend of smaller families, some readers and callers said that the real solution to planetwide environmental destruction is for each of us humans to consume fewer resources, rather...
read more
If Lyme disease designed a mammal to spread itself around, it would design the white-footed mouse
Great story by the Washington Post (reprinted in the Bangor Daily News here) about why the white-footed mouse is such a prolific carrier of Lyme disease: What makes the mice such excellent carriers? Lax grooming habits. Passive immune systems. Endless offspring that...
read more
The ‘baby bust’ is going to be a disaster. It’s our only hope
The most hopeful change in human society that has occurred during my lifetime – a change that must continue if our grandchildren have any hope of a decent life – is really bad. It’s bad economically, bad socially, even bad culturally. But if you love your kids like I...
read more
They’re going to test a moth that eats an invasive weed I hate, hate, hate
Pardon a personal rant, but for more than a decade my family has been fighting an invasive weed known as black swallowwort. It's a vine that grows up from the ground and tangles everything; when we bought our property it had filled one field to the point that it was...
read more
NH bitcoin machines to shut July 31 (for a bit) because of a complex dispute over forking
As I've noted several times, New Hampshire is one of the hotbeds of retail bitcoin usage thanks largely to the ultra-libertarian Free Staters. I believe we have more public bitcoin vending machines per capita than any state. For a short period s of July 31, however,...
read more
Return to the Concord Monitor
Science Cafe NH
Granite Geek on NH Public RadioAbout Granite Geek
Dave Brooks has written a science/tech column since 1991 - yes, that long - and has written this blog since 2006, keeping an eye on topics of geekish interest in and around New Hampshire, from software to sea level rise, population dynamics to printing (3-D, of course). He moderates monthly Science Cafe NH discussions, beer in hand, and discusses the geek world regularly on New Hampshire Public Radio.
Brooks earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics but got lost on the way to the Ivory Tower and ended up in a newsroom. He has reported for newspapers from Tennessee to New England. Rummage through his bag of awards you'll find oddities like three Best Blog prizes from the New Hampshire Press Association and a Writer of the Year award from the N.H. Farm and Forest Bureau, of all places. He joined the Concord Monitor in 2015.