by David Brooks | Jan 15, 2021 | Blog, Newsletter, Science-Technology
This post ran in 2016 when Wikipedia turned 15. Now that Wikipedia has turned 20, I figured I would run it again. This column concerns a number – 15, the number of years that Wikipedia will have existed when its birthday arrives Friday – but first let’s consider a...
by David Brooks | Mar 29, 2016 | None, Science-Technology
As New Hampshire contemplates its energy future, maybe we should include a bit of energy past that has never quite succeeded. That’s the idea behind an intriguing proposal from Dean Kamen’s research firm, DEKA. It wants to power a state-owned building with a Stirling...
by David Brooks | Mar 22, 2016 | None, Science-Technology
If you need help gathering tons of insects to determine whether bad bugs are invading our woods, you could do a lot worse than enrolling a thousand night-flying acrobats to do it for you. Even if the only way to get results is to perform DNA analysis of their poop...
by David Brooks | Mar 15, 2016 | None, Science-Technology
Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it, a famous person once quipped, but that’s not entirely true: We measure the weather like crazy, and measurement is the first step to control. Every morning, for example, I check a rain gauge next...
by David Brooks | Mar 8, 2016 | None, Science-Technology
There’s an interesting experiment going on in New Hampshire right now, as we figure out how to shift our electric utilities to some sort of futuristic energy-providing thingamajig that can help us create a world of distributed energy. The experiment involves New...