Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
NH: We must make roads safer – as long as we don’t do anything to annoy drivers
You will be astonished to hear that New Hampshire's "roadmap to safer roads" talks about enforcement and laws and penalties and says almost nothing about road design (except gosh, we should try to keep people from going the wrong way on divided highways) and nothing...
Law, order and ‘artificial intelligence’ in the courtroom
The Monitor's Catherine McLaughlin has a long piece in today's paper about a lawsuit that featured fake A.I.-generated citations, "perhaps the first of its kind in New Hampshire", and what that means. It was a garden-variety lawsuit in the state of New Hampshire. A...
National pro-vaccine group comes to NH
A national pro-vaccine group has opened a chapter in New Hampshire, the eleventh state in which it has done so. American Families for Vaccines said the chapter "organization will "work to promote science-based legislation and initiatives in the Granite State." The...
Geeks who love cartoons (i.e., most geeks) should love the Center for Cartoon Studies
The most unusual college in New England turns 20 this year. If it had been around a half-century ago I might well have attended. The college is the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vt., across the Connecticut River from Lebanon. It offers a two-year...
Three proposed NH bills would target some aspect of A.I.
Three proposed bills for the upcoming legislative session in NH concern "artificial intelligence." There are no details yet about what exactly they propose but FYI, here they are: HB 2026-2507: "creating an exception to the restricted uses of artificial intelligence...
Another invasive (sigh) shows up in NH lakes
The spiny water flea has been found in Newfound Lake, reports New Hampshire Bulletin (story here). It's already in Winnisquam and Winnepesaukee lakes. One impact of a spiny water flea invasion stems from the animals’ voracious appetites. Upon arriving in a lake, spiny...
Maybe NH can get ‘balcony solar’ too
A New Hampshire state senator has filed an LSR (legislative service request, sort of a place-holder for a future bill) for "portable solar generation devices" which I believe means small plug-in solar panels, a.k.a. balcony solar. As I noted last month, Vermont has a...
NH is still a laggard in fast charging for EVs
The NY Times has a big article about the improvement in fast charging stations along U.S. highways with excellent interactive maps. (Paywall-less version is here) Most of the highways in the Northeast are packed with chargers (although it gets sketchy going up to...
New England’s last coal-fired plant has closed for good
Six decades after it began, coal-fired electricity is officially gone from New England following the shut-down of Merrimack Station in Bow, the region’s last power plant of its kind. Merrimack Station, which started in 1960 during a wave of new coal-fired electricity...
A real-world user dents my A.I. doubts
f you want to stay a skeptic about the various technologies misleadingly called “artificial intelligence,” you probably shouldn’t chat with Greg Dorfman during an A.I. presentation. “It’s a real tool and I’m hoping to make it a better tool,” Dorfman told me in no...
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