‘Patent troll’ isn’t defamatory because nobody knows exactly what it means
There's been a long legal fight in New Hampshire between banks and an inventor who says he has patents covering ATM machines. The bankers say he's a patent troll; he got mad and sued and it made it to the state Supreme Court. Their ruling? "Patent troll" might be...
read moreAn almost-entirely online law degree – in I.P. law, of course
The UNH law school in Concord has launched its first virtually-all-online degree (a small part of the 3 1/2 years will be on campus), which required a waiver from American Bar Association rules that frown on "distance learning." It's also an unusual, perhaps unique,...
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More water or more growth? Trees change their mind as CO2 grows
From UNH News Service: Research from the University of New Hampshire finds that the increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted into the atmosphere by human activity and fossil fuels is altering the way forests grow and use water. Scientists found that trees in the...
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Law school goes online (finally!) for IP
The UNH law school in Concord - now renamed UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law, which was sort of its name for three decades before UNH took it over in 2010 - on Wednesday started its first class of a new online degree in Intellectual Property law. I wrote about the...
read moreWhen a new planet swims into your ken
Remember when finding a planet outside the solar system was an incredible, amazing discovery? Now they seem to be all over the place - but finding one is still cool. Dartmouth Prof. Elisabeth Newton was part of a team that found one with the weird name "DS Tuc Ab", as...
read moreStart with 3D printing, end with the existence of the soul
My weekly conversation with Chris Ryan on WKXL radio wandered a bit far afield this time: https://soundcloud.com/wkxl/nh-now-david-brooks-8-14-19
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UNH has a role in the latest finding-Amelia-Earhart saga
Figuring out what happened to aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, who disappeared into the Pacific Ocean on an around-the-world trip in 1937, has tantalized people for my entire life. I don't know how many "X has figured out what happened to Amelia Earhart" stories I've...
read moreWhy you shouldn’t be convinced by all those mountain lion ‘sightings’
Eric Orff was a wildlife biologist with New Hampshire Fish and Game for 31 years, most of it as "furbearer biologist", and he was an early user of the World Wide Web to disseminate information to the rest of us. He has retired now but he maintains his online presence,...
read moreTelemedicine needs regulation more than technology
Telemedicine has always seemed like an obvious use of the online world - Skyping for your health, so to speak. It's fun to think of the technical possibilities - a nurse or doctor "examining" you from far away via remote-control robotics, for example. But it's not...
read more3D printing is a dud! Well, maybe not.
When I set up some online accounts for Granite Geek a few years ago it required a horizontal photo, so I put together the Granite Geek logo with one of my columns from the Concord Monitor. I had to choose a column that ran at the top of the page so it would show me...
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Science Cafe NHAbout 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 WKXL radio in Concord.
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.