A little Sgt. Pepper’s nostalgia for us oldsters
I am ashamed that when writing a story that about the Concord street department having reported 4,000 potholes I didn't think to include a "Day in the Life" parody. (slaps forehead!) Better late than never: 4,000 potholes in Concord New Hamp-shire // And though...
read moreBaer! Where? There!
The geek canonization (so to speak) of Ralph Baer continues to gather steam. Officials in Manchester are scheduled to hold a dedication ceremony on May 10 of what will become, unofficially at least, Ralph Baer Plaza in Arms Park, on the bank of the Merrimack River...
read moreTiny NH town OKs private/public fiber-to-the-home
Tiny Chesterfield, home to 3,600 people between Keene, N.H., and Brattleboro, Vt., appears to be the first town in the state to take advantage of a new state law allowing municipal broadband internet. The Brattleboro Reformer had this story in advance of the town...
read moreCounting potholes finds a surprise: Last year was much worse
I have a story in today's Monitor about potholes and mud season - pretty typical March stuff for New Hampshire. But I got a surprise while reporting it: The city of Concord counts potholes, and last year at this time they had twice as many as this year - 8,000...
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New Hampshire patents
The Concord Monitor runs a list of patents that have been issued recently to companies or individuals in New Hampshire. Check it out.
read moreIt’s been a while since a reader claimed to have disproved Einstein
One of the pleasures of being a (very) minor public figure associated with science is that sometimes I hear from people who have "disproved" major findings. In my earlier, more self-assured days I called these folks "cranks" - as in "Mathematical Cranks," the...
read moreDartmouth professor wins Templeton Prize, an unusual mix of science and spirituality
The Templeton Prize is one of the major prizes in science - $1.4 million in prize money helps - but it's a bit of an oddball because it emphasizes the non-quantifiable part of human knowledge. It was awarded today to Marcelo Gleiser, a cosmologist at Dartmouth. The...
read moreGranny apartments – er, I mean, accessory dwelling units – join the state’s housing mix
Now that in-law apartments are no longer outlawed, New Hampshire towns are working on the details of what is turning out to be a small, if intriguing, part of the region’s housing mix. “We’ve had maybe four of them, if that,” said Stephanie Giovannucci, interim Town...
read moreElectronic voter check-in got tested during town meeting voting
Voters were missing something when they showed up at the polls Tuesday in the town of Milford: The alphabet. For the first time in memory the polling stations in the middle school gymnasium lacked signs directing voters to a specific clerk depending on the first...
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People want good news but not enough to keep a newspaper open
Amidst the national (global) decline of print journalism, the closing of the Suncook Valley Sun, a free weekly based in Pittsfield, isn't a big deal. It had no reporters and depended on submissions from readers, either columns or letters. They fell into categories:...
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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 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.