Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Most fake-caller-ID calls now illegal in N.H. (for what it’s worth)
If you hate deceptive telemarketing and phone scams – a description that covers every human being who ever lived – as of Jan. 1 you can push back a little more. A new state law imposes civil penalties of up to $5,000 for calls that pretend to be coming from a...
More details on that freezing-air-to-store-electricity idea in Vermont
When it comes to storing lots of electricity for periods of time longer than batteries can handle, there are plenty of ideas being tossed around. Pump water uphill to a reservoir! Fill underground caverns with compressed air! Push a train up an incline! Stack a tower...
Yes, it’s the end of a decade (eye roll)
Long, long ago in a newsroom far, far away – actually, it was 1999 in Nashua – I squandered many valuable hours arguing with people who insisted that the new millennium wouldn’t begin until the year 2001. Two decades have gone by but those folks are still around, or...
N.H. 4,000-footer list awaits decision from LIDAR remeasuring
Back in February I mentioned that LIDAR mapping of the White Mountains found that Mt. Tecumseh is only 3,995 feet tall, potentially removing it from the list of 4000-footers maintained by the Appalachian Mountain Club. The idea of the iconic list of peaks...
NH bill would limit telecoms’ sale of our location data
There's a couple of proposed bills in New Hampshire that would sharply limit phone and telecom companies from selling location data scarfed from the always-on corporate spy pretending to be a phone that we carry at all times. As NHPR notes (story is here) proposals in...
My favorite GraniteGeek stuff of the year (& decade, sort of)
This is my site, so I get to choose the best Granite Geek posts/articles of 2019. Here they are, looking backwards through the year. (What about my favorite post of the decade? Many of the several thousand posts I've written over the past 10 years have disappeared due...
Does leaving grass long to help pollinators also help ticks? Maybe not.
I am apparently not alone in thinking that advice to save pollinators (let your lawn grow) clashes with advice to avoid ticks around the house (cut the grass short because ticks don't like heat and dryness). But a (admittedly, very preliminary) study says that maybe...
Large-scale energy storage by “liquid air” proposed for Vermont
A British energy company called Highview Power Storage, along with Encore Renewable Energy, a developer of renewable energy generation and storage projects, say they plan to build the United States’ first liquid air energy storage system somewhere in "northern...
N.H. is unique in Northeast with rising college enrollment (yeah, but …)
The National Student Center has released its fall 2019 enrollment estimates for all colleges and universities, and there' a surprise: Despite the lamentation over dropping numbers of students in the Northeast, enrollment in New Hampshire has risen. I suspect this is...
Electric bikes, neither fish nor fowl, pose a dilemma on back-country trails
Is an electric bike a motorized vehicle that should be banned from hiking and mountain-biking trails? Most of the hiking and trail-riding community say yes; a lot of other folks say no. That's the question in a debate over whether the Forest Service should allow them...
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