Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Typewriters are riding the analog wave
It’s hard to remember now, but in the Good Old Days – the decade through my teenage years, which is everybody’s definition of Good Old Days – the typewriter was just about the most interesting piece of technology in people’s homes. Whether manual or electric, the...
Dartmouth course eyes A.I. from the humanities point of view
Dartmouth College has a new class called Critical AI that looks at the history and sociocultural impacts of the technologies known as artificial intelligence. Dartmouth News story is here. The Department of English and Creative Writing class is being taught this fall...
Thomas Kurtz, Dartmouth co-creator of BASIC and DTSS, has died
Thomas Kurtz, the Dartmouth professor who co-created BASIC and DTSS with John Kemeny, helping launch the whole idea of computing and networks, has died. He was 96. Dartmouth News has a long remembrance with some historic photos. I interviewed Kurtz via email in 2018...
Esports – competitive video games – becomes a varsity sport in NH high school
The NHIAA - New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association - has added esports to the list of competitive high school varsity sorts, reports the Monitor in this story. NHIAA has designated two games for official tournaments hosted at SNHU’s Esports Arena. The...
NH patents through Nov. 17
(Links to each patent can be found here, using the patent number or inventor’s name.) By Targeted News Service WASHINGTON – The following federal patents were assigned in New Hampshire through Nov. 17. *** Optical Identifier and System for Reading Same NEURSCIENCES...
Geeks love a certain type of joke, and they don’t get much better than this
A self-described Masshole is behind the brilliantly funny move of The Onion - for years the best satire site around - buying that fetid cesspool of ignorance and anger, Infowars. So says the Boston Globe.
Our winters have really, really warmed
An analysis from the site Climate Matters quantifies what is already obvious to those of us pining for the days when there was ice skating before Thanksgiving: winters in the Northeast have warmed faster than just about anywhere. The whole analysis, with...
Maine’s kelp forests face ‘widespread collapse’ as oceans warm
The Boston Globe has a well-reported but depressing article about the effect that the warming Gulf of Maine is having on kelp forests, which are almost up there with coral reefs in terms of supporting ecosystems. Researchers found temperatures have become too warm,...
We’re in the midst of a flash drought
Three years ago I first learned of the concept of a "flash drought," the dry flip side of a flash flood. As I wrote at the time, the term " sounds like an oxymoron since 'drought' usually reflects accumulated dryness rather than a quick-hit event. But as we saw last...
Storing electricity as water. (Wait – what?)
Last week I wrote about interesting stuff that UNH is doing in space, but there’s something interesting on the ground in Durham, as well. A big something. Big and cold. Admittedly, it doesn’t sound all that interesting. It’s just a giant water storage tank that...
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