Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Nashua displays public A.I. art, perhaps a first (it’s on trash cans, which seems appropriate)
Nashua, N.H., has put out some of those Big Belly solar trash cans onto the street; they compact the trash to reduce the amount of times staff has to empty them. Paul Shea, a member of the Nashua Board of Public Works who has long been active in the city, put up a...
N.H. GOP kowtows to Trump’s anti-wind power fixation
The state has taken "offshore wind" out of the title of what is now the Office of Energy Innovation, part of the Trump Party's irrational tirade against wind turbines, as Canary Media reports. New Hampshire's GOP-controlled (but just barely) House has plunged deeply...
N.H. sweeping-but-vague ban on cell phones in schools has everybody flummoxed
New Hampshire legislators have jumped on the cell-phones-are-bad-for-kids bandwagon (which is a legitimate bandwagon, BTW) but they did it in a such a sweeping and vague way that everybody's confused. Basically the law says that cell phones aren't allowed in the...
This nasty invasive bug suddenly isn’t very invasive – what happened?
Gather round, dear readers, and let me tell you the story of a nasty invasive insect. No, wait, don't run away — this is a happy story. And it involves a cute dog named Izzy. Our story concerns the Asian longhorned beetle, a beetle native to east Asia that, no...
Rerun: Space Force in a New Hampshire town with a weird history of trying to overcome gravity
EDITOR'S NOTE: There will be no Granite Geek next week. I know that's a big blow, so as compensation I'm rerunning this piece from 2020 that discusses perhaps my favor NH history story, the Gravity Research Foundation. I am happy to say that the Space Force has come...
Farm store for sale amid struggles of direct-to-consumer model
For two decades I've been writing about the transition that New Hampshire agriculture has gone through, from a few large farms growing a single crop (apples, for example) that is sold en masse to wholsalers, to many small farms that grow a bunch of stuff (veggies,...
N.H. says one staircase is enough (which is a big deal)
In what I regard as a pleasant surprise, the state legislature (a body of which I am not usually fond) did a clever thing this session by making one of those easy-to-overlook changes that can improve life. "A lot of states are looking at doing this. New Hampshire did...
NH patents through Aug. 10
(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 Aug. 10. Power Budget Calculation Using Power Headroom PARALLEL WIRELESS,...
When floods hit dirt roads, runoff hits waterways
I live across the street from a dirt road that runs down a short but steep hill. When there are really heavy rains, as happens more often these days thanks to our warming atmosphere, sand can flow clear across the road into my driveway and the town has to come out and...
The NH state marsupial is …
The opossum, of course. What other choice was there? U-L story here. When I was a kid, possums were a southern thing. I don't think they were found in New Hampshire back then, or at least were very rare. Just another species moving north as we change the climate.
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