Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Forget the metric system – WMUR is going to the Kelvin temperature scale
I wonder what keyboard slipup led to this delightful temperature listing for Nashua? It's not easy to accidentally type "-78" instead of something like "25" - although I've certainly made more than my share of boneheaded typing errors in my day. UPDATE: after I typed...
Vermont may join NH in banning firewood imports, to slow invasive bugs
You're not supposed to bring untreated firewood into New Hampshire or Maine, because such transport has proven to be a major route for invasive, tree-destroying insects to infect areas. Now Vermont wants to join suit, with a proposed rule that would ban all firewood...
Granite Geek on the air: Wikipedia-birthday-party edition
On Friday, Wikipedia becomes old enough to be married in Idaho, Missouri or Hawaii with parental consent. In anticipation of its 15th birthday, including a party to be held at harvard that you - yes, you - can attend, I talked with NHPR's Peter Biello. You can listen...
Powerball odds = choosing a single character from 3 1/2 years of newspapers
Human brains can't handle numbers like 292 million, which is why you think you have a chance to win the Powerball lottery. (Odds of the grand prize are 292,201,338 to 1.) Well, you don't. To demonstrate, here's another way to think of that number: A week's worth of...
GM is launching the first credible electric car (wait … GM?)
I can't afford a Tesla and real-world electric cars don't have the range to handle my embarrassingly long commute (shame on me) - until now, that is. Later this year General Motors will start selling the Bolt, the badly-named (too close to its Volt) but really...
‘We are as gods’ and we’ve created a whole new geologic epoch
If you want a single poetic sentence that sums up the issues facing humanity and the planet, you could do a lot worse than the opening line of the first Whole Earth Catalog in 1968: "We are as gods and might as well get good at it." A less poetic way to say this is...
Interesting job of the week: Net-gunning moose from a helicopter so you can study them
From NH Fish & Game: Residents in northern New Hampshire may spot a helicopter overhead in the coming weeks as approximately 45 moose cows and calves are collared for the third year of a six-year study of moose mortality and productivity. (You can see a video...
‘Tiny houses’ raise not-so-tiny regulatory questions
You've probably been hearing a lot lately about tiny houses - houses smaller than 1,000 square feet houses on individual foundations or trailers, usually built on site unlike manufactured housing and with more attention to energy efficiency and internal detail (and...
A flight-calculating slide rule used by Mr. Spock is real, still used 75 years after its invention
In pre-computer days, there were many variations of the slide rule. These were portable devices of varying shapes, with various scales (often logarithmic), that had different sliding or turning markers. They were used to simplify conversions or calculations, and their...
Blockchain was used in a NASDAQ transaction, which may be less earth-shaking than it sounds
Although NASDAQ says a recent share transaction was the first private securities issuance documented with a blockchain (the technology underlying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies), this Quartz piece notes that it is more of a PR stunt than anything wildly...
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