Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Granite Geek classic: “Windshield wipers up or down?”
As long as I'm using this excellent snowstorm as an excuse to avoid thinking of new articles - I mean, to rerun popular classics - let's dust this one off from 2015. Winter brings many vital issues to the fore, perhaps none more contentious than this: Wipers up or...
Concord has a chance to make a big climate move
The city of Concord has a golden opportunity to show that it's serious about its admirable clean-energy goals, but it's not the sort of opportunity you might think of. Two huge mixed-use developments are proposed for the city: here's a Monitor story about a recent...
‘Clean cement’ factory coming to Massachusetts
In Holyoke, Mass., on the Connecticut River, they're replacing a closed paper mill with a factory that will make "clean cement." If it lives up to hopes, that would be a big deal since making cement is a huge emitter of carbon. From the article in Heatmap (read it...
Solar panels on self-storage units makes a ton of sense
Self-storage units are all over the place - we sure own a lot of crap, don't we? - and seem to be perfect places to put solar panels. Flat roofs, already ugly so nobody will complain, connected to the grid. The problem is that the units don't consume much electricity...
Not geeky but I like it: Remembering Marty on the Mountain
(I wrote this piece for the Concord Monitor. It's not in the usual Granite Geek vein but certain readers might enjoy it anyway.) When you talk to old-time New Hampshire folks about “that funny guy who used to do the weather on TV,” there’s a split. In the southern...
Monadnock Energy gets solar award
Solar farm developer Monadnock Energy, presumably based somewhere around Peterborough judging from the name, is one of the winners of the first round of a contest by the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office. Called the American-Made Community...
NH solar homes get more Zillow views than in any other state – does that stat mean anything?
The site MarketWatch says home with solar get more average views on Zillow in New Hampshire than in any other state. That sounds impressive, but is it really? (Full article is here, with some state-v-state and city-v-city data about solar homes, scraped from Zillow.)...
You know what stone walls need? A taxonomy!
Robert Thorson, a professor of Earth sciences at the University of Connecticut, has been thinking for many years about stone walls, those iconic structures that fill the woods of New England. This thinking has led him to what sounds like a ridiculous conclusion:...
NH patents through Jan. 7
(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 Jan. 7. *** System and Method for Aerial to Ground Registration DEKA...
Turns out we haven’t actually dodged the winter COVID surge
Back in December I was clinging to hope – irrationally, but isn’t all hope irrational at heart? – that we would dodge the winter COVID surge. No such luck. As of Thursday, the New Hampshire Hospital Association says more people are in its beds with COVID-19 than at...
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