Recent David Brooks Columns

It may not be fun to look at, but dissection serves a purpose

David Brooks | Monday, May 21, 2012

If you have ever dissected an animal in biology class, as I did many years ago, you may have wondered where the pigs or frogs …

Fighting a war on invasive species? Mathematical modeling could be your new weapon

David Brooks | Monday, May 14, 2012

Fighting invasive plants is tough, as I know from an endless backyard battle against the nasty weed called swallowwort (may it be cursed for all …

Whooping cough outbreak was only a minor problem, thanks to vaccines

David Brooks | Monday, May 7, 2012

When New Hampshire reported a spike in cases of whooping cough among schoolchildren last November, on the heels of a similar report from Vermont, some …

Electric ‘smart meters’ are coming, raising hopes and a few concerns

David Brooks | Monday, April 30, 2012

If branding is everything, the person who coined the phrase “smart meters” deserves a pat on the back. Who could oppose electric utility meters that …

Web trend Kickstarter may help create a much-needed slaughterhouse

David Brooks | Monday, April 23, 2012

Today’s GraniteGeek will examine the cool process of crowd-funding via the website Kickstarter, and whether it can literally bring home the bacon via an attempt …

Even broadband’s gold standard, fiber-to-the-home, isn’t perfect

David Brooks | Monday, April 9, 2012

When it comes to broadband, fiber-to-the-home is the gold standard. Every time I write about Internet service, I hear envious comments about people who aren’t …

Upscale neighborhood’s feeble Net speeds raises a question: Should broadband be a utility?

David Brooks | Monday, April 2, 2012

When Leigh Eichel read in The Telegraph last year about federal and state efforts to extend broadband to under-served places like the town of Rindge …

N.H. scientists join global boycott in debate over ‘open access’ research

David Brooks | Monday, March 26, 2012

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: A big industry built on gathering information from paid and unpaid contributors, then packaging it and selling it …

Science Cafe tackles Lyme disease in humans and pets

David Brooks | Monday, March 19, 2012

Long before the Ides of March, at a time of year when we’re usually still shoveling snow, I came indoors from the yard and found …

Pakistan ahead of curve on compressed natural gas

David Brooks | Monday, March 12, 2012

Here, in Nashua, we pride ourselves on being cutting-edge, celebrating cool stuff like trash trucks that run on compressed natural gas. Even the president is …

The science of the ‘winter blues’ at the next Science Cafe

David Brooks | Monday, February 13, 2012

This winter has hardly been winter due to a shortage of snow and ice, but one thing has been reliably seasonal: daylight. The amount of …

Winter low temperatures aren’t as low as they used to be

David Brooks | Monday, February 6, 2012

As your snowmobile, ice skates and snowshoes slowly rust away from lack of use, you might be wondering if our winters are getting warmer. The …

Roman numerals are interesting, not just for making a football game look pompous

David Brooks | Monday, January 30, 2012

EDITOR’S NOTE: This column originally forgot about “D”, the character for 500 - the sentence has been corrected. . Not being what you would call …

Nashuan gets attention for helping find ‘lip-reading’ infants

David Brooks | Monday, January 23, 2012

When a graduate student getting widespread attention for a piece of scientific research looks back on her high school days, you expect reminiscence about labs, …

The law that blacked out Wikipedia has New Hampshire network firm worried

David Brooks | Wednesday, January 18, 2012

EDITOR’S NOTE: Wondering why Wikipedia, Wired.com, Boing Boing and other sites are blacked out today, and why Google has a big censored sign on its …

Science Cafe on Wednesday: Is burning wood for energy really a good idea?

David Brooks | Monday, January 16, 2012

Burning wood to keep warm is so 19th century. That’s why it has a much more interesting name for the 21st century. “We are tailor-made …

End-of-the-world predictions are a dime a dozen

David Brooks | Monday, January 9, 2012

I have been alive for more than half a century, and not a single one of those years has gone without somebody predicting that the …

Bills seek to dilute the teaching of evolution in public schools

David Brooks | Monday, January 2, 2012

Opponents of the science of evolution usually take one of two approaches: using word games to dismiss it as “just a theory,” or claiming there’s …

Lack of acorns shows why biodiversity is a good thing

David Brooks | Monday, December 19, 2011

If you ever get tired of hearing people talk about how biodiversity is a really good thing without actually explaining why, go outside and look …

Alternative ballots make a presidential race even less predictable

David Brooks | Monday, December 12, 2011

EDITOR’S NOTE: The GraniteGeek blog is moving its URL and software, and the transition is proving to be, shall we say, awkward. At the moment …

Participate in our online alternative-voting ballot test (no sharp pencils needed)

David Brooks | Monday, December 5, 2011

Would American history be different if the New Hampshire presidential primary used non-traditional ballot methods like ranked-choice or approval voting, instead of the usual single-vote-per-ballot, …

Ticks are everywhere; blame warm weather, land-use changes

David Brooks | Monday, November 28, 2011

Change is good, they say. I agree, unless the change has eight legs and carries nasty diseases. “When I was a kid, we didn’t even …

Pay for a little bit of science via ‘crowd-funding’

David Brooks | Monday, November 21, 2011

If you’re reading this, you’re a fan of science, but do you put your money where your fandom is? You read about science, you talk …

One man, one vote – but not necessarily for only one candidate

David Brooks | Monday, November 14, 2011

No offense to Nashua candidates, but the most interesting election in New England last week occurred in Portland, Maine. This isn’t because of the result, …

‘Smart meters’ just a first step toward a smart power grid

David Brooks | Monday, November 7, 2011

While you were sitting in the dark last week, waiting for power to be restored (I was only out two days and can’t complain), wouldn’t …

There’s no plug-and-play way to create ‘gas stations’ for electric cars

David Brooks | Monday, October 24, 2011

The world’s coolest car turns into useless junk the moment it runs out of gas, which explains why a whole bunch of people around the …

Digital privacy, or lack thereof, at next Science Cafe NH on Wednesday

David Brooks | Monday, October 17, 2011

The federal government, it was disclosed last week, wants to scoop up all the various information about us that’s floating around the Internet to create …

Point of order: NH should have a statewide vaccination registry

David Brooks | Monday, October 10, 2011

Part of the appeal of living in New Hampshire is that the state tends to be unique, a square peg amid New England’s round holes. …

New Hampshire dragonfly survey is a source of good news

David Brooks | Monday, October 3, 2011

One of the reasons people dislike environmentalists, I’m convinced, is that they tend to be bearers of bad news, carrying messages that run along the …

Messy but not harmful, webworms show autumn is coming

David Brooks | Monday, September 26, 2011

Before autumn makes our trees beautiful, webworms make them ugly. Some of them, anyway. Although, not so many this year, at least around here. But …

Kids: To vaccinate, or not to vaccinate?

David Brooks | Monday, September 19, 2011

If you’re a parent, you wouldn’t do anything to put your child at risk, would you? Of course not. Except you do, all the time …

Cost of burying power lines would be a shock to customers

David Brooks | Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Tropical Storm Irene didn’t do much in Greater Nashua (thank goodness), but it did provide one lesson: Hauling water from the rain barrel sure beats …

Putting a positive spin on hurricane rotation

David Brooks | Monday, August 29, 2011

As I write this, it’s unclear how bad Hurricane Irene actually affected us, but I assume you’re reading this on Monday morning as you assess …

Nashua panel to discuss our pollution vs. our health

David Brooks | Monday, August 22, 2011

Many years ago, I visited India, a delightful trip that taught me plenty of valuable lessons, including this one: Anti-pollution laws can be our friend. …

Hey, coach, is that pawn to queen four?

David Brooks | Monday, August 15, 2011

Remember all the fuss after the Bruins won the Stanley Cup, celebrating Boston as the first city to win championships in four different sports in …

Alternative regulations test alternative energy

David Brooks | Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Today we have a cautionary tale about an alternative energy technology that holds great hope for New Hampshire. Alas, for the geeks in the audience, …

Like bird watchers for Lepidoptera, they see the butterflies flutter by

David Brooks | Monday, August 8, 2011

We sometimes get things wrong at the Telegraph, and we sometimes hear about it from readers. But in all my years here, I can’t remember …

Could the Nashua River turn into Water Chestnut Way?

David Brooks | Monday, August 1, 2011

A river is forever, right? Not if one of the most prolific weeds in the world has anything to do with it. “Every year the …

By degree, geekiness more attractive

David Brooks | Monday, July 25, 2011

How geeky is New Hampshire? That seems a reasonable question for a New Hampshire newspaper column called Granite Geek to ponder in the dog days …

Simple equation: Less energy, less cost

David Brooks | Monday, July 18, 2011

GraniteGeek fans like numbers, and here’s one that fans who live in Nashua will really like: $7,670,201.51. That is not my salary (alas) – it’s …

This invasion may be happening in your pool

David Brooks | Monday, July 11, 2011

It usually takes finely tuned scientific instruments to keep an eye on Mother Nature and deflect nefarious invaders from entering our realm, but sometimes it …

Lawmakers pushing creationism in schools is a bad idea

David Brooks | Sunday, July 3, 2011

EDITOR’S NOTE: Because the Telegraph is not publishing on Monday, the weekly Granite Geek column is being published today. Two lawmakers are trying to pry …

Progress brings Net result to Mason

David Brooks | Monday, June 27, 2011

This is how you know that broadband Internet is spreading in the area: The Mason Net Cooperative doesn’t exist anymore. “It was just a thing …

Be there as food enters the geek domain

David Brooks | Monday, June 20, 2011

Growing the food we eat used to be straightforward: Other people did it far away – cheaply, adequately and with such globalized productivity that we …

Cheap loans cry for cutting energy bills

David Brooks | Monday, June 13, 2011

Even the biggest Nashua booster has to admit that our sort-of-official nickname “Gate City” doesn’t really sing. I always thought it sounds like something sold …

Expanded Internet getting a trial run

David Brooks | Monday, June 6, 2011

Techy folks aren’t always great at thinking up brand names, which may explain why the biggest change to hit the online world in years carries …

Space fan watches as the shuttle era ends

David Brooks | Sunday, May 29, 2011

EDITOR’S NOTE: Because The Telegraph doesn’t publish on Memorial Day, David Brooks’ Granite Geek column is running in today’s paper. The space shuttle has never …

Unusually wet or dry may become usual

David Brooks | Monday, May 23, 2011

This has been, as you have probably noticed, a really wet spring, with borderline flooding. But last spring, as you may recall, was really dry, …