http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek Granite Geek Blog from The Telegraph of Nashua en-us dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com (David Brooks) onlineeditor@nh.com (OnlineEditor) http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/961486-440/steampunk-convention-coming-to-nashua-june-8-10.html Years ago I attended King Richard's Faire down in Mass., one of those "re-enacting ancient times while selling you stuff" events built around Renaissance-era life. It was fun, but hasn't drawn us back. A vaguely similar, although smaller, event is coming to Nashua, this one built around steampunk, the alternative Victoria Era genre that has become a major force in science fiction. Could be interesting. Here's an advance from The Telegraph, which is a little light on details. The website for the event is supposed to be here, but it's down at the moment. Sun, 20 May 2012 10:46:18 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/961330-440/flies-to-control-weeds-lead-to-more.html My previous post mentioned an example of a nice-sounding biocontrol of invasive species and how it can fail, which I learned from this week's Science Cafe. Here's another tale that is particularly interesting because the unintended consequence is so off-the-wall. It was told to us by post-doctoral fellow Jeff Evans of Dartmouth. A gall fly that eats the seeds of a nasty invasive called spotted knapweed was released in Montana in the 1970s. It sounded like a perfect biocontrol, and it sort of worked. Fri, 18 May 2012 08:51:00 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/961175-440/giant-mutant-carp-are-alas-not-an.html Excellent Science Cafe last night about invasive species. I thought I knew all about the subject, which I have written about many times, but I learned plenty. Notable were two tales of how biocontrol can go wrong. Here's the first - I need to nail down details of the second, so it will come later: Variable milfoil, as I'm sure you know, is an invasive weed that can rapidly turn ponds into green goop. Thu, 17 May 2012 08:41:00 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960982-440/red-sox-pitching-great-curt-schilling-is.html Boston loves Curt Schilling, the former Red Sox pitching of "bloody sock" fame, but Rhode Island might be getting a little wary about him. Deadspin, among varous places, reports that Schilling's video-game company called 38 Studios (after his uniform number) doesn't look too promising, despite taking a $75 million loan from that state. Here's the story. An interesting tidbit: Last year Schilling told Reuters that he had invested "$30 million to $35 million" in 38 Studios. A disclosure filing obtained by WPRI shows that Schilling advanced the company $4 million of his own money, and has already been paid back—with funds from the Rhode Island loan. Wed, 16 May 2012 15:22:37 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960957-440/mass.-wants-to-shut-wind-turbine-because.html An interesting wind-power development in Massachusetts. As the Boston Globe reports (read it here), the " state Department of Environmental Protection, in a long-awaited response to Falmouth residents’ complaints about noise from two turbines, released a report Tuesday finding that one turbine less than 1,500 feet from the nearest home repeatedly exceeded allowable noise levels." Two turbines in Falmouth, at the wastewater treatment facility, produce about 3 megawatts of power at maximum output. They were built three years ago. One is going to shut down, the other only operate during the day. The Globe quotes an official saying "There are other turbines operating in residential areas, which have not led to similar complaints. Wed, 16 May 2012 15:22:36 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960953-440/invasive-plants-practical-and-theoretical-are-the.html The latest free, wickedly intellectual Science Cafe New Hampshire is tonight (Wednesday, May 16) at 7 p.m. in The Barley House on Main Street in Concord, across from the Statehouse. (Don't shout "seig heil.") The topic is invasive plants and we have folks from the practical side, including a Conservation Commission member who has been yanking up milfoil from a local pond for years, and the theoretical, including a guy who does mathematical modeling of populations to find their weak points. (I wrote about him Monday.) It should be interesting. Wed, 16 May 2012 08:43:00 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960859-440/ships-leave-nh-harber-to-keep-an.html From the Portsmouth Herald: The Liberty Star and Freedom Star left the Port of New Hampshire early Tuesday morning, headed out to sea for this weekend’s SpaceX launch. Both NASA ships left port around 8 a.m. and will head to different support locations in the North Atlantic to help document the upcoming mission, according to Kathy Barnstorff, media relations specialist for NASA. The teams aboard the two NASA ships are preparing to capture high-definition video and thermal imagery of the SpaceX launch, which involves a Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon capsule climbing through the atmosphere en route to the space station. SpaceX, as I'm sure you know, is trying to be the first private spacecraft to make it to the space station. Its launch has been delayed, but should happen later this week. The Russians just launched a three-man team to the space station. Tue, 15 May 2012 13:04:00 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960781-440/why-is-hitler-rather-than-stalin-the.html A local high school had some minor online vandalism yesterday, as we reported (calling it a "prank" rather than fussing about hate speech or finding one person to criticize it so we could put "community outrage" in the headline, which would give it way too much gravitas). The prank involved putting a picture of Hitler on a Facebook page that looked like the school's official page - it was actually a "community" page, which can be created by almost anybody. Somebody also dumped the Hitler picture on the school's Wikipedia page around midnight (labelling it "school mascot"). The Wikipedia change was undone almost immediately, and Facebook removed the Hitler picture within a few hours of our reporting on it. This led me to ponder something, however: Why is it always Hitler? Why not Stalin? Josef Stalin who was just as horrible a human and caused the deaths of at least as many people as Hitler, and the gulag system was as mind-numbingly, deliberately awful as the Holocaust. So why doesn't Godwin's Law , which says that any Internet conversation invariably degrades into comparisons with Hitler, also cover Stalin? There are other awful folks in history which could be cited, of course: Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Caligula, but they're not as well known or are historically distant. Tue, 15 May 2012 13:27:14 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960763-440/governments-might-be-unsure-about-the-value.html The White Mountain National Forest says more than $10,000 worth of solar panels and related components were stolen from campground and recreation sites along the Kancamagus Highway over the winter, according to the Associated Press. Spokswoman Tiffany Benna was quoted as saying thefts along the scenic highway through the White Mountains have included eight 2-by-4-foot panels; three 12-volt electrical panels; charge controllers; inverters; and deep cycle batteries. The items were taken between October and March. The solar systems provide electricity for lights and exhaust fans. They also provide water for campgrounds and bathroom facilities at forest recreation sites. Mon, 14 May 2012 15:15:00 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960665-440/do-it-yourself-solar-power-these-solar-panels-can.html SpinRay Energy has developed a system that lets consumers install up to five solar panels and plug them into an outdoor power outlet. People can install one panel at a time, and get up to 1,000 watts of power with five installed. It costs $1,100, each panel I think. So says the story from Cnet; click here to read more. Caution is required. As the story notes, other companies have made similar promises without following through. Mon, 14 May 2012 14:54:46 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960497-440/volunteers-find-dragonflies-18000-times---including.html Last October I wrote about the nearly finished New Hampshire Dragonfly Survey, a citizen-science project in which volunteers gamboled through the state's woods, fields and riverbeds, carrying bug-catching nets and counting the types of dragonflies they snagged or spotted. Now the survey is finished, reports New Hampshire Fish & Game. Roughly 100 volunteers collected "more than 18,000 records" of insects of the order Odonata, which means dragonflies and damselflies. They found 157 of thw 162 species known to live in the state. They aren't finished, said Fish and Game in a press release: "two volunteers kicked of the season in style by finding emerging Hudsonian Whitefaces in southeastern New Hampshire on April 4 – fully 10 days earlier than any previous record of any dragonfly in the state. Fri, 11 May 2012 15:37:01 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960391-440/volunteers-needed-to-track-evapotranspiration---the.html I am a volunter with CoCoRaHS (Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, Snow network), which means I measure precipitation every morning and post it at this site. The network is trying is to gather enough fine-grained, real-time precipitation data that quick predictions can be made about flooding. When I joined a couple of years ago, I was told they wanted one volunteer every square mile. That would require 9,350 volunteers in New Hampshire alone; I think we have 100 or so, which is still lots of real-time data. I mention this because CoCoRaHS (yes, it's a goofy acronym, but what can you do?) wants to start a cool new project: Measuring evapotranspiration, the "up" side of the water cycle. Fri, 11 May 2012 14:54:48 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960301-440/a-calico-lobster-need-i-say-more.html (Apparently it's non-mammal day at GraniteGeek.) I haven't visited the New England Aquarium in years, but I may have to take a jaunt down to Boston one of these days. They've received a calico-colored lobster! More description here. The lobster was caught off Winterport, Maine; it isn't on display at the moment, but might be down the road. They're much rarer than blue lobsters (although not as rare as white lobsters). The aquarium in Boston says roughly 1 out of every 30 million lobsters are calico. I now have Michael Nesmith's (non-Monkee) song "Me and My Calico Girlfriend" in my head, but that's OK because it's a great song. Thu, 10 May 2012 12:43:00 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960272-440/turtle-with-boys-initials-shows-up-in.html Great story out of Pennsylvania about a guy walking in his woods who found an eastern box turtle, turned it over, and recognized it: His son has carved his initials into the carpace 47 years earlier! Turtles are so cool. This species can easily live to be 100. Here's the story, from the Pittsburgh CBS affiliate. Thu, 10 May 2012 12:26:34 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960172-440/last-12-months-were-warmest-on-record.html The year from May 2011 through April 2012 was the warmest 12 consecutive months ever recorded in New Hampshire, as well as the warmest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States, meaning the lower 48 states. The record high temperature for a 12-month stretch was made not only in New Hampshire but all the other New England states plus New York and New Jersey, as well as most of the Upper Midwest. All in all, 22 states broke cumulative temperature records during that period. The record covers the 117 years of data measured by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the department which contains the National Weather Service. The 12-month period from May 2011 through April 2012 included the second hottest summer on record, fourth warmest winter and warmest-ever March for the lower 48 states. The 12-month running average temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 55.7 degrees Fahrenheit, 2.8 degrees above the 20th-century average. The hot stretch was no anomaly, either. All 10 of the warmest 12-month periods on record have occurred since 1999 (although, admittedly, that includes a lot of overlapping time periods). Wed, 09 May 2012 16:19:00 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960168-440/working-for-the-electric-company---in.html Whatever you think of the state's biggest electric utility, PSNH, you've got to love its Tumblr feed of historic photos, called Shoebox. I include one above because it's just great. Anybody else out there remember Diver Dan? That stupid song is going through my head now ... Wed, 09 May 2012 15:20:57 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/960099-440/technology-is-good-until-it-makes-you.html There has been a long-running debate in the White Mountains about how cell phones make some hikers careless, because they think they can easily call for help. This is hardly unique to the Whites - similar debates about false sense of security occurs in many wilderness areas - but it's particularly acute in New Hampshire's signature mountain range, which has always been notable in its ability to lure the unprepared. The Whites relatively close to cities, which makes them easy for newbies to get to, and their unusual weather patterns make it easy for dangerously bad weather to sneak up on you. It's routine to be sweating in a sunny parking lot, where those "worst weather in the world" signs look ridiculous, and within a bare two hours of uphill hiking to be facing hyperthermia conditions. The Union-Leader has a story today about a particularly fed-up rescue worker hoping that the book is thrown at a hiker whose lack of preparedness forced nine people, many of them volunteers, to stay out on Mount Madison from late at night until 4 a.m. Here's the whole story. Wed, 09 May 2012 10:48:26 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/959993-440/insert-dog-poop-get-free-wifi--.html Mexico City is testing, or at least fiddling with, a system in which people in public parks place their dog poop in a special bin, leading to a set amount of time of free WiFi. At first I thought the poop was being used as a biofuel to power the WiFi, but I think this is just an incentive to have people clean up after their dogs. Either way, it's weirdly clever. Here's the full story, which includes a funny video. Tue, 08 May 2012 10:24:00 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/959930-440/new-hampshires-vaccination-rate-is-high-good.html My Telegraph column today discusses immunization, focusing on a minor whooping-cough outbreak last fall in the state. The outbreak faded, probably due to the state's high rate of childhood vaccination, but the fact that it showed up at all, and mostly in vaccinated children, is a sign that defeating diseases is complicated. In this case, whooping cough (pertussis) appears to be evolving a strain which can overcome vaccine-produced antibodies more quickly that we're used to. As a result, the disease can re0emerge before kids get their booster shot at age 11. Clever process, that evolution! For more details, including (at last count) 11 anti-vaccination comments by a Texas guy whose Facebook handle is AntiVax, read it here, in all its verbal glory. Mon, 07 May 2012 14:17:00 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/granitegeek/959893-440/nuke-of-the-north-quebec-has-a.html Everybody - well, most people - knows about the situation at Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which is trying to get its license renewed despite state opposition, and many people know that Pilgrim Station south of Boston is trying to get its license renewed as well, facing less but still non-zero opposition. Then there's New Hampshire's Seabrook Station, whose 40-year license doesn't run out for more than a decade but is trying to get it extended anyway because it don't want to be left out of the fun. Until last weekend, however, I didn't know about another controversial nuclear plant not far from New Hampshire: Gentilly-2 Nuclear Station in Quebec, about halfway between Quebec City and Montreal on the south bank of the St. Lawrence seaway. Mon, 07 May 2012 10:12:36 EST