I missed advance notice of the Conference on Clean Energy in Boston, which wound up yesterday, but fortunately Cnet was there. They have a slide-show report on lots of entrepreneurs with lots of breakthrough technologies (tidal power, crankshaft-free diesel motor, hydrogen from water, etc.) that need lots of investment before anybody can tell wheat from [...]

Entomologists in Maine have released Laricobius nigrinus, a little beetle used elsewhere in an attempt to control the voracious wooly adelgid as it attacks our hemlocks, reports Maine’s biggest newspaper. The adelgid is a big, big problem and has already made it to a few places in New Hampshire.

Presidential politics, software and allegations of impropriety - sounds like a GraniteGeek natural: Wired reports that a researcher says Ron Paul’s campaign is benefitting from spam sent out by zombie PCs. And you thought the phone-jamming controversy was bad!
Paul is a Libertarian-ish Republican who has gotten major buzz online and surprisingly large donations as a [...]

To a very minor extent, anyway, says Slate: "Let’s be optimistic and assume you shave 15 percent off of your annualgas consumption (by using a manual transmission). The Department of Energy estimates that the averageAmerican driver uses 500 gallons of gas per year, so we’re talkingabout a reduction of 75 gallons. Since a gallon of [...]

I’m old enough not to get indignant about it any more, but it’s that time of year when newspapers drop their professional skepticism and run blather about locals who see "ghosts" - in photos taken at cemeteries or at local inns. I can attest from my many years with local papers that every restaurant, [...]

That’s the request of a guest writer at the Washington Post. Part of his suggestion: "Not knowing the questions in advance would force them tostudy as much science as possible, and this in itself would be amarvelous thing. However, a statement would be read at the startstating that no one expects politicians to understand every [...]

That’s one quickie estimate by an expert, who put this order-of-magnitude dollar figure on the state’s woodlands, if its carbon-sink characteristics could be traded on carbon markets.
Happily, the Free-Press article includes hiscalculations (if only more reporters followed suit - well done, Candace Page):
"His math ran like this: Assume one-quarter ofVermont’s 11 million acres [...]

As the FairPoint / Verizon hearings get going again - they’ll last most of this week, too - the Union-Leader reports that FairPoint’s plans to expand broadband with various flavors of DSL over copper lines is the most prudent and speediest method of expanding high-speed Internet to under-served areas of New Hampshire, including the Upper [...]

Swiss drug maker Novartis went for the southeast Asian city-state rather than our neighbor to the south, reports the Globe, for no single reason. Novartis already has 1,500 employees in Cambridge.

This is unlikely to replace the stick-built home, but here’s a story about a "dome" house in Vermont made by inflating a shell, then coating it with concrete to create a sort of upended egg cup shape that is then turned into a 2,000-square-foot home. The story claims fabulous energy efficiency, which is de reigeur [...]

I performed my annual pilgrimage to the Siegars’ monster trebuchet, Yankee Siege, in Greenfield yesterday: (Previous blog about the 55-foot-tall, 40,000-pound behemoth here) They’ve really jazzed the place up - the "castle", built out of used oil tanker sections, is now painted in very clever ways. I almost expected some Disney animatronic robots to appear.
Good [...]

Sometimes I read the ads in magazines and newspapers that just drive me up the wall. The worst of these are the so-called “Miracle Heaters” that use electric elements to supposedly reduce your heating bills by a ‘ton’, another ill-defined factor.
One ad in a recent Telegraph claims an amazing 5119 BTU, yet uses less energy [...]

The Union-Leader has a big report today on music-downloading lawsuits against students at Dartmouth College, UNH and Keene Stage. It says 28 suits from the RIAA have been settled. From the story: "UNH officials said they do not turn any names over to anyone unless theuniversity first received a subpoena from a music company filing [...]

Today GraniteGeek starts a new weekly feature: Shareware Report, by Bill Dubie and Dave Sciuto. Readers of the Sunday Telegraph, the Lowell Sun, and other newspapers in the region have been seeing their weekly look at software’s most intriguing neighborhood for a decade; now we can, too. It’ll be here most Sundays, so check it [...]

No surprises from a Vermont commission looking at how the state can fight climate change, as reported by AP: It says the state should "expand energy efficiency programs, support renewable energy, and teamup with its colleges and universities to develop a ‘green economy’." I think a similar commission would make the same recommendations to virtually [...]