The funny thing is that the story was written in 1989. You think Utley, an experienced writer, would know to project time travel more than 20 years into his future. Rack it up with “2001″ and a bazillion other science fiction tales that overestimated the speed of certain technological development. (My favorite example: Heinlein’s wonderful “The Door Into Summer” with its super-skilled, all-purpose household cleaning robots, is set in 1987; 21 years after that, the best we can do is a Roomba.)

Eighty-four months have passed since then. That’s 2,555 days and counting. In that span, our carriers have transported approximately 5 billion people and made more than 51 million takeoffs and landings. Yet the crash of Flight 587 was the last large-scale mishap involving a major U.S. carrier — the longest such streak since the advent of the jetliner five decades ago.

The column is written by a commercial pilot, whose viewpoint toward commercial flight is therefore perhaps slightly upbeat - but that’s an impressive feat, worth celebrating amidst all the mess that surrounds flying these days.

(By the way, the stuff about the accident is on the second page of the column.)

Howstuffworks is a great site for answering those nagging questions that we’ve all had. I thought I pretty much knew the answer to this one, but it’s nice having confirmation.

PointCarbon estimates that electricity production in the ten RGGI states wil create 165 million short tons of carbon this year, compared to about 168 million tons last year. That’s way below the 188 million ton cap set by the RGGI auction. - this means there’s less urgency for utilities and others to bid on the credits needed to offset their carbon pollution, which could mean that the price per ton will fall. The first auction, last month, sold out all 12.5 million tons of allowances at a pretty good price of $3.07 a ton - but it was sort of a beta run since many states, including New York and New Hampshire, didn’t participate. Futures prices for the system are holding up so far, but who knows what will happen next month.

The fall in pollution so far this year occurred largely because of a switch from expensive oil to less expensive natural gas; the recent fall of oil prices could reverse that trend.

RGGI is the first mandatory cap-and-trade scheme for electric providers in the U.S., and may be a model for a national program that the Obama administration seems interested in.

On a semi-related note, Salon’s terrific Explainer tackles a question I’ve often wondered: How do you total up a country’s greenhouse-gas emissions?

Out of Town News is a spiffed-up version of the classic newsstand, with newspapers from all over the world and magazines you never heard of. It’s a great place to linger while waiting to attend the Ig Nobels, a bricks-and-mortar indication of how small the world is. And now it’s a bricks-and-mortar indication of the decline of ink on mashed tree pulp.

For those of us whose career has been built around that mashed tree pulp, it’s kind of scary!

The award was given Tuesday night at the New Hampshire High Technology Council’s Product of the Year gala banquet, at the Center of NH Radisson Hotel in Manchester. The products were judged by other NH tech folks according to their innovation, performance, functionality, value and uniqueness, among other attributes.The gala featured Gov. Lynch, and Insight will get to show off in the big display case at the Manchester airport.

The other finalists:

Bradford Networks - NAC Director Guest/Contractor Services (GCS) - network access systems

Dell, Inc. - Dell EqualLogic PS5500- data storage

Eleme Medical Inc. - Smooth Shapes® Systems- removes cellulite

Ensconce Data Technology - Digital Shredder

My Telegraph column today is about two BAE Systems software engineers overseeing a project to create open-source versions of the new controller software for the FIRST robot competition. It’s geek-errific!

West Nile transmission cycle, via New Mexico State University

The Centers for Disease Control has released its 2008 map on West Nile Virus incidents (here) and it confirms that the mosquito-borne disease which worried us 5 years ago has virtually disappeared from northern New England. New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont had no human cases this year, and Maine (which has never had a human case) didn’t even have any infected mosquitoes.

It’s hard to remember the semi-panic that came in 2002 when case numbers spiked in Massachusetts as part of its fast spread through the country. It seemed like West Nile was going to become a part of our life - and it’s still not clear why it faded. It remains a big problem out West.

Here’s a chart I put together of its arrival and disappearance:

YEAR - WEST NILE CASES IN NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND

1999 -  first cases reported in New York City

2000 - NH 0; Mass 0; Vt. 0

2001 - NH 0; Mass 3; Vt. 0

2002 - NH 0; Mass 23; Vt. 1

2003 - NH 3; Mass 17; Vt. 3

2004 - NH 0; Mass 0; Vt. 0

2005 - NH 0; Mass 6; Vt. 0

2006 - NH 0; Mass 3; Vt. 0

2007 - NH 0; Mass 6; Vt. 0

2008 - NH 0; Mass. 0; Vt. 0

(The) Executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority … (is awaiting) the results of a $200,000 study to determine what size of solar installation the roof could support and how much money it might save on electricity.

Two hundred grand to determine how many solar cells you can put on a big flat roof and how much they’ll cost? What in the world makes that so expensive, I wonder?

ADDENDUM: The Mass. governor wants retailers to stick solar panels on their flat roofs.

http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html

I’ve done a quite a bit of power monitoring in my past, using expensive modules and cobbled together parts, displaying the results on a chart recorder. When computers came along, it was still a complicated process with datalogging boards, signal conditioners and custom designed software to give us basic information. But at least, we didn’t have to deal with yards of multichannel recorder paper, rulers and eyeball guesses averaging the center of a noisy signal. The cost of all this gear usually ran to the thousands of dollars and lots of hours dedicated to making it work.

Along comes a new device that makes obsolete all that equipment , packaged in a 3.25 x 5.25 inch molded box with a large LCD readout.  There are actually two little boxes, one that plugs into a convenient outlet near your computer and another that  mounts in your circuit breaker box. The one in breaker box has a couple of clip-on current transformers that slip onto the power leads coming into the house. There are also two power leads that easily connect to supply neutral and a hot lead on any circuit breaker. The current and voltage information are transmitted over the house power lines, so once it’s installed, no other wiring is needed.

The readout is simply plugged in near the computer.

Programming is pretty easy given the detailed Installation and Operations Manual. Everything proceeds in a linear fashion, and the LCD screen only shows the single view you are changing. You will need a recent power bill for energy costs. That’s about it. The unit can be set up for complications such as winter/summer rates, peak power charges and other variables, but for most homeowners, these can be ignored.

www.theenergydetective.com

Now the really nice part. There is a USB port on the side that connects to your computer. Loading the optional software will give you a display for every variable from the reading unit. If you want to see current or accumulated dollars that electrical power is costing you, there it is. Carbon footprint? Average or accumulated power usage? Monthly usage over the past two years? All this and a lot more is right there.

I had a little trouble setting this up but it worked fine after I downloaded the 64 bit version instead of the program that came on the mini-CD. I also had a problem with too many loads in the house that included line filters that sucked out the data on the power line. The large screen hi-def TV had to be put on an isolation transformer to let me read data reliably. I also had to switch the power leads in the breaker panel from one side to the other. I suspect that the TV is an unusual case that wouldn’t be an issue for most people. All these problems were discussed and probable cures suggested in the troubleshooting part of the 38 page manual. The quick start pages will be enough for people, but you can get a lot more into detail if you wish.

So far, I’m happy with it. At $145 for the unit and $45 for the software, I don’t expect everyone will spring for one of these. Still, as an example, knowing that running the entertainment center at 200 watts versus a small radio at 2 watts and seeing the difference in cost over a months time means that this will pay for itself quickly. Just having that display showing money trickling away increases my awareness of what happens when I make the right small decisions.

Buddy, can you spare a battery?

This AP story falls into the “confirming the obvious” category:

The Pew Internet & American Life Project discovered in a survey released yesterday that 15 percent of people who had some piece of technology break down in the previous year were never able to get it repaired. The figure was even higher for certain products. Almost a quarter of cellphone users said they never managed to get their devices fixed. And among those who did resolve an issue, a higher percentage either corrected the problem themselves or sought help from friends or relatives rather than call customer service.

I nod sadly as I gaze at my dead HP-branded iPod mini - Apple won’t replace the dead battery because it’s HP branded, HP doesn’t do it anymore, and I can’t find any third-party folks to do it.

And this is no surprise, as shown in this NY Times article detailing the fact that female participation in computer science departments at colleges has actually declined in recent years, even as women have done better in virtually all other engineering/science fields.

Why, for crying out loud? There’s no obvious reason why programming should drive away women.

The experts in the article are mostly baffled too - the only possible explanation offered is the dominance among programmers of the action-gaming mentality, creating a culture that women don’t like: “Some people in the field still believed that the answer to reversing declining enrollment was building the right game.” That seems ridiculously simplistic to me, but I can’t really offer any alternative ideas.

I’m particularly puzzled since I recently interviewed a woman who is a senior programming engineer at BAE Systems who is helping to revamp the FIRST robotics code. (That will be in my column Wednesday.)

Any ideas, readers?

On a happier note, no chronic wasting disease - a deer/elk variant of “mad cow” - has yet been detected in the state.

Redstone rocket firing in 1961, courtesy Redstone Arsenal (www.redstone.army.mil)

The Redstone rocket - the one that lifted New Hampshire’s  Alan Shepard into suborbit for 15 minutes on May 5, 1961 - looks like a rocket should. It’s not too monstrous, unlike the Saturn V; has no wings, unlike the shuttle; isn’t weird, unlike SpaceShipOne. It seems slightly rickety, as if it was made by ordinary humans in a mad dash to accomplish something wonderful, not by a committee ruled by budgets and OSHA regs. Terrific!

So it’s great that the Christa McAuliffee Planetarium is going to have a replica of Shepard’s carrier installed as part of its expansion into what it’s calling the McAuliffee-Shepard Discovery Center by next March. Monitor story here; Union-leader story here.

Because it’s a replica, though, it’s s not quite as cool as the real Redstone missile - military version, not carrying-humans version - that has been on display in the green of the little town of Warren since 1971. The Cow Hampshire blog explains how it got there.

Start-ups are being hit very hard by the difficulty of raising money. This sort of thing is likely to continue, alas.

From Inknerd tattoo blog

I confess I haven’t been to the Boston Museum of Science in several years, but I might have to go to see the full-size Triceratops skeleton they’ve just installed. Triceratops was my favorite dinosaur back when I was of an age that had favorite dinosaurs … those three horns are so cool! ( I never liked them enough to get a tattoo like that one!)

Speaking of cool, the Globe has a very cool time lapse on the assembly of the skeleton, including the 800-pound skull,  with their article. The only thing lacking is a Mack Sennett soundtrack.

Speaking of dinosaurs, while looking for a free triceratops-skeleton picture I stumbled across the Creation Museum Web site - and their “If dinosaurs could talk” page is just too good not to read.  Here’s a taste:

“Yes, sir! When Adam named all the beasts of the field, it was easy for him to name the dinosaur families, too. There are probably only about sixty actual ‘kinds.’” Most people think that T. rex has always been a meat eater. At the Creation Museum, guests will learn the truth about his original diet.

Photo couresty PSNH. The Merrimack Station power plant in Bow includes fountains that are part of the system used to reduce the temperature of cooling water prior to release into the Merrimack River.

Remember that backwards fight over installing big, expensive scrubbers to reduce mercury emissions at the state’s dirtiest power plant? As I and others reported, environmentalists said the scrubbers sholdn’t be installed (because the money should be spent on alternative energy, not on coal power) while the utility, PSNH, said they should - because it needs the plant to meet customer demand (coal power is cheap to make).

Well, the work can go ahead as planned: The state’s Public Utilities Commission said yesterday that it has no authority to block it, because the work was mandated by the legislature. Serious work is set to begin in the spring on the huge installation, which includes a water-treatment plant to keep stuff out of the Merrimack River.

This isn’t news, in a way. The health effects of small particles in the air has long been known (the EPA is cracking down, belatedly, on particulate emissions) so it makes sense to worry about really really small particles - some so small that they might evade the protections that our bodies have developed through evolution. But living systems are much harder to understand than chemical/physical systems, so it’s not surprising that, as the story warns, “Knowledge about the potential health and environmental impacts of nanomaterials lags significantly behind the pace of innovation.” Not surprising, but perhaps worrisome.

My Telegraph column today looks a little more closely at the FCC’s decision to allow parts of the freed-up TV spectrum to be used for wireless broadband, especially in rural areas. Executive Summary: The equipment exists but the rules are still being drawn up, and what will come of it is still unclear.

As the Keene Sentinel noted yesterday, a lot of rural areas are still looking for broadband even in southern NH.