The Viking Tir leaves Vienna this afternoon for Budapest, which will be featured in my blog tomorrow.  Today.  I'll instead post a sci-tech article which usually appears on Wednesdays. I regularly report on information provided by the American Energy Society.  While this society promotes energy, it tries to protect the environment, and attempts to curb global warming is an important goal. This year, the  AES writer of the year is Rosanna Xia . Her works offers new ways for us to think about resiliency and our relationship with the environment. Xia is an environmental reporter for the  Los Angeles Times . She wrote an award-winning 2023 book,  California Against the Sea . This year, she released  Out of Plain Sight,  a documentary film about the half a million barrels of toxic waste that were quietly dumped into the ocean decades ago, just off the coast of Los Angeles. I haven't read her book, nor seen her documentary, but understand from wh...

 Vienna:  Early on was a Celtic settlement, and became Roman in the first century AD.  Has a metro population of 2.9 million, nearly one-third the population of Austria and the 5th largest city in Europe. Lies on the Danube, on the eastern edge of the Vienna Woods. 582 miles from Amsterdam and 152 miles from Budapest.  7616 miles from Honolulu. I was first in Vienna nearly a decade ago  and toured Shonbrunn Palace (above--a stop you should make if you ever get here), hearing about Maria Theresa who once lived there, and a person I claimed to be the  Most Extraordinary Female in History.   Why? Was active around the time of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Blond, blue-eyed and short, at the age of 23, pregnant with her fourth child, her father, Emperor Charles VI (right) of the House of Hapsburg, suddenly died. The emperor not having a son, Maria Theresa became the first female ruler of the empire, which included Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemi...

  The  Dow Jones Industrial Averag e gained 0.4% on Friday, and broke its all-time high, rising 189 to 44,911.  The S&P 500 also got to a record high, increasing 0.6%. Donald Trump is also on a roll .  Amazon has a wide assortment. I go to the Orient a lot, and the  dollar to yen exchange rate the past year has been great .  Up to 160 yen/dollar.  Today, still a good 150 yen to the U.S. $. I'm in Europe, and the $ to Euro rate is now close to parity. Well, not quite today, for you need to pay $1.05 to the Euro..  But equality occurred in 2022 after a period of 20 years, and remains in this range.  So both Europe and Japan are good places to visit these days to get value for your dollar if you live in the USA.  Unfortunately, this good fortune does not work the other way around for those in Japan and Europe Okay, the Viking Tir was repaired, I think, and we are on our way to Melk, Austria.  A few photos.  Last night we had ...