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...

  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 ...

The Viking Tir is now on the Danube River, the final leg that started with the Rhine River, then the Main River, and onto the  Rhine-Main-Danube Canal  (106-mile long connection completed in 1992) with 16 locks).   The Danube is the second-longest river in Europe, 1051 miles in length, after the Volga River in Russia, from the Black Forest into the Black Sea. Flows through 10 countries, including Ukraine (border with Romania). The river water is opaque and greenish-brown.   In other words, the Danube is NOT blue.   You might see photos of what looks like a blue Danube, but that is more a reflection of the blue sky. The  most polluted is the Ganges River in India , with the Mississippi at #5. Rivers all pick up soils from land, and man-made waste, so the water color reflects the mineral content. But the Danube is beautiful, matched with gorgeous surroundings. There are  four Danubes  flowing through Vienna, called Old Danube, New Dan...