Vapors Rising Released this Month

A good friend of mine has published his first novel, Vapors Rising, this month and can be found on Amazon.  He and I both are familiar with the quaint city of Hot Springs, AR and he has written a very interesting story blending fiction with a lot of real events and places.  The details are amazing and there is a good bit of humor.  Check it out in paperback or Kindle edtion.

Deepfake-Busting Apps Can Spot Even a Single Pixel Out of Place

This technology may be able to determine whether a photo has been altered from its original. I think this has been a needed tool for a long time.  Read about it here.

12 Mind-Bending Perceptual Illusions

Check this out.

USS Sturgis Ready for the Scrap Yard

I worked on the project performing MARSAME surveys on the USS Sturgis for the past several months.  This bit of history from WW-II and then the late 1960s to mid-1970s was an amazing vessel.  She was modified in the late 1960s and it is told that as a teenager, Jimmy Buffett worked on the conversion of the ship.  It was used in the Panama Canal Zone as a floating 10 MW power plant until 1977 and was towed back to the shipyard in Virginia.  The decontamination work was done in the Port of Galveston beginning in the spring of 2015 and was finished in August of this year.

WW-I Documentary by Peter Jackson

By the end of October, famed Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson will release an amazing documentary based on film clips from various sources on World War I.  The frames per second of the films have been enhanced using a computer algorithm, color has been added, and sound added. Jackson used lip reading experts to decipher what filmed individuals were speaking.  It is an amazing piece of work.

This blog format does not take advantage of the widescreen video format, so I recommend that you go to the Mail Online site to get a better view and to also read the article.  Click here.

Here is another clip:

Fukushima Tainted Wine in California

Radioactive fallout from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant on the north east coast of Japan crossed the Pacific ocean and settled on the vineyards of the California wine country and sample collected in recent years show about 2 times as much radioactive cesium (a fission product) as detected before the 2011 disaster.  Not that is in no measurable way harmful.  There is probably much less fission product activity today compared to the peak of the atmospheric nuclear weapons testing performed by the USA and USSR back in the 50's and early 60's.  Click here for an article in The Health Edge.  To view the report compiled by French scientists, click here.

Ektachrome Film - It's Back!

Well this is a pleasant surprise.  Kodak has revived production of Ektachrome 35-mm film.  Good thing I didn't pitch my Canon AE-1 system.  I also still have my Minolta DiMage Scan Dual III high resolution slide scanner.  Click here for the story in Popular Mechanics.  I just wish Kodak would consider bringing back Kodachrome, but that is probably asking too much.

USS Sturgis Barge is Headed to the Scrapyard

After almost 41 months, the decontamination & decommissioning cleanup project has been completed for the USS Sturgis in Slip 41 in the Port of Galveston.  The tugboats began the journey early in the morning of September 25, 2018.  Click here to read the article from the Houston Chronicle.

Cheap Alloy Cleans Polluted Water in Minutes

Scientists from "Down Under" have developed a novel way to clean up polluted water with an inexpensive metal alloy.  For more information, click here.

Mystery Meteor Explodes Above US Military Base with 2.1 kt of Force

It is amazing that this story has not been more widely reported.  The event happened on July 25, 2018 and the USAF has said nothing.  My question is did the tracking infrastructure see this hours or days before the event?  If not, some tweaking of the system is needed.  But of course, there is not much that can be done about an impending impact.

Ad Astra Rocket Company's Versimir Plasma Rocket Engine Update

Apollo 11 Landing from PDI to Touchdown

Yesterday was the 49th anniversary of the day that the Apollo 11 Astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, lifted off the Moon's surface in the upper stage of the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM).  This video documents in detail, the decent and landing on July 20, 1969.  It is rather dramatic, as I remember it, although I don't remember these details.  I believe the TV commentators were talking over a lot of these transmissions.

Nobody Lives Here

 Unpopulated U.S. Census Blocks are illustrated here.  Click here to see a larger version of the map.

Hypatia, The Most Mysterious Stone in the Solar System

SpaceX's Secret Payload on the Falcon Heavy

                                                                                                             (Photo from SpaceX) 
Backing up humanity's data and sending into orbit in the solar system was not mentioned initially in news releases on the launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy payload.  Chick out the details here.

Breakthrough in Desalination of Water

This report in phys.org describes a big breakthrough in a more efficient and sustainable way to filter salt and metal ions from water.  This method could significantly lower costs of environmental cleanup for the mining industry.  This might also be an alternative process for collection lithium for the demands of battery production.

The sound of the Falcon Heavy at liftoff and booster landing.