Major advance in chocolate manufacturing

 

This is REALLY big news.

Don't let the fact that it's about chocolate fool you. It would mark a major change in chocolate agriculture and production.

Have Swiss scientists made a chocolate breakthrough?

"They say traditional chocolate production, using only the beans, involves leaving the rest of the cocoa fruit – the size of a pumpkin and full of nutritious value - to rot in the fields.

The key to the new chocolate lies in its very sweet juice, which tastes, Mr Mishra explains, "very fruity, a bit like pineapple".

This juice, which is 14% sugar, is distilled down to form a highly concentrated syrup, combined with the pulp and then, taking sustainability to new levels, mixed with the dried husk, or endocarp, to form a very sweet cocoa gel.

The gel, when added to the cocoa beans to make chocolate, eliminates the need for refined sugar."

Cocoa fruit broken open: 

This article actually has a diagram of how the new process works.

 Swiss scientists invent a new type of chocolate

I don't like this idea

 

According to the following article, the mayor of Paris wants to leave the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower.

In a word, non.

Eiffel Tower Will Keep Olympic Rings Permanently, Mayor Says

"Mayor Anne Hidalgo said that it was a “beautiful idea” to combine a quintessentially French icon, the Eiffel Tower, which was originally built for the 1889 World’s Fair, with a global one. The five interlaced rings of blue, red, yellow, black and green, which represent the different continents, were installed this summer between the tower’s first and second floors, more than 200 feet above the ground."

This is what I think. It's the Eiffel Tower, not the Olympic Eiffel Tower. The tower is a symbol of Paris without the rings, not with them. 

Well, it turns out that news moves fast. The rings came down, but the mayor still wants to put a set of rings on the tower to commemorate the games. The new rings will be smaller, according to the proposal. 

Workers take down Olympic rings from Eiffel Tower – for now

"Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has promised to build new Olympic rings and return them to the landmark as a tribute to the hugely successful Olympic Games held in July and August.

The proposition has been criticised by descendants of the tower's designer Gustave Eiffel, as well as conservation groups and many Parisians.

After initially suggesting the rings should be permanent, Hidalgo has proposed they remain on the city's best-known symbol until the next Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028."

If they do get rings, they will be lighter, smaller, and paid for by the International Olympic Committee.

But what's the point?  They had the Games, they renovated the stadiums, built a new pool and other venues -- that's the lasting impact of the Games. They don't have to remind everyone how great they were.

In other words:  don't F with success.

If you wanted more to worry about

 

Just passing on this story about the debt crisis in many African nations. It might help distract from Israel crushing Gaza like stepping a bag of potato chips and bombing with the goal of killing identified human targets. Not exactly kosher.

But let's get into debt; actually the subject of debt in African nations.

Africa’s Debt Crisis Has ‘Catastrophic Implications’ for the World

Except 1:

"It [the debt crisis] leaves less money for investments that could create jobs for what is the youngest, fastest-growing population on the planet; less money to manage potential pandemics like Covid or mpox; less money to feed, house and educate people; less money to combat the devastating effects of climate change, which threaten to make swaths of land uninhabitable and force people to migrate.

If nothing is done to help countries manage the financial crunch, “a wave of destabilizing debt defaults will end up severely undermining progress on the green transition, with catastrophic implications for the entire world,” warned a new report from the Finance for Development Lab at the Paris School for Economics and Columbia University’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue."

Excerpt 2:

"Countries that borrow more than they can afford end up experiencing intense economic and social pain as output crashes, employment dries up, and inflation and poverty rise. The systemic problem, said Indermit Gill, chief economist at the World Bank, is that lenders who also made bad decisions by extending too much credit often don’t pay a financial penalty."

OK, that's not good. Also, the political and social instability that high debt causes is really bad. 

Here's more:  Africa's Debt Crisis Explained

Now back to the Middle East.

Lighthouse of the Week, September 22-28, 2024: Angel's Gate (Los Angeles Harbor), California, USA

 

Continuing in my series of lighthouses near the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, CA, I'm going with the appropriately named Angel's Gate Lighthouse, which guards the entrance/exit of Los Angeles Harbor. It's truly one-of-a-kind; as the Lighthouse Directory notes below, it is the only one of its kind remaining.

Now, clearly you know it's near Los Angeles, but it lies at the end of a very long breakwater, as you will see in both the map and satellite view (if you switch to satellite and zoom in), in the location map here.

So now I'll go to the Lighthouse Directory, and then add links to other sites below that.

"1913. Active; focal plane 73 ft (22 m); green flash every 15 s. 69 ft (21 m) cylindrical steel and concrete tower rising from an octagonal concrete base, all on a concrete crib; DCB-24 aerobeacon. Lighthouse painted white with narrow vertical black stripes, lantern and gallery black; concrete base is white. Continuously operating fog horn (2 blasts every 30 s). The original 4th order clamshell Fresnel lens is on display at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in San Pedro. ... This is the only surviving lighthouse of its type. ... Located at the end of the San Pedro Harbor breakwater about 1/2 mile (800 m) east of Point Fermin. Accessible only by boat. Ferries to Santa Catalina pass the lighthouse while departing San Pedro."

 Angels Gate Lighthouse (SanPedro.com)

Los Angeles Harbor (Angel's Gate), CA  (Lighthouse Friends)

First, a very short video during a boat-by; then pictures, including the 4th order clamshell Fresnel lens. 

Impressed by the technology

 

Let's go back in history for a moment;  in 79 A.D., the massive Plinian eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy -- so named because Pliny the Younger described it and Pliny the Elder, the younger's uncle, perished in it -- buried Pompeii in ash and buried Herculaneum under a pyroclastic flow.  This resulted in the remarkable preservation of homes and other buildings in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and as noted, even the various fates of the unfortunate victims have been determined by their skeletal remains and even casts of the shape that was left in the ash that buried them.

Until very recently (last month), one thing that I didn't know about at all was the Herculaneum scrolls, also called the Herculaneum papyri.  From the article that I'm going to link to, here's the description of what they are:

"According to Smithsonian Magazine, “In the 18th century, workmen employed by King Charles III of Spain, then in charge of much of southern Italy, discovered the remains of a magnificent villa, thought to have belonged to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus (known as Piso), a wealthy statesman and the father-in-law of Julius Caesar. The luxurious residence had elaborate gardens surrounded by colonnaded walkways and was filled with beautiful mosaics, frescoes, and sculptures. And in what was to become one of the most frustrating archaeological discoveries ever, the workmen also found approximately 2,000 papyrus scrolls.”

Why is it frustrating? Because the intense heat of the pyroclastic flow cooked them better than a burnt steak.  But though they look like what bad boys and girls get in their Christmas stocking, there's still writing on them. That writing could be read, if there was a way to unroll the scrolls without turning them into a pile of little black burned papyrus fragments. 

Here's what both the wrapped and unwrapped scrolls look like.

This is where the the impressive technology comes in.

Unwrapping The Herculaneum Papyri With Infrared, Imaging, And AI

I can't excerpt everything that's in this article, so you'll have to read it, if you are so inclined.  But to summarize, this impressive technology has been successful.  The excerpt below describes why this is just a first step, and given what's said below, one might wonder if money at the level being discussed might potentially be better spent on something that's more societally concerning, such as climate change.

But archaeologists are people too, with jobs, and it's OK for them to be employed.

"According to the Vesuvius Challenge, two key technical problems need to be solved: segmentation at scale and scanning at scale. “The current bottleneck is tracing the papyrus surface inside the scan of the scroll,” Vesuvius Challenge writes. “Currently, we use manual tracing aided by various algorithms. This is quite expensive – about $100 per square centimeter. We spent about $200,000 so far to trace enough material to read the fifteen partial columns of text that were revealed in 2023.”

The Herculaneum scrolls present a significant challenge due to their size and the costs associated with unrolling them. Full scrolls measure between 10 to 20 centimeters in width and can reach lengths of up to 15 meters. Current techniques for unrolling these scrolls are prohibitively expensive, costing between $1 to $5 million per scroll.

With approximately 300 scrolls to decipher, the total cost could easily exceed hundreds of millions. Additionally, some sections of the scrolls are so compressed that current methods cannot unroll them at all."

But that's not all!

"The second challenge – scanning at scale – needs to be met because “each scan currently requires the use of a particle accelerator in England and conservator-supervised transportation of the scrolls two at a time from Naples in custom-made 3D-printed cases. This costs about $40k/scroll with current techniques and is also subject to the availability of beam time,” writes the Vesuvius Challenge. “The total cost to scan all 300 scrolls could be $30M with current techniques (at current prices).” "

So it is indeed impressive technology, and clearly one of the challenges is significantly reducing the costs. But a lot of people love a challenge. 

Cleaning up the big lake, maybe

 

Lake Okeechobee, the really large lake in southern Florida, is a vital resource for the environment of much of the Everglades, as well as a freshwater source. It's also used for recreation and fishing. The problem is, it's also used as a place to receive runoff from all the agriculture taking place north of it, meaning that it gets way too much nutrient input, which has led to algal blooms, sometimes of the toxic variety.

So now the Army Corps of Engineers, which has been engineering changes to the water flow all over southern Florida for decades, is going to try to reverse some of those changes to make the lake and the ecosystem healthier.

New Lake Okeechobee Plan Aims for More Water for the Everglades, Less Toxic Algae

Instead of prioritizing flood control above all else, the strategy is designed to balance all the needs of the watershed. “This plan marks a cultural shift on the part of the Army Corps of Engineers.

"Now that a $1.8 billion rehabilitation of the dike is complete, the Army Corps will have more flexibility to hold more water in the lake, reducing the harmful discharges [of water with toxic algae]. It is the first time a lake plan has acknowledged the risk of toxic algae or recognized the need to send more water south for the Everglades, said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, an advocacy group. Her group said the plan allows for releases when the lake level climbs above 16.5 to 17 feet.

“Acknowledgement does not always equate to action,” she said. “There are no guarantees we will be protected from harmful discharges.”

The Everglades Foundation, another advocacy group, estimated the releases east to the St. Lucie River will decrease by 75 percent, and discharges west to the Caloosahatchee River will decline by 60 percent. Flows south to the Everglades will increase by 242 percent.

A more robust Lake Okeechobee means better water supply for the vast sugar cane and vegetable fields south of the lake. But the higher water does represent a drawback for the lake itself. Decades of pollution have clouded the lake’s once-crystalline water, and when the water is too deep, less sunlight can reach the vegetation undulating beneath the surface. The vegetation supports the gamefish popular among anglers and serves as a natural water filter removing the pollution from the water, said Steve Davis, chief science officer at the Everglades Foundation."

So I guess you could say, one step at a time -- at least it's in the right direction.

Below, what a toxic cyanobacteria bloom in the lake looks like from the vantage point of space.

 

Look, up in the sky! It's electric!

 

NASA recently announced the discovery of a new electric field in the region of space surrounding the Earth. Apparently it was something that should have been there, but hadn't been conclusively observed before.

Scientists find a long-sought electric field in Earth’s atmosphere

What they were looking for is called the "ambipolar electric field".  As the article says, it was predicted in the 1960s, but deemed difficult to measure. So some enterprising NASA atmospheric scientists decided to look for it.

"Collinson and colleagues developed a new instrument called a photoelectron spectrometer specifically to detect the electric field. The team mounted the spectrometer on a rocket named Endurance, after the ship that carried Ernest Shackleton to explore the Antarctic in 1914.

Getting to the launchpad in Svalbard, Norway was a journey worthy of the rocket’s name. The team traveled by boat for 17 hours to get to the archipelago of Svalbard, located just a few hundred kilometers from the North Pole. Several members of the team fell ill with COVID-19 on the way. And the war between Russia and Ukraine had begun just a few months earlier.

“At the time, there was a certain amount of nervousness about firing off rockets,” Collinson says. “Polar bears were the least of it. We had war and plague.”

Two more days of blizzards kept Endurance grounded. When the rocket finally launched on May 11, 2022, it went straight up through the atmosphere to about 770 kilometers, measuring the energies of electrons every 10 seconds. The whole flight lasted 19 minutes. At the end, the rocket splashed into the Greenland Sea.

Endurance measured a change in electric potential of 0.55 volts between the altitudes of 248 kilometers and 768 kilometers — exactly enough to explain the polar wind on its own, without any other atmospheric effects."

So it's there, where it was supposed to be and as strong as it was expected to be.

Science!

Here's a video that gets deeper into the science (and it also shows the launch, which goes WHOOSH!)

We got one!

 

I've written several posts about archaeological discoveries in the Old World, where people find swords in streams, use metal detectors to find caches of coins in farmer's fields, and find kings buried under parking lots.

With much less history to dig up, the North American continent doesn't provide as much buried booty. But in Jamestown, Virginia, there is some history stretching back a few centuries, and in a dig there, in the "Governor's Well", they found a sword. Not just any sword, though -- this one was made by a legendary swordmaker, and he even put his mark on it.

A Mysterious Maker

Conservation and research of a marked sword blade from the Governor’s Well

"Bricks discarded in the well were cemented to the iron blade by corrosion as it lay in the moist ground for 400 years.

Some of the sword fragments after an initial dry-brushing. As soon as excavators brought the sword into the lab from the field, it was dry-brushed and cataloged. Based on its measurements, it is likely a broadsword.

Conservators x-rayed the fragments, which revealed a maker’s mark on one side, which included letters, symbols, and possibly a number. Since this is the first marked sword blade from all of Rediscovery’s excavations, the reveal was exhilarating! The name “FERARA” appears one above the other within each of the blade’s fullers — along with an unknown symbol before the letter F and after the final A."

Like so:

 

After all the conservation, they got the brick off and it looks like this. It is being very carefully curated.

 

Hard hit

 

When the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impacted asteroid Dimorphos, the little asteroid that orbits the bigger asteroid Didymos, it hit it very, very hard. Astronomers are still figuring out how hard.

NASA's DART asteroid crash really messed up its space rock target

"Lots of incredible information has been gleaned from this impact already, and we just got a little more. According to a paper published this year about the event, DART created a large crater in Dimorphos, in fact reshaping the rock so dramatically it derailed from its original progression."

"One surprise was just how much DART was able to alter Dimorphos. Prior to the collision, the asteroid was oblate, meaning it was somewhat flattened or squished along one axis, likely due to its own rotation or gravitational effects."

After the collision, Dimorphos' shape became prolate, meaning the asteroid was stretched along its axis, making it longer in one direction. The impact likely caused this elongation by redistributing the asteroid's mass and altering its rotational dynamics."

In the actual paper (unless you're a planetary dynamicist, I don't expect you to understand a lot of it), there is a diagram of the shape change, which I grabbed and show below. At least I understand that.

 

Swimming pool book

 

I think I want to get this book. 

The World's Best Swimming Pools

The Daily Mail had a preview in an article:

Splash hits! From a Beverly Hills hotel to a South American pool so big you can SAIL on it, 12 of the most jaw-dropping swimming pools in the world

This one at the Titanic Mardan Palace in Antalya, Turkey impressed me. Now, can someone explain to me why there is no one in this pool in the picture? 

About d*mn time

 

Ed Westwick married luscious and beautiful Amy Jackson a couple of weeks ago. The Daily Mail covered it, 

but the wedding pictures are here.

Ever since I saw Amy on Supergirl, and then looking like this (below), I've always felt she'd make some man happy. Hope that's the case for Ed.

And these are just black and white photos.

This is humorous

 

This 'Panavision' trailer for The Terminator is fairly humorous for fans of the original (like me).  There are other similar trailer parodies for other famous movies, such as Star Wars, from the same source.  Idle fun if you've got the time.

Incredible Nicola Cavanis

 

I've featured the incredible, and I do not use that word lightly, German model Nicola Cavanis a couple times before on this blog. I keep up with her activities on Instagram; she was recently in New York City to watch a New York Giants football game. Most of the time she just posts pictures of herself doing casual things while looking casually gorgeous.

Below, three recent pictures captured from her Instagram, demonstrating the incredible nature of her casual beauty.

Lighthouse of the Week, September 15-21, 2024: Point Hueneme, California, USA

 

Continuing in a series of Lighthouses of the Week from the Los Angeles area and somewhat nearby, this is the Point Hueneme lighthouse, which is up the coast (north) from Los Angeles, near Oxnard. This is a pretty lighthouse that's not highly accessible, but you can get there if you really want to.

So, where is this one?  It's located right here (clicking on the link takes you there).

Next, the Lighthouse Directory excerpt about it:

"1941 (station established 1874). Active; focal plane 52 ft (16 m); white flash every 5 s, except every sixth flash omitted. 48 ft (15 m) square cylindrical art moderne concrete tower mounted on concrete fog signal building. Building is unpainted white concrete; lantern and window woods are painted bright red. The historic 4th order Fresnel lens (1899, transferred from the earlier tower) was removed in late 2013 or early 2014 and is now displayed on the first floor of the building. Fog horn (blast every 30 s) activated on radio request. ... The present lighthouse was restored by the Coast Guard in 1999. In July 2002 volunteers from the Coast Guard Auxiliary began offering tours. In November 2012 the Coast Guard and the Port Hueneme Cultural Heritage Board reached agreement on a plan to replace the Fresnel lens with a modern LED light; the lens was restored for display. ... The area is accessible by a walking path from the Hueneme fishing pier parking area at Surfside Drive and Ventura Road; the walk to the lighthouse is about 1 mi (1.6 km) round trip."

Here's a long webpage about the history of the lighthouse.

The Point Hueneme Lighthouse

Point Hueneme, CA  (Lighthouse Friends)

Pictures of the featured lighthouse (including the Fresnel lens, now on display) are below.

 

As I was saying: pay attention

 

Just a couple of posts ago, I featured the new Pompeiian discovery of two victims of the eruption, found in a home, with some coins they never got to spend and jewelry that they couldn't wear again. 

In that article, I counseled that if the Naples region starts rockin' and rollin' with volcanic temblors, that would indicate the prudence of going to visit your Italian aunt in Bergamo. 

In this Washington Post article, the reasons for relocating the domicile are described.

Europe’s most dangerous volcano rumbles, and Italians weigh the risk

"A number of scientists are warning of a possible tipping point — but no one more so than Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo, a senior researcher with Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) who is engaged in a public fight with the agency he serves, arguing it is not taking the threat seriously enough. He describes a worst-case scenario in which a deep fissure opens in the earth, spewing a mushroom cloud of noxious gas, superheated ash and pyroclastic material. At night, emissions would be wreathed in lightning bolts. The view of the coastline would be shrouded by a deadly black veil. In the aftermath, white-gray ash and rock would blanket the land.

Even a significantly smaller but still strong eruption, he said, “could devastate the entire metropolitan area of ​​Naples, with its 3 million inhabitants.”

“The pressure could release like a bomb,” he said, standing under the scorching sun and gazing down at a massive crater lake formed during the last significant Phlegraean eruption in 1538."

However, according to what I can find out about the 1538 eruption, a crater lake did not form during that eruption -- a cinder cone named Monte Nuovo did, and it also reduced the size of nearby Lucrine Lake (Lago di Lucrino). So I'm not sure what the writer is talking about, but he could mean the nearby Lake Avernus (Lago d'Averno), which is the nearest big volcanic lake around.

So a bit of an error there. But still, the whole region could go boom! or BOOM!, and that would constitute a major problem. 

Keep watching that seismometer.  And it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on Vesuvius, too.

Monte Nuovo:

A really big stone

 

In case you missed it, the second-largest diamond ever found was found a couple of weeks ago in Botswana.  Bonus -- it's a blue-white diamond.

(Actually, though, I think it's the second-largest clear diamond. Because the "Sergio", a black diamond (a carbonado), appears to have been the actual largest -- at least according to this: List of largest rough diamonds)

All I can say is, somebody better start making a crown.

This one was just discovered, so I doubt that any plans have been made for it yet. My first question, which may be on the minds of many people, is:  do they go for the record?

The world's largest cut diamond is the Golden Jubilee, 545.67 carats. The second-largest, and more famous (and also blue-white, aka colorless) is the Cullinan I, in the scepter of the British Crown Jewels, 530.2 carats.

So given the size of this new one, will they consider trying to cut at least one chunk into a faceted diamond heavier than the Golden Jubilee?  Because opportunities like this don't come along very often.

Second-largest diamond ever, 2,492 carats, unearthed in Botswana

"Lamb [president and chief executive of Lucara Diamond, the Canadian mining company] credited X-ray technology that has been used by the company since 2017 for the detection of the massive diamond, which was retrieved intact."

There aren't too many pictures of it yet; there are a couple in the article, one of which is the same as shown below.

OK, she's a little bigger, but still ...

 

For many years, my blog celebrated the astonishing combination of body and beauty found in the singular existence of Kelly Brook. As the years have progressed, Kelly, still very lovely, has gained a bit of weight and roundness. She's still a very gorgeous woman, now curvier.  (She got married, to her personal trainer, Jeremy Parisi, and they recently did a travel adventure show together.)

And then, apparently, they went on a safari and Kelly posed naked in a bathtub (with her back to the camera).  Of course, Kelly posed nude for Playboy a few years ago, so if you still want to see that, look it up. But this picture is still invigorating. Because she's still Kelly Brook.

Kelly Brook strips NAKED and teases a glimpse of sideboob while enjoying a scenic bath with very hunky husband Jeremy Parisi amid lavish safari getaway

The torpedo bomber gets an update

If you remember your World War II aerial combat vs. battleships, aircraft carriers, and such, one of the carrier-based aircraft was a torpedo bomber. A torpedo bomber, as you might guess, carried a torpedo, and when close enough, dropped the torpedo to zip through the water until it hit an enemy ship (likely an aircraft carrier, as those were the most critical targets) and blew a hole in it.

Here's a picture of one:

The U.S. Navy recently provided an update of the technology. 

USAF B-2 bomber demonstrates new anti-ship technology in Gulf of Mexico

"The US Air Force (USAF) has successfully demonstrated a new low-cost method for neutralizing surface vessels with an air-delivered strike known as QUICKSINK. 

The test took place in the Gulf of Mexico near Eglin Air Force Base during RIMPAC 2024, the world’s largest international maritime exercise, which involved 29 nations and over 25,000 personnel. 

During the test, a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber successfully sank the M/V Monarch Countess, a decommissioned cargo vessel now resting 180 feet (54 meters) below the water off the coast of Destin-Fort Walton Beach, Florida."

This is QUICKSINK.

You can't take it with you

A recent discovery in Pompeii found two unfortunate inhabitants who apparently died wealthy. Or at least with spending cash for their inadvertent unscheduled vacation on the Mediterranean coast, for which they did not make the cruise departure. 

As for all of the residents of Pompeii who perished in the cataclysmic eruption of Vesuvius, it was a sad and likely frightening ending to their lives. I am glad we live in a time when there should be sufficiently interpretable signals that a massive eruption is going to take place, allowing residents to hopefully evacuated safely. I say this knowing that Naples and vicinity sit on top of a number of volcanic features that could potentially wreak their geologic havoc on the nearby neighborhoods. So, my advice to the local residents of one of these features really starts acting up, surely repeated by many of the governmental officials in the area:

GET OUT OF TOWN. 

Two bodies unearthed in ancient Pompeii with ‘small cache of treasure’

"The small room [where the two victims were found] was probably used as a temporary bedroom during the renovation of the wider house, archaeologists believe. The impressions left in the ash by decomposed organic matter have made it possible to reconstruct the furnishings by casting the voids and therefore identify “their exact position at the time of the eruption,” the statement from the park said."

 

Not as old, but still old

 

Back in early August, I posted about a message in a bottle that might be the oldest ever found. Now, still catching up on the news, I'm posting about a message in a bottle that's definitely old, and definitively dated. Not as old as the potential record-holder, but still tossed into the ocean decades ago.

Florida woman finds a message in a bottle after Tropical Storm Debby

It's a bit mysterious; the letter can be read, addressed to someone named "Lee". The letterhead is from a base in Virginia. Now, the currents don't flow that way, but conceivably it could have spiraled into the Sargasso Sea from the Gulf Stream (if it was tossed into the ocean off Virginia), floated slowly around there for years, then drifted south to the flow that goes into the Caribbean, and henceforth into the feeders to the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico. That's a long trip. Alternatively, maybe the person that wrote it took the letterhead with them to a new posting (like somewhere on the Gulf Coast) and tossed it in. 

The fact that it's addressed to "Lee" is intriguing. As the article notes, why is it addressed to a specific person?  I speculate (and it seems to me I saw other speculation) that perhaps it was written before the writer found it that something had happened to Lee, perhaps something tragic, and put the final message into the bottle as a living memorial.

It would be very interesting to know more.

Lighthouse of the Week, September 8-14, 2024: Point Vicente, Rancho Palos Verde, California, USA

 

It occurred to me a couple of days ago that while I have featured several lighthouses in California, I hadn't featured lighthouses near Los Angeles. So I'm going to address that this week and in subsequent weeks, because there is a great deal of variety in the lighthouses around Los Angeles.

I'm going to start with a simple one, the Point Vicente light on the Rancho Palos Verde peninsula. This place has been in the news very recently due to the unfortunate state that some of it, including houses and roads, is landsliding toward the Pacific Ocean. I don't think the lighthouse is endangered by that process, but we should keep an eye on it. If you're unfamiliar with the area, this is where the lighthouse is. I zoomed out so it can be discerned where it is in relation to the greater Los Angeles area.

Now we get the basic information about it from the Lighthouse Directory:

"1926. Active; focal plane 185 ft (56 m); two white flashes every 20 s, separated by 5 s. 67 ft (20 m) cylindrical reinforced concrete tower, painted white. The original Barbier, Bernard and Turenne 3rd order Fresnel lens (1886) is on display at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center near the lighthouse. The 2-story concrete Spanish revival keeper's house houses a small museum; additional buildings were formerly used as Coast Guard housing. This is a very well preserved light station; members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteer to maintain it. ... The light station was well maintained for many years but Anderson reports that it has deteriorated in recent years. The site is popular for whale watching. Located on a cliff overlooking the Pacific on Palos Verdes Drive in Rancho Palos Verdes."

The website for the Rancho Palos Verde government, which unfortunately is currently running alerts about the state of emergency due to the landslides, features an aerial pan around the lighthouse.

Point Vicente, CA (Lighthouse Friends)

Drone aerial overflight:

After all that, pictures!  More artistic and scenic shots are available; this one has been photographed frequently. 

Oh really?

 

Prince Albert of Monaco has divulged that his romance with Charlene Wittstock (now Princess Charlene), which succeeded despite the fact that he has a few non-heirs on his list of progeny in addition to the twins birthed by Charlene, which are officially heirs -- was not exactly love at first sight.

Given that it was widely reported she had to be persuaded not to be a runaway bride on their wedding day, and also a apparent mental health episode from which she has thankfully recovered, this does not hit me as a big surprise.

Prince Albert of Monaco, 66, says it was not love at first sight with Princess Charlene, 46, but recalls her 'cheerful' and 'approachable' nature

"Now, in a rare joint interview, Albert revealed his uncertainties of whether they fell in love at the 2011 [swimming] competition, he told Paris Match: 'I don't know if we fell in love back then,' adding that it was several years before they would meet again.

But while romance might not have been on the cards at first, Charlene still made an impression on Albert, with him recalling: 'I thought that she was an excellent swimmer and that she was friendly, cheerful, and approachable'. "

And pretty easy on the eyes, too.

By the way, I should mention that she and they were recently in the news, and she's looking well.

Princess Charlene of Monaco joins husband Prince Albert at annual picnic alongside their two children - as the European royals dazzle in their classy outfits

Italian cuisine has a new ingredient

 

A very intriguing article here about how blue crabs, the kind familiar to U.S. citizens on the East and Gulf Coast, particularly in Maryland, are an invasive species in the waters around Italy.

And surprisingly, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Italian chefs are incorporating the invaders, of which there appears to be plenty, into Italian seafood dishes.

Yes, there does appear to be plenty:

Blue crab invasion upends Italy’s culinary traditions and ecology

It's apparently somewhat good for the chefs and the consumers of what the chefs prepare:

"Zennaro says the blue crabs, once considered tasteless by many Venetians, have adapted to the local environment, developing more flavor as they feast on their version of the Mediterranean diet. “Their meat is much more savory,” he says. “The versatility of the blue crab meat allows you to have a good base for working and studying new pairings and bolder dishes.” He’s now serving a blue crab dish with ponzu caramel sauce and trout caviar, and has plans for frying it as a soft shell or using it “as a condiment with fresh egg spaghetti.”

But what are they doing to the ecology/environment?

"Just as tourists overcrowd hyped vacation destinations in Italy, the blue crabs have become an invasive species, particularly in the Veneto region because its bay hosts no known predators. The crabs prey on young clams, mussels and oysters, and have destroyed up to 90 percent of the area’s young clams, causing severe damage to future production. This invasion prompted the Italian government to allocate 2.9 million euros (about $3.2 million) to protect local fisheries from the crabs. The damage is extraordinary, not only to the marine ecosystem but to small fisherman families whose livelihood depends on providing local shellfish to markets and restaurants."

Yeah, that doesn't sound too good. So just as I've recommended eating as much lionfish as is possible down south, I guess I have to recommend eating as much blue crab as possible in Italy.

Should we ship them some Old Bay?

All grown up and doing it well

 

Dafne Keen was just a young kid in Logan, and a young teenager in the His Dark Materials series. If you didn't know, she was in Deadpool & Wolverine, and still looked quite a bit like her character in Logan.

But as the red carpet pictures indicate, she's grown up. (This was for the It Ends With Us premiere, as the headline says.)

Dafne Keen stuns in a red figure-hugging halterneck dress as she steps out for the It Ends With Us London screening in yet another Deadpool and Wolverine crossover

Beat the traffic

 

Traffic in Los Angeles is terrible. But if you've got the money and don't want to waste the time, there's going to be a new way to get around the city in a remarkably short period of time, and it's going to happen soon.

Archer plans Los Angeles eVTOL network to supersede one-to-two-hour drives

eVTOL stands for "electric Vertical TakeOff and Landing". 

Here's the cool eVTOL that is planned to get you around LA in a jiffy.

For some reason, I see a resemblance.

Yes, it is indeed melting

 

A couple of weeks ago, the Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, Alaska, released a meltwater flood that put a lot of water into parts of Juneau, which is obviously downriver. 

As the Washington Post article notes, it's a problem that's getting worse, because yes, global warming means more melting.

A melting Alaska glacier keeps inundating Juneau. Floods are getting worse.

"Glacial outburst floods have poured out of Suicide Basin more than 30 times since 2011. It is challenging to predict exactly how large they will be, since conditions change each year. The jumble of icebergs in the basin keep melting — adding more liquid water to the pool — and the glacier that acts as a dam keeps thinning and retreating as the atmosphere warms, so scientists don’t know exactly when the pent-up water might release."

The picture below shows the basic problem. Juneau is both in the Mendenhall Valley and to the east and south of it, but much of the city population lives in the valley.

Another Olympic note, this time on volleyball

 

Not every USA team won a gold medal at the Olympics. Obviously the two basketball teams did. I was pulling for the men's volleyball team, but they ended up with the bronze medal. I was also pulling for the women's volleyball team, but they didn't strike gold either, which Italy did with a dominant performance over the American women.

But this isn't about that. To get to the final, the USA women had to defeat Brazil in a very tight match. And Brazil took the bronze medal by defeating Türkiye. I happened to watch the semifinal match, and Brazil featured a VERY tall player wearing a big knee brace. She was also quite striking in appearance -- not exactly traditionally gorgeous, but hard not to notice. She was tall and had quite an outgoing competitive personality, and she kept showing up in the shots of the Brazilian side.

After a bit of searching on her name, I finally hit upon her identity. She is Thaisa Daher de Menezes, a Brazilian volleyball legend.  (Sorry, I don't really follow international volleyball, so that wasn't something that was obvious to me, but it probably would have been to anybody that follows international women's volleyball.)

So, if you didn't know who she is, like me, here's a couple of links and short quotes about the magnífica Menezes. And pictures, obviously.

"Thaísa Daher de Menezes is a Brazilian professional volleyball player. She won back-to-back gold medals at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics. She has won numerous Best Spiker and Best Blocker Awards and is often singled out as one of the greatest Brazilian players of all time." (Wikipedia)

Fortunately For Curious Fans, Thaisa Menezes Has Been Quite Open About Her Surgeries(personally I think she's had a bit too much work done)

Brazil reveal star-studded roster for Paris 2024

She's the tall one.

Doing one of the things she's noted for

In case you were wondering. 

U.S. Open: Well, almost

 

So I did something rare and posted on-time about the U.S. Open tennis championship last week. On the women's side, I said that the odds would favor Swiatek and Sabalenka at the time.  I also said that Jessica Pegula, who had yet to fulfill her promise, could win too.  Well, if you've been following along, Sabalenka did win, and she defeated Pegula, who made the final, so that was much better performance in the service of fulfilling her promise. 

Pegula might still win a Slam, but she suffers from lack of size and power, something that Sabalenka has a lot of.  With her, Swiatek, Rybakina (when she's healthy), a resurgent Naomi Osaka (maybe), Coco Gauff, and lots-of-potential Emma Navarro all in the mix, along with the usual assortment of players with names ending in "-ova" who always seem to show up in the draw, Pegula might not make it back to a Grand Slam final ever. But I hope she does. Same goes for Rybakina.

On the men's side, I said that I wanted one of the three T's:  Francis Tiafoe, Taylor Fritz, or Tommy Paul -- to get into the final. Lo and behold, one of them did. And it was the one that I think the network brass would have wanted, along with many of the male heterosexual fans of the game, because by Taylor Fritz being in the final that means they can intersperse the coverage of the play on the court with shots of Morgan Riddle in the friend's box. 

Unfortunately, Fritz has to play Jannik Sinner, so like Pegula vs. Sabalenka, the American is decidedly lower-ranked than the opponent. It'd be nice to get the upset, but the smart money is on the currently better player.

By the way, I found out that Taylor Fritz got married young and had a child with his then-wife, before they divorced a couple of years ago, which allowed him to connect with Morgan. It turns out that the ex-wife tennis player Raquel Pedraza was also an attractive blond young woman.  I guess he's got some consistency in that game.

Now I'm not going to post another picture of Morgan Riddle. Here's Fritz doing what he's paid to do.

Lighthouse of the Week, September 1-7: Cape du Couedic, Australia

 

After last week's lighthouse on Kangaroo Island, Australia, the posting of which alerted me to the fact that Kangaroo Island has six of them, I decided to do one more. This is the lighthouse which is at the top of the page for lighthouses of South Australia in the Lighthouse Directory.

The name of the lighthouse is Cape du Couedic, which actually looks a bit French (or Dutch?). It's on the same island as the last one, near Adelaide, which is shown on the map here. Kangaroo Island also has some remarkable wind-carved rock formations, which I may have included on a post somewhere in the past.

I will turn once again to the Lighthouse Directory for the basics.

"1909. Active; focal plane 103 m (339 ft); two white flashes, separated by 2 s, every 10 s. 25 m (83 ft) round sandstone tower with lantern and gallery. Tower is unpainted sand-colored stone; lantern painted white with a red roof. 2nd order (?) Chance Brothers Fresnel lens in use. ... The keeper's houses were restored in 2000; historically accurate slate roofs were added. This is one of the most historically authentic light stations in Australia; all its original buildings are preserved and even the surroundings are little changed. Located on the southwestern point of Kangaroo Island, south of Rocky River."

This is the Lighthouses of Australia page for it, with lots and lots of historical information: Cape du Couedic Lighthouse (includes a picture of the Fresnel lens)

Four pictures are provided beneath this line.

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