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This week on The Gralien Report Podcast, Micah and the fellows tell about their recent visit to the Ozark Mountains, where they attended one of the largest UFO conferences in the United States. Also covering the latest news and strange goings on in the twilight world of Forteana, what are the strange and thunderous sounds emanating from Highgate, home of a legendary “vampire”, which continue to rattle the countryside?
Then during hour two, we look at the recent Blood Moon, and the way that Japanese researchers have been baffled by the recent blooming of a cherry tree that spent eight months aboard the International Space Station as a seed. Do the effects of spending time off-planet affect such things as germination? And finally, you won’t want to miss Tyler’s survey of Lovecraftian Elder Gods that warps… I mean, wraps up this week’s installment of the show.
Also, here are a few choice photos from our time spent at the Ozark Mountain UFO Conference this past weekend:
The Hanks Brothers Arrive in Eureka Springs!
Micah and George Noory garner a few laughs during George’s special audience Q & A
Race Hobbs of KGRA displays Bob White’s alleged UFO “artifact”
Having lunch with Travis Walton, author of Fire in the Sky
Interviewing Delores and Julia Cannon during KGRA’s post-conference wrap-up
Meeting John Moore, who designed the cover of The UFO Singularity (New Page Books, 2013)
Sally Bellsnyder becomes the latest member of Team Gralien as we dodge tornadoes in Arkansas
by 
Bob White’s Great UFO
Artifact Mystery—Solved!
(Sometimes All it Takes is Finding the Right Expert.)
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-10-12/#feature
Our expert Ean Harrison is a retired steel foundry quality control supervisor who worked in the Seattle area. Not only can he explain the origin of Bob White’s strange object, he once owned several of them and used them as garden ornaments. Harrison writes:
The object in question is made of accreted grinding residue. It forms in a manner similar to a common stalagmite when metal castings are “cleaned” on large stationary grinders. Rough castings need to have the parting line fins and gates smoothed to facilitate machining and reduce tool breakage. A typical stationary grinder in a foundry cleaning room used to hand clean castings up to 40 pounds may have a composite wheel 3 feet in diameter and 4 inches wide or larger. The casting is placed on a work guard just like the small grinder found in home workshops, and the piece is fed against the surface of the wheel, grinding off parting line fins, weld repairs, and gate bosses. The grinding dust is spewed downward into the wheel guard at a temperature near the melting point of the parent metal. When the metal dust and grinding wheel abrasive hit the bottom of the guard, the melted epoxy wheel binder glues the mixture together. Over time a stalagmite is slowly created from the bottom up, that fuses the parent metals into the characteristic form. Depending on the size of the machine, a stalagmite can easily grow to a length of 2 feet or more. Also, depending on the castings being ground, the composition of the stalagmite could be an exotic mix of stainless steel, manganese, mild steel, aluminum—in other words, a very puzzling metallurgical mix all combined in a seemingly impossible compound. But in reality it is merely a product of the melted grinding wheel binder. eventually the stalagmite grows high enough to block the opening at the base of the grinding guard. The housing must be opened, the stalagmite broken off, thrown away, recycled, used as a yard ornament, or reported as something tossed out of a UFO.