Proud to be Swedish!

Sometimes the collective (hive) mind works, all over Sweden there where shouting and cheering when the 4x5 km (ladies) and 4x10 km (men) cross country skiing was on TV this past Saturday and Sunday.
Our cheering must have been heard all the way to Russia and Sotji, and both men and women teams from Sweden were able to secure gold!

A fantastic achievement, and a glorious day to be Swedish!

Vintertid (Winter time)

Snön har lagt sig som ett täcke över hela vår värld här i Mälardalen. Stora sjok tynger ner träd och grenar och stora snömassor täcker grönskan. Under snön är det ganska varmt, jag skottade igår och fram över stenkanten tittade några blåsippsblad fram ur snötäcket. Det kändes nästan som att jag borde stoppa om dem igen, med ny snö, men gjorde det inte. Kraften finns i rötterna , och i bladrosettens mitt finns en hårt knuten knopp med blom-embryon. Ljusblå, mörkblå och röd blåsippa finns det i hörnan. Det känns trösterikt att veta att de finns därunder, och mer snö kommer snart.
Mer snö väntas, men först har vi kallgrader några dagar efter vad jag förstår av väderleksrapporten. Ute kör stora lastbilar iväg snölass ikväll, det var enorma mängder snö som kom, så den måste flyttas för att göra plats.
Luciafirande idag på skolan, alla barnen var så söta och sjöng så fint som bara barn kan.
Förra helgen var det skidpremiär för familjen och två barn försvann iväg på snabba skidor genom skogen, i varsitt spår. När rundan var avklarad ville de åka mer, men mörkret föll.

Jorden passerar genom Geminiderna just nu, men vi har mulet så vi ser inte stjärnfallen. En meteor syntes härom kvällen över delar av Sverige.
Om det är stjärnklart över norra Sverige kan man njuta av norrskenet i Abisko, via deras webkamera.

The snow has fallen and created a thick blanket over all of our world here in the Mälar Valley. The trees are decorated with snow on the branches and all the green is covered in white.
Below the snow it is still relatively warm, as I found out when I was moving snow in front of our house entrance. More snow is expected, but we will have some days with cold weather first if the weather forecast is correct. Outside tonight there is large trucks moving snow away from the streets; there are huge amounts of snow that need to be moved.
Today is Lucia Day in Sweden, and all the school children have been dressed up as gnomes (Santa), ginger bread cookies, Saint Lucia, maidens and Staffan the stable boy. It´s hard to explain this mix of religion, fairytale, Christmas and maiden and boys, but it is all very traditional. They sing the same songs as I did in school, and it is the first real sign that Christmas is soon here.
Last weekend was the family's skiing debut for this winter. Two fast boys disappeared on their skis, in one track each, into the silent, snow-covered pine and fir woods. When the tour was finished they wanted to go on another, but darkness fell.

The earth is passing through the Geminides now, but we don't see the shooting stars, it's cloudy. A meteor was seen in some parts of Sweden a day ago. If there is a clear sky in the north of Sweden, one can enjoy the Northern Lights in Abisko, through a webcam.

A sports quote and some ponderings

Football has the same relation to education that bullfighting has to agriculture.                                
           Robert Maynard Hutchins (President, University of Chicago)

This is of course about the crazy college sports that are going on here in the US.  Players that are like slaves, using their bodies for a few years, end up with injuries for the rest of their lives, and earn a lot for a short time, and then nothing maybe.  There are billions of dollars in college sports here in the US.  In Sweden the sports are private teams, unrelated to colleges, like other parts of Europe.  How did US sports come to be so associated with educational institutions?  There are students here in the US that pick their college based on how the football team is doing, not how good the academic programs are.  That is just crazy. 

Toothpaste for dinner shows it best in his cartoon, Sports Aren't News.  [OK readers, you may like sports, that is OK, I am not outlawing it, I just think it is ridiculous that more money and attention is spent on sports than making this a better world to live in for everybody.]

Source and copyright for image: www.toothpastefordinner.com

Ice Hockey Gold Medal to Sweden

The Junior Icehockey team from Sweden, with boys born 1992-95, defeated the russian team yesterday ( or today, swedish time). Last time a Swedish junior team got a gold medal was 1981.

I want to extend my big congratulations to the team and all of the Swedish fans. These guys are ice hockey heroes, and you will see them in the American NHL league in a couple of years.

The picture is a proposed stamp from a news paper in Sweden, Aftonbladet. If you are in Sweden, watch the game on svt.se/play.

Stamp of the Day: Rink, ice, club, helmet, skates, puck...

This US stamp is for AREA, our ice hockey fan in the family.  Skate on!

Congratulations to Finland!

You won!  We admit it, we Swedes.  In ice hockey VM tonight for those that don't know. This time you Finns didn't have to say 'if I only had more speed'. But you have only won VM once before, so you deserved it very much. For the record -  I love Finland, and especially surdegslimpa, Tove Jansson, and Arto Paasilinna. Some of my best friends are Finns. Really. :)  Nobody said it better than Monthy Python:

Knappar, märken och medaljer

Varje barn i Sverige har nog minst ett simmärke och det verkar som även vuxna sparar sina.
Att ta ett märke är förknippat med en prestation och att ta simborgarmärket är något alla barn i Sverige vill klara. För att ta det ska man simma 200 m, i bassäng eller i fritt vatten och detta märke har funnits sedan 1934. Det har nyligen MH 8 år gjort, till sin och min förtjusning. Att kunna simma är en livförsäkring. Många barn får flera märken, både vid simning och andra sporter.




I Sverige finns en lång tradition att visa sin sympati för något med ett nålmärke på kavajslaget. Därför finns många märken för politiska partier, företag, föreningar mm. Att ge ut ett borgarmärke var ett sätt att främja folkets kunnande vilket ansåg i många föreningar vara en huvuduppgift. Genom att göra ett prov kunde man ta sitt märke, traditionen finns ännu. Därför finns (eller fanns) både hundborgarmärke, skidborgarmärke, ridborgarmärke (tv) simborgarmärke och bilkunskapsmärke. Livräddarmärke och samaritmärken visar att man är utbildad. Troligen får fortfarande sjuksköterskor ett märke vid examen.


Det företag som oftast står bakom de mångformiga märkena är Sporrong. Jag blev nyfiken och det visar sig att Sporrong är ett av Sveriges äldsta företag, verksamheten startade redan 1666 i Stockholm med en Mäster Grau. Då hette inte företaget Sporrong ännu, det kommer först 1842. Mellan tiden 1842 och 1875 heter företaget Sporrong för att därefter heta CC Sporrong & Co. Ofta tillverkades även uniformsknappar, t.ex till militären.
Tillverkningen skedde i flera verkstäder runtom i Stockholm men bedrivs idag i Estland och Finland. Mer om Sporrongs historia här .



Metal buttons, pins and medallions

First picture is a swimming test pin, which many children in Sweden get after they succeed to swim 200 m in a pool or outdoor lake. There are many pins in Sweden that are linked to a personal achievement like riding, dog leading, car driving and skiing. Many are also worn to show support for a specific political party, sports club or hobby club. The company which makes many of these is Sporrong, one of the oldest companies in Sweden, dating back to 1666. For a long time the production was sited in Stockholm but is has now moved to Finland and Estonia.

Bits and pieces from the internet, D edition

Some more wanderings around the internet, with stops linked by D....

Dips, Chips, Wings, and Things:  It has been Superbowl Sunday here in the USA, which is something the rest of the world and certainly this household could care less about (well, AREA watched it a friends).  People (about 150 million) watch the two top football teams fight over the Superbowl award on TV, while eating snack food in enormous amounts (ALL the food magazines and food websites had special recipes just for this Sunday).  One of the most anticipated events are the special ads that are made for this event, which cost each advertiser about $3 million dollars for 1 min or so. We didn't see the Superbowl, but we did see some of the ads on the internet afterwards, and these two stood out...

Detroit: A city in northern USA ravaged by the manufacturing crisis during the last 30 years at least, and home to many famous car brands, many now defunct.  It is high crime, high unemployment, and has many social and infrastructure problems.  But it has seen a great revival, and Chrysler showed it off in their ad.
From a blogpost about the ad: "...Chrysler managed — in just two minutes — to make me cry, think, feel proud, question my Toyota, and want to hug the entire city of Detroit while screaming the lyrics to I’m Proud to Be an American. That roller coaster of emotion aside, the spot also managed to reaffirm my values and beliefs as a preservationist. " (link to whole blog post by Jason Clement on PreservationNation).  And some more about Detroit here if you like.

Darth Vader: A toddler-sized Darth Vader was the best ad during the Superbowl, I think.  Another car they (Volkswagen) wanted us to buy, but who cares? it made you laugh, especially the parody of the ad, which was online in less than an hour, I bet.  These ads are like when you went to Swedish movies and you made sure you never missed the ads in the beginning because they were fun and cool and different...and one reason you went to the movies (true!). This was before there were ads on Swedish TV channels, so the only moving ads you ever saw were at the movie theater or in newspapers and magazines.  I still remember some of the classic Swedish movie ads from 30-40 years ago. Oh, and Volkswagen's second Superbowl commercial is perfect for the entomologists! See the black beetle here.

Design in old biological diaramas at The Biological Museum (Biologiska Museet) in Sweden - how about a nice chair in the middle of the forest with a bear?  Quite great, unexpected, and fun! I bet this old-fashioned museum are getting some new visitors based on this exhibit. Look at the last picture too, it shows the museum building from the outside in its great national-romanticism glory around the end of the 1800s. I think it is supposed to be reminiscient of an old, old stav church from Western Scandinavia.

Drag something new around your arm:  "Sixteen ways to use your arm now when watches are obsolete"  My favorite was the small game trophy and the cross stitch, which is yours?

And, there is more Dust in the world than ever.  

Stamp of the season: Skiing in all kinds of ways.

Winter sports in all kinds are fun to do, and if the weather is bad you can always enjoy Swedish accomplicements on TV and the web.

Here is Ukrainan stamps from 2010.

For all soccer and toy fans out there...

As you know, we love LEGO on this blog...

Spring has sprung

The Gods must have gone crazy.  First we have two giant storms and hundreds, maybe thousands of trees fall down and most people get flooded, and a week later or so, we have 98 degree heat (that is 37 degrees Celsius).  It has cooled down since then, but the spring took off with an explosion.  My photos are still in the camera, so you just have to imagine green trees, purple lilacs, daffodils and cherry trees, all at once.  We have already cut the lawn (with a mower that started on the first try after the winter rest, that was a record too!).  A new fence is up around the garden, photos will come later.  Inside, all my tomato seedlings are up, as are onion shoots and cucumbers.  There is still lots to do before they can go outside, and the last frost date hasn't been yet.  If we get snow now, a lot of plants would be really, really unhappy. And people too.

I have a somewhat adventurous cousin who lives in Tromso (Tromsø), the northernmost part of Norway.  If you want to see how spring windsurfing is in a place where the snow never leaves and the ocean is ice cold year round, look below. This is filmed in March, a month ago, when they average about 4 hours of sunshine per day:


Windsurfing season opening, Tromsø 2010_03_07 from O Bra on Vimeo.

Egg breaks record...

With the egg post yesterday, which was mailed out and twittered to many people (not by me), we broke our old record of visits per day. 526 people took a look at our blog and the peacock by the egg tractor. Thanks for the visit, come back whenever you like!

More news in the world: Sweden got its first gold medal this year in the Olympics, in Women's cross country skiing. Go Kalla, go!

Check out the ferocious hunger of the geckos of Madagascar in Chad's fantastic blogpost.

In Stockholm there is the yearly design week. Some photos here.

Everything you need to know about brain farts. (you might have to subscribe for free)

And the seeds for the garden are ordered. On its way are Sungold orange cherry tomatoes, tiny pickling cucumbers, sunflowers, Chioggia and red and golden beets, Swiss chard with orange, pink, and white stems, lettuce in many colors and shapes, and some flowers that I hope will survive the onslaught of bugs and mammals, as well as rain and drought. Gardening in New Jersey is more of a challenge than I ever expected.

The modern kick-sledge.

I found this modern kick-spark on www.varmlandadventures.se/kickbikeshop.html. This looks a bit weird but they claim it´s fast. You can have it with wheels or skis on too. They also sell kickbikes.

Fun time on the ice

We had a race on the road by Barking Dog Plaza yesterday, me and the kids. The 6-year old was the fastest, of course. I didn´t stand a chance. But it was just as fun as when we used to ride our "sparks" as kids.

Today I have muscle ache..but I don´t mind. It was fun!

Snapshot: Bike Polo!

Attack!

Almost...

Ooops!

/O.K.
Listening to while posting: Terje Rypdal - De slagferdige

Sportsmanship

Yesterday 110 years ago this was published in the Cleveland Gazette:

The victim Major "The Worcester whirlwind" Taylor, despite having to struggle against open racism and hostility among his competitors and cycling organizations went on to become world champion on the one-mile sprint three consecutive times. It often happened that competitors teamed up against him, and he was banned from racing in his state of birth Indiana when he was too successful.

Taylor himself had a strict view on the subject:

"It is my thought that clean living and a strict observance of the golden rule of true sportsmanship are foundation stones without which a championship structure cannot be built."

/O.K.
(Listening to while posting: Glen Velez - In Transit)

Bigger, better?

Quote from the arranger of the proposed cycling race "Tour of America", modeled after Tour de France:

"The idea is to go big. In some sense, it may be overboard. It may be swinging for the fences. But then again, hey, this is America. That's what we do. We want big. We want powerful. We want wonderful. We want grueling."

Well, what do you say? East coast to west coast in 26 stages, 4700 miles / 7520 km in total (more than twice the distance of Tour de France), starting in september just as the "Vuelta a España". I like the spirit but seriously, no big teams will participate in this craziness after participating in any of the big tours earlier in the season. So who will? Cycling isn't that popular in the states as far as I know, so attracting sponsors for a lot of american teams will be hard. And I imagine that american viewers want "stars".

I think this is the ostrich of the cycling sport. It may be the biggest bird, but it won't fly...
But by september 6th 2008 we will know.

Now I'm just waiting for the russians to respond with Tour of Russia, from the Baltic sea to Bering Strait. On unicycles. :)

/O.K.
(Listening to while posting: Frank London - Scientist at work)

Tour de France: Lanterne Rouge

Not everyone can win le tour, so how to make your mark in its history? Of course you can take a stage victory, or earn the sprinters green jersey, the mountain specialists polkadot jersey, or the white one for the best cyclist under 25. But If you aren't good enough to do that? Don't despair, there's always "la lanterne rouge", the red lantern.
It refers to the rider who finishes last but still makes it to the end of the race in Paris. The name comes from the red light on the last wagon of a train. Although it is not an official award, it is part of the culture and has its own history.

This years lanterne rouge, the belgian Wim Vansevenant, "defended" his title from last year. In 2005 he was "beaten" by Iker Flores, who carried on a family tradition. His brother Igor was the lanterne rouge in 2002.

Here's a snippet from wikipedia about the last stage in 2004:

"Shortly after Simeoni's first attack, Jimmy Casper, the lanterne rouge, or last place rider, made an attack, shooting out ahead of Armstrong. Having gotten his lead, he removed a digital camera from the pocket of his jersey and snapped a picture of him leading Armstrong, then dropped back to the peloton. 2004 is the second year that Casper has finished the Tour de France, and the second year he won the lanterne rouge."

Some have gone to great lengths to secure the title, including hiding on the last day, others do anything to avoid it. At times there was also a financial reward, since the lanterne rouge was payed to start in smaller races after the tour. I guess the reasoning behind that is "if you can beat the last guy of le tour, you could have been in it". Not entirely true, of course.


In honor of "la lanterne rouge" I post this several days after the finish of Tour de France. ;)

/O.K.
(Listening to while posting: Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte)

Tour de France: "Death comes with a big hammer"

Second stage in the Pyrenees today of Le Tour 2007, and another day of long, steep climbs. The tour first went up in the Pyrenees in 1910 with the mountain pass of Tourmalet on stage 10, 2114 meters high, as one of the major challenges for the cyclists. The tour organizers waited along the route in anticipation to see who, if anyone, could handle the 326 km long stage with several severe climbs. The climb of Tourmalet was after all rated as "hors catégorie" (beyond category) by tour sponsor and initiator, the magazine L'auto. The categorization of mountain roads was published by the magazine to inform motorists how difficult and steep they were, on a scale from 1 to 4 with 1 being the hardest. A category 1 climb was only to be attempted with the most powerful cars. "Hors catégorie" meant that motorists should not even try...

When the french participant Octave Lapize spotted the organizers beside the road he uttered the now famous "Vous êtes des assassins!" ("You are murderers!"). These words came from the man who was regarded as the greatest climbing cyclist ever. Lapize however survived "the attempt to take his life" not only to win the stage, but claimed the overall victory of the tour of 1910 back in Paris as well.

Lapize receiving the kiss of victory

The rating of the climbs in the tour still stands, but are not for motorists anymore. Both engines and road surfaces have improved considerably since then...

"Death comes with big hammer" was said yesterday by a Eurosport commentator when rider Cadel Evans, third in the overall classification, failed to keep up with the race leader Michael Rasmussen on the "hors catégorie"-climb of Plateau de Beille, the second of the day.

/O.K.
(Listening to while posting: John Paul Jones - Tidal)

Tour de France: Man-Machine

Tour de France (1983) by Kraftwerk, one of the coolest album covers ever. It was inspired by a hungarian stamp, shown below. The faces of the cyclists resembles those of Kraftwerk members Ralf Hütter, Karl Bartos, Florian Schneider and Wolfgang Flür. Apparently the cover was changed for the reissue in 1999, only keeping the faces of the remaining members Ralf and Florian. Kraftwerk as a group failed because Ralph and Florian were a little to much fond of being out cycling instead of making music in the studio, at least according to former member Karl Bartos.

In my opinion the bicycle captures the essence of Kraftwerk, man and technology overlapping, and in harmony. The song could just as well have been on their record "The Man-Machine".

Another stamp-cycling connection: When US Postal Service sponsored Lance Armstrong's adventures of Tour de France, there were jokes of the need to raise the price of postage to afford his salary...

Stamps, art, music and Tour de France. How's that as a hybrid post?