It is so interesting when something that earlier was the privilege of a few countries is suddenly spread out also to those who you cannot think about in that context. One good example is the Swedish pole-vaulter Armand Duplantis, currently the world’s undisputed champion, who has raised the world record in 1 cm increments from 6,17 to 6,23 m, with more to come. He was born in the USA, but thanks to his Swedish mother, he also has a Swedish citizenship. More about him can be found here: 212’2022 (2022-07-29).
Earlier this month, CBDN (Brazilian Confederation of Snow Sport) had the pleasure of presenting to the world its newest affiliate, the Norwegian slalom skier Lucas Braathen, who also has a Brazilian mother and thus also a Brazilian citizenship. He spent much of his youth in Brazil, where he learned how to love sports and, among other things, support the São Paulo FC football team! He has already won both Olympic gold medals and the World Cup in alpine skiing, and now the Brazilians are hopeful that he will repeat it for his “new” country. More about Lucas can be found in reference #1 below.
In last month’s post, I wrote about something that I would present now. My friend Neide visited recently the South West corner of Brazil, where there is an amazing water fall. Far from being so well known as the Iguaçu falls, but not very far away, there lies Salto do Yucumã (Yucumã falls), Derrubadas, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. In these water falls, water from one side of Rio Uruguay falls into the other side of the river. However, this can only be seen when the water level in the main river is low, if not it will be hidden under the surface. You have to be lucky to see the falls because the water level depends on what is liberated from the hydroelectric plant in Chapecó, state of Santa Catarina, Brazil, that is located upstream. These falls are considered to be the widest longitudional falls in the world, 1800 m wide. More about this can be found in reference #2 below.
Here are some nice pictures from Salto do Yucumã:
These photos were taken on 57’2024 (2024-02-26) at Salto do Yucumã (Yucumã falls), Derrubadas, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, by Neide Martins de Aguiar.
We have come to that day every four years when we are blessed with one extra day. Some think it is good, while others do not. If you have a fixed monthly salary, it means that you are working one day for free!
In my post eight years ago, I explained the reason for why we have the 29th of February every four years, you may revisit it here: 60’2016 (2016-02-29)
You may remember that in my post of 356’2023 (2023-12-22) I showed a picture of Inhotim, the outdoor art museum that is considered to be one of the biggest of its sort, blendid in with a variety of bothany. Unfortunately, time has leapfrogged me, but here is finally more interesting facts about it. The name Inhotim is said to be derived from a former owner of the land where Inhotim is located today, a Mr. Tim, which the local dialect transformed to Senhor Tim -> Nhô Tim -> Inhotim, as simple as that. But it was thanks to a Brazilian mining magnat, Bernardo Paz, who bought the land to preserve it from exploitation and also bought contemporary works of art, that Inhotim could be created. He started with that feat in 2004 and could finally open the museum in 2006. In reference #1 below is the complete story.
You may have heard the name of Brumadinho, the municipality where Inhotim is located, in another, unfortunately terrible context. On 25’2019 (2019-01-25), a dam of a mine in Brumadinho broke and it led to a disaster where 270 people lost their lives and vast pieces of land, both built and unihibited, were totally destroyed. Luckily, Inhotim is located on a higher altitude, so the dam catastrophe did not affect it. More about the dam tragedy can be seen in reference #2 below.
Finally here are some nice pictures from Inhotim:
Pictures from Inhotim, taken during the visit Adriana and I paid there on 342’2023 (2023-12-08). This museum of contemporary art and bothany is fantastic and when one needs to recharge the batteries then there is this delicious restaurant demonstrating what makes the state of Minas Gerais such a fabulous place to visit, famous for its food and drinks.
Today’s header photo was taken by my friend Neide who recently visited the Southwest corner of Brazil. It shows the waters from Rio Uruguay falling down in a spectacular extension, in the so called Salto do Yucumã. More about it will come next month!
As I have mentioned in two earlier posts in 2022, 16’2022 (2022-01-16) and 58’2022 (2022-02-27), this time of the year in the Northern hemisphere can show the interesting Aurora borealis (Northern lights) and six months from now the time will come for the Southern hemisphere with its Aurora australis (Southern lights). But there is also a different phenomenon that can be present and seen if we are lucky.
Yesterday, I received a message from my good old friend Dina, native from Kazakhstan, who nowadays lives in Ireland. She had gotten a photo from a friend of hers in Uralsk, her home town. You can see the picture in today’s header. In Russian this phenomenon is called the equivalent of Gala lights, but when searching for that term on Google, I found nothing. Dina discovered that the English denomination is Light pillar, and in contrast to Northern and Southern lights being electric impulses, the Light pillar is more of an optical illusion, similar to a halo or a rainbow, where water drops high up in the sky refract the sun light and create this marvellous sensation. But this can only happen when the sun is very low on the horizon, rising or setting, and in temperature below -20 degrees Celsius. More of this can be found in reference #1 below.
Addendum on 13’2024 (2024-01-13)
Only two days after I published the post above, I learned of another interesting natural phenomeon that only can occur during the winter.
This time it is an earthbound matter. In the vicinity of Gothenburg, Sweden, a woman named Emelie Mellberg decided to take a walk on sunny winters day. When she came to the lake Kåsjön, there was something absolutely marvellous that caught her eyes. On the frozen ice surface were thousands of ice crystals forming flowers, the reason why this phenomenon is called ice roses. It happens when the droplets reach the surface from underneath. Water vapor freezes on the drops and starts to form flowerlike figures. The conditions for this to occur depend on the air temperature and humidity. There is a need for clear sky, a light wind and cold weather. See the following photo and the video clip in reference #2. My warmhearted thanks to my friend Cecilia for appointing this to me!
Ice roses on Kåsjön, Gothenburg. Photo by Emelie Mellberg and published by SvT.
Once more, I do not know how many times I have said it before, but I must admit that times travels so fast. Today marks the 8th anniversary of this modest blog. But thanks to all of you, my faithful readers and followers, it is really a pleasure to think that within two more years, it will complete 10 years of existence.
There are so many wonderful places in this world. Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting one of them. It is called Inhotim, located in the municipality of Brumadinho, 60 km south of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. I took the following header photo there on 342’2023 (2023-12-08). In a future post, I will tell you more.
Photo of one of the beautiful scenic views in Inhotim, taken by me on 342’2023 (2023-12-08).
But for now, here comes an update to modularity, subject of my post last month, 334’2023 (2023-11-30):
In the reference about the Ericsson central office AXE is said “Modular design may appear self-evident. After all, wasn’t that the key to Scania’s success as a relatively small truck manufacturer?”
So, here comes more information about Scania’s approach. Scania is a Swedish company with headquarters in Södertälje, immediately south of Stockholm. The name Scania is latin for the Swedish southernmost province, Skåne. It was there in Malmö, Sweden’s third biggest city, that Scania was founded in 1900. Today it is part of the German Volkswagen group, but it is still considered an important Swedish company.
In 1980, Scania introduced its 2-series of heavy trucks. It is a very good example of how the various modules of chassis and engines can be combined to configure the needs of a customer. It was very succesful and paved its way for future generations. More about the 2-series can be found in reference #1 below.
But, as most of you probably know, there is also another major truck manufacturer in Sweden, Volvo. Of course, Volvo is also heavily invested in modularity. An example of this can be found in their EDC (Electronic Diesel Control). Reference #2 gives all the details.
Finally, I would like to show you two different kinds of photos I took during the year 2023. The first one comes from a presentation at the Swedish-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce on 172’2023 (2023-06-21). I was very fortunate to integrate a group of athletes who together have won three olympic gold medals.
The golden trio, from right to left: Lars Björkström, olympic champion in yachting, tornado, in 1980; Giovane Gávio, twice olympic champion in men’s volleyball, in 1992 and 2004; and myself, no gold.
The second one was a photo that I had tried to take for a very long time, but the object always found a way to vanish before I could succeed. Then, finally, four days ago, I hit the jackpot. When a humming bird came to refresh itself with the sugary water I had waiting for him, then I was lucky enough to catch, not the humming bird, but more importantly, this fascinating picture of him. More about hummingbirds can be found in refrence #3 below.
This little bird is called beija-flor in Portuguese, a name that literally means flower kisser. It is always so fascinating to see it coming for a pit stop of sugary water on a sunny day, but it so quick in its action that it is very difficult to catch it on film. Photo taken by me on 352’2023 (2023-12-18).
I wish all of my faithful readers and followers a MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
As I said one month ago, today I would like to discuss what modularity is and give some examples of where we can find it.
First, look at these four pictures:
The pictures illustrate: 1) A clay brick, 2) A Lego block, 3) The telephone switching equipment AXE (photo by Ericsson), and 4) The 974 stadium (photo by FIFA).
Which ones of the those four objects do you consider suitable to be called modules?
According to litterature references, modular thinking is a strategy of organizing complex products or processes in an efficient way. A modular system is composed of modules which are designed independently of each other, but that at the same time may work together as an integrated unit.
A product contains functional and physical elements. The physical elements are details, components or compositions which finally contribute to the function of the product. The physcial elements of a product are organized in various assembly blocks. If such a block is a collection of exchangeable components which execute similar functions, then the block is a called a module.
So, according to that reasoning, only 3) and 4) can be thought of as modular. Furthermore, the correct denomination for 1) and 2) is that they are components. I am sure that you all know what a brick and a Lego block are, so let us concentrate on examining 3) and 4) in bigger detail.
In 1979, I started my first job after having received my Masters degree in Electronics engineering from Chalmers. It was really interesting, a 1.5-year trainee course at the world-wide headquarters of the telecom company LM Ericsson in Stockholm, Sweden. Me and my three fellow colleagues visited many of Ericsson´s factories in Sweden and took many training courses in order to learn the theory behind the company’s products. It was then I first heard of modularity.
At that time, Ericsson was extremely busy changing the method of their central offices for telecommunications. Instead of the old electro-mechanical systems with a lot of valves and relays arranged in a big volume of hardware, the new systems based on the digital technology with computerized control were much smaller in size and were judged as more reliable than the old systems. The new system was called AXE and had been developed during the 1970’s at a development company called Ellemtel, joint owned by Ericsson and the Swedish Telecommunications administration, called Televerket.
When developing the AXE system, the engineers were using a novel approach, to organize both the hardware and software blocks of the final product according to the modular strategy. The result was astonishing, Ericsson grew from being one of the many telecom equipment producers in the world to lead the world market.
Then in 2022, when the FIFA World Cup was being played in Qatar, I was surprised by the way one of the stadiums was built. Yes, you guessed it right, using the modular thinking! The name of the stadium, 974, denotes the number of modules used to construct the stadium. According to a description by FIFA, Stadium 974 was constructed using standard certified shipping containers and modular steel elements, echoing the nearby port and the industrial history of the plot. Then, once the World Cup was over, the whole stadium was disassembled to be set up somewhere else for another game.
See also references 1,2, and 3 below about modularity.
In my blog post next month, I hope to able to show you some more examples of other objects that also are using the modular approach.
Is there anyone today who does not know what modularity is? But how was it 50 years ago, did anyone talk about modularity then? If there were, they were very few.
Prepare yourselves, because starting next month I will give you examples of where the modularity exists today and how it slowly started to catch on everywhere.
In my previous post, I talked about the small differences in sport between success and failure. Here are two more such events, both of them involving Swedish athletes:
Swimming men 400 m individual medley in Summer Olympic Games 1972
An earlier such fact happened in the Summer Olympics Games in Munich on August 30, 1972. In the final of the 400 m individual medley for men, the two first swimmers were registered for the same time, 4 min 31,98 s. So far using hundredths of a second had been sufficient to decide a winner, but in this case the organizers had to go further down, to the thousandths of a second, and then it was discovered that the Swede Gunnar Larsson had the time of 4 min 31,981 s, while his major opponent, the American swimmer Tim McKee was recorded for 4 min 31,983 s, 2 thousandths of a second slower, or converted into distance 3 mm. Of course there were many people who wanted the goal medal to be shared between the two swimmers, but the decision was to keep them apart. I remember very well this event, I was at home watching the event live on TV and how everyone was apprehensive about the outcome.
Thousandth second timing was also used at the 1973 World Championships, but this would not be allowed again, as it was shown that this was less than the thickness of one coat of paint on the wall, and minute differences in the lanes could affect this result. All future international swimming races after 1973 would be decided only to the 1/100th of a second, and if swimmers were tied at that margin, they were declared tied. However, that decision did not have any retroactive result, so Gunnar Larsson continued as a sole winner in 1972. But Tim McKee could at least console himself that both he and Gunnar were registered as having broken the old olympic record.
Since then, there have been three different olympic events where the two first swimmers have shared the gold medal, all in freestyle swimming, in 1984, 2000, and 2016. Will there be anext one in 2032?
See also reference #1 below.
The winners podium after the 400 m individual medley, the winner Gunnar Larsson accompanied by the silver medalist Tim McKee (to the right) and bronze medalist Andras Hargitay, Hungary (to the left).
Triathlon women individual event in Summer Olympic Games 2012
Another similar event happened in the Summer Olympics Games in London on August 4, 2012. It was hosted in Hyde Park, and the first three athletes were all within 2 seconds at the finish line. Of those, the two first competitors ended up with the same time, 1 h 59 min 48 s. But the Swiss athlete Nicola Spirig was judged as being the winner in a photo finish, with the same time as the Swede Lisa Nordén. The Swedish Olympic Committee appealed against the result in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), but it turned down the appeal.
See also reference #2 below.
The thrilling photo finish with Lisa Nordén (foremost) and Nicola Spirig side by side. Photo by Imago.
Winter sports in Brazil
You may remember that a little over a year ago, in my post 240’2022 (2022-08-28) , I wrote about the two Brazilian winter sports organizations, CBDG (ice) and CBDN (snow), and presented the Arena Ice. Last week, I had the opportunity to visit the Arena Ice again, this time together with my fellow associates of Swedcham, the Swedish-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce in São Paulo, and practice some curling under the supervision of one of the curling instructors at CBDG, Fabrício Dias Paes. We all had very much fun in trying to master the 20 kg heavy curling stone and guide it to its goal. Here you can see some photos taken by Anders Pettersson and myself:
Curling practice in Arena Ice on 264’2023 (2023-09-21)
Then on the following weekend, from my home in São Carlos, I could watch two very different sports events happening at the same time in the region of Morumbi in São Paulo, to the left the final in the Brazilian Championship in Icehockey 3×3, held at the rink in Arena Ice, and to the right the final in the Brazilian Football Cup, occurring only 4 kilometers from Arena Ice. Unfortunately, the home team Big Hockey Brazil lost the final 3-4 to the Falcons from Bragança Paulista, but São Paulo FC compensated that by securing the Brazilian Football Cup with a draw 1-1 against the Rio team Flamengo, after having won the first game in Rio de Janeiro one week before.
Two totally different sports happening at the same time only 4 km apart on 267’2023 (2023-09-24).
By the way, during this weekend, there is also a Brazilian Championship in Curling for Mixed couples being played in Arena Ice. If you want to accompany it live, you can do so on this link: https://youtube.com/live/laEfuz7FYMU
Finally, today’s header photo was taken in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires by my daughter Karina on 250’2023 (2023-09-07). This metallic rose opens its petals during the day and is called Floralis Genérica. See also reference # 3 below.
How exciting sports at top level can be. Sometimes, it is impossible to judge who won the competition and who was only runner up. Some say that we should stop there and give the winner’s award to both, but others think that we should apply measures to find out if one of those athletes was just slightly better than the other and thus win the sole gold medal.
You have probably heard and maybe seen that this month we saw a new champion in women’s football, Spain, who beat England in the final. But before that, we also saw that on three occasions the winner of the match had to be decided in the penalty shootout, because both teams could not be separated, having made the equal amount of goals during the 120 min of normal play.
In the first of those three games, between Sweden and USA, in the round of 16, the decision came when both teams had scored the same number of goals, but where Sweden still had one more chance to win the game. It was then that the Swedish player Lina Hurtig kicked the ball, the US goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher touched it, but not sufficiently to impede it from passing the goal line, with the least possible measure, only possible to judge because of the video recording system called VAR (Video assistant referee). That is the situation you can see in the photos.
This is the user interface of FIFA’s Video Assisted Referee (VAR). Here we can see how the penalty kick from Lina Hurtig passed the goal line with a minmum distance. GOAL !!!
A video clip from the match can be found in reference #1 below. You may remember that I already talked about VAR five years ago, in my post 224’2018 (2018-08-12) .
By the way, the Swedish team finished third in the competition, but in sequence was rewarded with the top spot in the Fifa ranking of all nations. Grattis, tjejer!
Men’s World Cup final 1966
In the final of the 1966 Fifa World Cup, held at Wembley stadium in London, the match between England and West Germany, was tied at 2-2 during overtime, when Geoff Hurst shot the ball into the crossbar and the question is if the ball did make it inside or not. The referee decided it was a goal, a very questionable decision. If VAR had existed then, how would the outcome have been?. See also reference #2 below.
One of the greatest fears that many people have in their lives is when they get high up over the normal altitude they are used to live on. And yet, so many of those still risk their lives to ride an attraction such as a rollercoaster in an amusement park. By the way, did you know the word used in Swedish for that ride is called berg- och dalbana (a track between mountain and valley) and in Portuguese it is montanha russa (Russian mountain). Then, on rare occasions, the ride ends in a catastrophe, just like it did recently in Stockholm, where the Jetline ride in the Gröna Lund amusement park derailed on the last Sunday of June, 2023. Here is a photo of the exact moment when the accident occured:
A photo taken on 176’2023 (2023-06-25) by Fredrik Persson, TT, showing how the front car is already starting to derail. In sequence, other cars follow suit. One person died and various people were wounded.
Zugspitze cable car
The highest mountain peak in Germany, Zugspitze, lies in Bavaria, right on the border to Austria. From the German side one can reach the peak by cable car. This ride is made in the world’s longest freespan in a cable car during a travelling distance of 3 213 m, where the amused passengers are lifted 1 942 m from the base at Elbsee to the Zugspitze. More on this can be found in reference #1 below. See also these photos taken there:
Two pictures from Zugspitze, taken on 163’2023 (2023-06-12) by an anonymous blog fan, thank you very much for your contribution! The leftmost photo shows the cable car running from Elbsee up to Zugspitze on the German side, and the right picture shows similar arrangements on the Austrian side.
Vôo da serra
In Brazil was inaugurated during the month of June, 2023, a similar, individual ride of type zip wire, where a person hooks onto the steel wire that stretches from a certain elevation and down to a lower location. It lies in the state of São Paulo, between the municipalities of São Bernardo do Campo and Cubatão. This ride is called Vôo da serra (mountain flight) and during 50-60 s the daring traveller is transported a distance of 500 m while lowering their body 110 m. See also reference # 2 below and the breathtaking photo below.
The person who dares to hook up to the zip wire and travel down the mountain has this spectacular view of the mountainside and the shore line of the Baixada Santista (Santos shoreline).
A Swedish forest lake in Summer
However, not everyone enjoys those blood pressure rising activities, but prefer to look up their own little spot by a lake in the forest. For today’s post, my friend Paulo Santos did just that, he has found what the Swedes call a “smultronställe”, i.e. a calm place that few people know about and where one can benefit from when Mother Nature shows her best side! Thanks, Paulo, you really make me envy you!
What did you learn in School today? 