Happy Holidays

I am thankful for the wonderful and thoughtful readers I have, and I want to wish you all a really happy Christmas, or whatever you celebrate, and a fruitful new year!   :-)
Eolake

I have seen things you humans wouldn't believe...

Bert said: it's a true-color shot of the earth as seen by a new Japanese weather satellite. The ultra-high res version is quite stunning. It is 120 MegaBytes!

The Sun's activity as recorded by NASA'a NuSTAR experiment.

Bigger picture

Ice Sculptures That Formed After a Windy Mountain Storm

Ice Sculptures That Formed After a Windy Mountain Storm, article/photos.
This is going all over the net, so I may as well show them too.
Horizontal icicles up to three meters!

In Memory of a Shutter-Bug (A Christmas Story)

In Memory of a Shutter-Bug (A Christmas Story), article on ToP. 

One of the most relevant and touching real-life xmas stories I have read. First posted eight years ago, and I remembered it clearly! 

Laban - Hvor skal vi sove i nat

From the sublime to the widikullous. Here it is: the biggest and best and very worst of Danish pop love songs ever, "Hvor Skal Vi Sove I Nat". It was one of those things which was a mega-hit, yet I never found anybody who admitted to liking it. :-)
In case you're confused: it's a Love Song called "Where Shall We Sleep Tonight?" Very romantic!



How come I could never grow a hair like his? I am so envious.

Once in a small café in Tivoli in Copenhagen where a pretty good three man band were playing, they were asking for audiences requests, and I requested this one as a joke. The singer didn't hesitate for a second, he said "Get out you, now!!"

Siouxsie Sioux and C V Jørgensen and Surf A La Mode

Surf A La Mode (The Current Taste), a lovely song from late seventies... which weirdly enough apparently is about vagriacies and shifting fortunes of pop music (If you include Siouxsie and the Banshees in pop music...). Enjoy the guitar solo in the middle.




I think CV himself has fallen prey to the fickle public's tastes, since this was put up over a month ago, and has been listened to four times, three of them were me and perhaps the first one was CV testing his new channel.
But it seems serendipitous that I been on the web for twenty years, but I never look up this old favorite until now, just after it's been posted. So maybe he'll come back.

Except for this song and its sound, I can't claim to be a big fan. Good music, but he always seem to sing in a sarcastic tone about unlikeable things, including a song about that very very rare thing, a Danish serial bomber who targeted phone boxes.

And it did, then, introduce me to Siouxsie Sioux, which I still think is someone one should know if one is interested in avant garde rock music of the last half century.

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (The Real Reason For The Forty-Hour Workweek)!

Article.

Here in the West, a lifestyle of unnecessary spending has been deliberately cultivated and nurtured in the public by big business. Companies in all kinds of industries have a huge stake in the public’s penchant to be careless with their money. They will seek to encourage the public’s habit of casual or non-essential spending whenever they can.

Do you know this tablet stand (solved)

Update: 
Robert M and Jonas (thanks) found was I was looking for. It is KUBI, a semi-robotic tablet stand (indiegogo) which allows the person at the other end to tilt and turn the tablet to look around in the room. It is 500 bucks, and even then you save 400, according to Amazon! Seems the list price is enough for two iPads. But in a corporate environment it could be useful, and the price no big deal. 
(It's a pity they did not use it fully in the show, would have been fun to see it tilt and turn towards Amy when Bernadette called.)

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In a pretty recent episode of The Big Bang Theory, this intriguing tablet stand was shown. I've never seen anything like it, and I'm quite curious. For example, what does it use power for? (It's not passed on to the tablet.)
I've googled and googled, but didn't find it. Does anybody know what it is? (It may even be a piece of lab equipment not originally meant for a tablet stand.)

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The brunette is (from Wiki):
Mayim Hoya Bialik, born December 12, 1975, is an American actress and neuroscientist. From early January 1991 to May 1995, she played the title character of NBC's Blossom. Since May 2010, she has played Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler on CBS's The Big Bang Theory, a role for which she has been nominated three times for the Primetime Emmy Award...

Winter nature

Watch this beautiful nature video on Tommy's blog. 

http://tommys-mind.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/wild-december.html

(Sorry, I still have odd and varied problems with Blogger, no matter what app or platform I try. So formatting is basic.)

Talking Birds and Bees in a public place

One evening almost alone in the library, I was browsing, standing on the other side of the shelf from two young women. One of them, handsome brunette, was telling the other, pretty blonde and slightly younger, how high school  was generally fine but she was somehow was missing out on all that amazing sex that her friend apparently had in high school. She didn't say it in those words but it was clear what she was talking about. Her friend told her that with a little patience "it will happen for you too", and then she told about a couple of her own adventures, for example having sex during a party in the basement room with a window view open to public areas.

And then they suddenly got quiet, clearly realizing that they were themselves in a public area, and they walked out from behind the shelf and past me very demurely, suppressing giggles, and quickly got out of the library.

I mentioned them to the librarian in the next room, and she laughed and told me looking out the window, "they're still standing out there giggling".

I found this so funny and perfect, and almost like a scene out of a movie. 

Just after sunset

(Clickable)

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Olympus E-MD1, 12-40mm F:2.8 Pro, on auto, ISO 5000, hand-held at 1/30 sec. Focal length equivalent 80mm.

A close look at Europa

... one of Jupiter's moons, which you'll know if you've read Space Oddity 2010 (or was it 2050? Sequelitis, all of them). (OK, it was "... oddessy. Pardon an old Bowie fan.)

Click for big pic

Isn't that gorgeous?
I love images which combine order with a certain kind of chaos, combine simplicity with a certain kind of complexity.