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SorellaLaBefana
SorellaLaBefana's Journal
SorellaLaBefana's Journal
February 7, 2026
Only seven new petrol-powered cars sold in Norway in January !!
Yes, seven dinoburners out of ~2100 new cars. Progress
...BEVs [battery electric vehicles] made up 95.9% of new-car sales in Norway last year. Analysts say the oil-rich country’s electric vehicle boom is the result of high carbon taxes, generous EV subsidies and the lack of a powerful lobby to oppose the transition.
The secretary general of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, Christina Bu, said the data for 2025 “certainly doesn’t mean the job is over”.
“Two out of three people still drive fossil-fuel cars,” she told the Norwegian public broadcaster, NRK. “If they are to have the opportunity to choose electric cars, we must be just as ambitious in 2026.” ...
The Guardian (UK)
The secretary general of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, Christina Bu, said the data for 2025 “certainly doesn’t mean the job is over”.
“Two out of three people still drive fossil-fuel cars,” she told the Norwegian public broadcaster, NRK. “If they are to have the opportunity to choose electric cars, we must be just as ambitious in 2026.” ...
The Guardian (UK)
Light is starting to break through"Winter Sun" by contemporary artist Angela Stanton
February 2, 2026
Light from the moon can also give rise to such wonderful phenomena. These magical nocturnal lights are called Moon Dogs (paraselenae) named for Selene (the moon), sister of Helios (the sun).
Happy Groundhog Day, or, if it is your tradition, Happy Candlemas
Vermont Sun Dogs (Cloud Appreciation Society image)
In the bitter 2ºF...chill of morning over...Vermont...Andrea Anthony...spotted a pair of parhelia, or sun dogs, glimmering on either side of the rising Sun. These are bright spots of light with reddish edges that can appear as the sunlight refracts through prism-like ice crystals in the shape of tiny hexagonal plates.
Often, parhelia are produced by ice crystals up in high-level Cirrus or Cirrostratus clouds, but Andrea’s sun dogs were born much closer to home. The morning light was shining through a ground-level mist of glittering ice crystals known as diamond dust. You can see evidence of this in the out-of-focus sparkles captured in the middle of her image.
The glitters result from the gentle wobble of the ice crystals as they fall through the still air like autumn leaves. This same wobble has the effect of stretching out the parhelia into golden vertical beams.
Often, parhelia are produced by ice crystals up in high-level Cirrus or Cirrostratus clouds, but Andrea’s sun dogs were born much closer to home. The morning light was shining through a ground-level mist of glittering ice crystals known as diamond dust. You can see evidence of this in the out-of-focus sparkles captured in the middle of her image.
The glitters result from the gentle wobble of the ice crystals as they fall through the still air like autumn leaves. This same wobble has the effect of stretching out the parhelia into golden vertical beams.
Light from the moon can also give rise to such wonderful phenomena. These magical nocturnal lights are called Moon Dogs (paraselenae) named for Selene (the moon), sister of Helios (the sun).
Happy Groundhog Day, or, if it is your tradition, Happy Candlemas
January 19, 2026
Storm Brew -- Cloud Appreciation Society
Andrea Hamer ...could see a storm was brewing in the north as she looked up from her front gate in Tarrawarra, Victoria, Australia...
Andrea found beauty in this chaos of air and water. Can you find a subtle breaking-wave shape hidden in the upper middle of her cloud? Known as a fluctus, this curled cloud feature formed in the intense wind shear that can occur around Cumulonimbus storm clouds. A fluctus like this lasts no more than a minute or so before it’s lost into the restless, roiling cauldron of the sky.
https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/monday-19th-january-2026/
Andrea found beauty in this chaos of air and water. Can you find a subtle breaking-wave shape hidden in the upper middle of her cloud? Known as a fluctus, this curled cloud feature formed in the intense wind shear that can occur around Cumulonimbus storm clouds. A fluctus like this lasts no more than a minute or so before it’s lost into the restless, roiling cauldron of the sky.
https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/monday-19th-january-2026/
January 11, 2026
For some reason Britannica has taken to defacing their lede photos/artworks with puerile orange graffiti. Usually, TinEye can find the original undefaced image. Not this time.
I refrain from comment.
Milk in Bottles (1878) plus later Pasteurization halved the Infant Mortality rate within a few years ꩜
For some reason Britannica has taken to defacing their lede photos/artworks with puerile orange graffiti. Usually, TinEye can find the original undefaced image. Not this time.
...in 1878 Alexander Campbell of the New York Dairy Company Ltd. pulled off something revolutionary: He delivered milk that was contained. There was no ladling, pouring, or siphoning into whatever tub, bucket, or pail was handy. This milk arrived in a clean, clear... glass pint bottle, sealed with a lid...
No standards governed refrigeration, storage, or processing, and additives were sometimes mixed in to “enhance” milk (read: disguise spoilage). These “enhancements” included everything from plaster of paris to charcoal to eggs. The milk traveled in a large container, and customers filled their own vessels along the route. Cleanliness, then, depended on the consumer, the container, the ladle, the weather...
A sealed bottle meant fewer hands touching the milk and fewer opportunities for contamination. But it didn’t solve everything. Commercial pasteurization wasn’t far off...its application to milk proved transformative. Rates of diseases routinely transmitted through milk (typhoid, strep, tuberculosis) dropped, and infant mortality fell by half...
https://www.britannica.com/today-in-history/January-11-Milk-in-Glass-Bottles
No standards governed refrigeration, storage, or processing, and additives were sometimes mixed in to “enhance” milk (read: disguise spoilage). These “enhancements” included everything from plaster of paris to charcoal to eggs. The milk traveled in a large container, and customers filled their own vessels along the route. Cleanliness, then, depended on the consumer, the container, the ladle, the weather...
A sealed bottle meant fewer hands touching the milk and fewer opportunities for contamination. But it didn’t solve everything. Commercial pasteurization wasn’t far off...its application to milk proved transformative. Rates of diseases routinely transmitted through milk (typhoid, strep, tuberculosis) dropped, and infant mortality fell by half...
https://www.britannica.com/today-in-history/January-11-Milk-in-Glass-Bottles
I refrain from comment.
January 8, 2026
Why, yes, I would like my sunset pictures to turn out like this :)
...near Adelaide, South Australia, Cher McGrath...watched the waves rolling in. The waves...originated in storms hundreds of miles out in the Southern Ocean, where high winds had disturbed the ocean surface...
Cloud Appreciation Society
Cloud Appreciation Society
January 7, 2026
For me, this striking image (made by an Italian) showing the deep immensity of space, immediately brought to mind Carl Sagan's book Broca's Brain. The whole APOD image and write up flooded me with hope. Least this is all seeming wayyyy too wooey — raising the question WTF is being posted in the pragmatic Way Forward — am posting here because I think that it is fundamental to recall WHY it is that we need to rebuild, WHAT it is that we actually wish to rebuild.
It was the vaguely skull shaped and deeply convoluted image that brought Broca's Brain to mind. It is a wonderful read. The title refers to Paul Broca the French physician who identified a portion of the brain (now called Broca's Area) important in speech. Broca’s own brain is preserved in a jar of formalin in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.
When visiting the museum, Sagan asked himself how much of the man known as Paul Broca can still be found in this jar. The book is a collection of more or less related essays which, one way or another, tries to answer that question.
Many will be familiar with some of the quotations from this book. Perhaps the most widely known is “I believe that the extraordinary should certainly be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
He also made many other observations in the work. Two of my favourites being:
We need to regain the ability to think critically. In particular we need to work to help society to regain that ability.
Thus endeth the sermonizing and to confess that the name of the nebula also brought to mind FSM — the Flying Spaghetti Monster
We need to keep moving forward, and we need to remember WHY.
To rebuild the party, we need to rebuild Art, Knowledge and Science. APOD reminded me of all of this today
the Spaghetti Nebula...it is easy to get lost following the looping and twisting filaments of this intricate supernova remnant..
light from this powerful stellar explosion first reached the Earth when woolly mammoths roamed free..
image was captured last month from Forca Canapine, Italy.
[Ed: Single text block reformatted into paragraphs for readability]
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260107.html
light from this powerful stellar explosion first reached the Earth when woolly mammoths roamed free..
image was captured last month from Forca Canapine, Italy.
[Ed: Single text block reformatted into paragraphs for readability]
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260107.html
For me, this striking image (made by an Italian) showing the deep immensity of space, immediately brought to mind Carl Sagan's book Broca's Brain. The whole APOD image and write up flooded me with hope. Least this is all seeming wayyyy too wooey — raising the question WTF is being posted in the pragmatic Way Forward — am posting here because I think that it is fundamental to recall WHY it is that we need to rebuild, WHAT it is that we actually wish to rebuild.
The image points to the importance of Art, of Knowledge, of Science, of Wonder in creating a World in which we wish to live. To my thought, to focus minutely upon such things as 'we lost because ...' can distract from why people should give a *hit about our party in the first place.
It was the vaguely skull shaped and deeply convoluted image that brought Broca's Brain to mind. It is a wonderful read. The title refers to Paul Broca the French physician who identified a portion of the brain (now called Broca's Area) important in speech. Broca’s own brain is preserved in a jar of formalin in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.
When visiting the museum, Sagan asked himself how much of the man known as Paul Broca can still be found in this jar. The book is a collection of more or less related essays which, one way or another, tries to answer that question.
Many will be familiar with some of the quotations from this book. Perhaps the most widely known is “I believe that the extraordinary should certainly be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
He also made many other observations in the work. Two of my favourites being:
“Anger at queries about our beliefs is the body’s warning signal: here lies unexamined and probably dangerous doctrinal baggage”
“Both Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public…But the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking”
We need to regain the ability to think critically. In particular we need to work to help society to regain that ability.
Thus endeth the sermonizing and to confess that the name of the nebula also brought to mind FSM — the Flying Spaghetti Monster
We need to keep moving forward, and we need to remember WHY.
January 3, 2026
Came back in from morning walkabout with catz to check on cameras had setup to have another go at catching a Boötid meteor. Yes, do know that this shower is more correctly named the Quadrantids (vide supra) after the ‘extinct’ constellation Quadrans Muralis.
Howsomever, one of our catz is named Boötes (after the Current Constellation where the radiant is) or Boots (when he goes to the Vet) or Baffles for his usual state of apparent confusion or MrB...all depends upon how he's acting. So we think of them as the Boötids
It was as wonderful a walkabout as is possible moving beneath and within the calm, gentle light of the setting moon.
There are many traditional names for a year’s full moons.
We learned this many decades ago one winter at Timberline Lodge (built by the New Deal WPA) from the wall hangings. ‘Wolf Moon’ was given as the name used by (unspecified) Northwest indigenous people. It was said this was because of the incessant night long howling of the hungry wolves of deep winter.
Since then, we’ve an interest in what other cultures may have named these remarkable, repetitive events. Have only ever been able to find Northern Hemisphere names. Even read somewhere that people in the Southern Hemisphere never had particular names for full moon. This seems BS—if anyone knows…
Anyhow, around the Great Lakes the name ‘Cracking Tree Moon’ was used. We never really understood this until a few years ago we had a severe winter storm which overnight coated the trees with inches of ice from freezing rain and then piled snow on top of that.
In the morning there was the LOUD Explosive Cracking of tree branches breaking as they warmed up just a few degrees—tho was still well below freezing—and crashed to the ground. I put on my hard hat, went out (no catz interested in coming with) for walkabout with curiosity and camera.
Soon realized was too dangerous and came back inside by the fire.
I do wish us all—once more—a Newer, Better, New Year
Wolf Moon
...Full Moon is the brightest lunar phase, and tonight you can stand in the light of the first Full Moon of 2026....on January 3 at 10:03 UTC...
about 7 hours later planet Earth reaches its 2026 perihelion, the closest point in its elliptical orbit around the Sun...
while you're out skygazing don't forget to look for rare, bright fireballs from the Quadrantid meteor shower.
This masterful, mysterious, understated and remarkable APOD is found on this link
about 7 hours later planet Earth reaches its 2026 perihelion, the closest point in its elliptical orbit around the Sun...
while you're out skygazing don't forget to look for rare, bright fireballs from the Quadrantid meteor shower.
This masterful, mysterious, understated and remarkable APOD is found on this link
Ed: Single block of text reformatted for clarity
Came back in from morning walkabout with catz to check on cameras had setup to have another go at catching a Boötid meteor. Yes, do know that this shower is more correctly named the Quadrantids (vide supra) after the ‘extinct’ constellation Quadrans Muralis.
Howsomever, one of our catz is named Boötes (after the Current Constellation where the radiant is) or Boots (when he goes to the Vet) or Baffles for his usual state of apparent confusion or MrB...all depends upon how he's acting. So we think of them as the Boötids
It was as wonderful a walkabout as is possible moving beneath and within the calm, gentle light of the setting moon.
There are many traditional names for a year’s full moons.
We learned this many decades ago one winter at Timberline Lodge (built by the New Deal WPA) from the wall hangings. ‘Wolf Moon’ was given as the name used by (unspecified) Northwest indigenous people. It was said this was because of the incessant night long howling of the hungry wolves of deep winter.
Since then, we’ve an interest in what other cultures may have named these remarkable, repetitive events. Have only ever been able to find Northern Hemisphere names. Even read somewhere that people in the Southern Hemisphere never had particular names for full moon. This seems BS—if anyone knows…
Anyhow, around the Great Lakes the name ‘Cracking Tree Moon’ was used. We never really understood this until a few years ago we had a severe winter storm which overnight coated the trees with inches of ice from freezing rain and then piled snow on top of that.
In the morning there was the LOUD Explosive Cracking of tree branches breaking as they warmed up just a few degrees—tho was still well below freezing—and crashed to the ground. I put on my hard hat, went out (no catz interested in coming with) for walkabout with curiosity and camera.
Soon realized was too dangerous and came back inside by the fire.
I do wish us all—once more—a Newer, Better, New Year
December 31, 2025
Well, we've now had *our* New Year's Eve Party !!
As for the last several years we traveled (by interweb) to Finland.
Since it is 8 hours ahead in time, this works Really Well and we’ll be in bed in a couple of hours for a Long Winter’s Nap.
Well, for at least two hours or so before all of the private fireworks in our and surrounding ‘communities’—housing developments—start up. Generally they go on until ~0200.
Last year, when mentioning to a friend that we’d be Celebrating New Year’s in Finland they were amazed that we would travel that far for so short a time—as had plans with them right after the New Year.
This is one of the Really Good uses of the World Wide Web: It makes the world so much smaller and personal!
So, Merry Christmas and ¡Feliz Año Nuevo! o ¡Un próspero año nuevo! to All Y’all from Texas
Since it is 8 hours ahead in time, this works Really Well and we’ll be in bed in a couple of hours for a Long Winter’s Nap.
Well, for at least two hours or so before all of the private fireworks in our and surrounding ‘communities’—housing developments—start up. Generally they go on until ~0200.
Last year, when mentioning to a friend that we’d be Celebrating New Year’s in Finland they were amazed that we would travel that far for so short a time—as had plans with them right after the New Year.
This is one of the Really Good uses of the World Wide Web: It makes the world so much smaller and personal!
So, Merry Christmas and ¡Feliz Año Nuevo! o ¡Un próspero año nuevo! to All Y’all from Texas
December 31, 2025
The URL for this livecam is (at least for the nonce):
New Year in Ozland! - Soon will be New Year here as well.
Was completely surprised when I came upon this live Sydney Harbor YT stream to see that the New Year had Started!
It was earlyish, and, though I knew today would be New Year’s—somehow I wasn’t awake enough to have put it together to recall that the year starts in the Western Pacific.
Serendipitous that saw this, for do not visit this part of the World Wide Web every day, as often find that the interwebpipes are clogged with catz on the way to Australia.
The Good News is that This is A New Year !!
Happy New Year!
¡Feliz Año Nuevo! o ¡Un próspero año nuevo!
It was earlyish, and, though I knew today would be New Year’s—somehow I wasn’t awake enough to have put it together to recall that the year starts in the Western Pacific.
Serendipitous that saw this, for do not visit this part of the World Wide Web every day, as often find that the interwebpipes are clogged with catz on the way to Australia.
The Good News is that This is A New Year !!
Happy New Year!
¡Feliz Año Nuevo! o ¡Un próspero año nuevo!
The URL for this livecam is (at least for the nonce):
December 27, 2025
A lot was done with that over half-century old tech. Suggesting that dreams and desire are of more import than the latest gadgets when it comes to accomplishment.
Moonship, December 1972
In this picture of Apollo 17—the LAST moon mission—the pilot can be seen peering out from the triangular window to the right of the small round structure.
Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space...
...this picture taken from Apollo 17's command module America shows Challenger's ascent stage in lunar orbit. Small reaction control thrusters are at the sides of the moonship with the bell of the ascent rocket engine underneath. The hatch that allowed access to the lunar surface is seen at the front, with a round radar antenna at the top. Mission commander Gene Cernan is clearly visible through the triangular window.
This spaceship performed gracefully, landing on the Moon and returning the Apollo astronauts to the orbiting command module in December of 1972. So where is Challenger now?
While its descent stage remains at the Apollo 17 landing site in the Taurus-Littrow valley, the ascent stage pictured was intentionally crashed nearby after being jettisoned from the command module prior to the astronauts' return to planet Earth.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251227.html
[ed: reformatted from original solid block of text]
...this picture taken from Apollo 17's command module America shows Challenger's ascent stage in lunar orbit. Small reaction control thrusters are at the sides of the moonship with the bell of the ascent rocket engine underneath. The hatch that allowed access to the lunar surface is seen at the front, with a round radar antenna at the top. Mission commander Gene Cernan is clearly visible through the triangular window.
This spaceship performed gracefully, landing on the Moon and returning the Apollo astronauts to the orbiting command module in December of 1972. So where is Challenger now?
While its descent stage remains at the Apollo 17 landing site in the Taurus-Littrow valley, the ascent stage pictured was intentionally crashed nearby after being jettisoned from the command module prior to the astronauts' return to planet Earth.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251227.html
[ed: reformatted from original solid block of text]
A lot was done with that over half-century old tech. Suggesting that dreams and desire are of more import than the latest gadgets when it comes to accomplishment.
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Member since: Tue Dec 24, 2013, 08:33 AMNumber of posts: 491