Still Gravity

The amazing orange-yellow wings of a male Halloween pennant -  License our images here . I got this photo in our latest hike. Check the beauty of the wings of a male Halloween pennant ( Celithemis eponina ), a dragonfly found year around in the southeast of North America, the Bahamas, and Cuba. The shiny wings have veins and membranes layered with a high level of design complexity. On the practical side, they provide these dragonflies with 97% chances of success in hunting. In hot days, the wings become sort of umbrellas to cover their thorax.   Dragonflies eat over a hundred mosquitoes a day. They don't attack humans, so let's keep them around.

And we knew it. We "reincarnate", even if not in the form that most would like. Matter and energy become something else. So says the First Law of Thermodynamics and the Law of Conservation of Mass - if you believe in science. The caveat is that all this works only in a closed system. But isn't the universe a closed system?  Dinosaur atoms may live inside us. Everything is star dust. What a huge recycling system. We are immortals.

Jasmine flower after the rain - License our images here .  Beautiful and smelly plant with 200 species of shrubs and vines. The word jasmine comes from the Persian language. It came to English through the Old French. It's said that the original meaning was "gift from God" or "fragrant flower".  A good name indeed. 

Writing short is hard. Writing a long chain of unneeded content is easy.  Thoreau wrote about this:  Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. While on the other side of the Atlantic, the mathematician Blaise Pascal confessed: I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.  Even the venerated Shakespeare saw it clear with his:  Brevity is the soul of wit. And the rational William of Ockham commanded:  Entities should not be multiplied without necessity.  On more modern times, we can follow the ideas of William Zinsser in On Writing Well   to write less nonsense.   Use shorter words. Cut unnecessary words. Cut sentences to the cleanest components. Cut the meaningless jargon.  Was Zinsser advising a resuscitation of the extinct  telegram ? I don't think so. But cutting clutter and embellishment sounds practical for non-fiction texts.  Time is gold because time is life. Why to bet on verbose writings? Inef

Many say that "less is more". Is it true? Or "less is less" like "more is more"? "Less is more" comes from a bunch of people, but the most popular sources are  a poet  and  an architect . Funny that the poet didn't go for economy of words.  Yet do much less, so much less. Someone says, (I know his name, no matter)—so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.            (Robert Browning, "Men and Women".) The architect? He was a minimalist and bet for less. The man was a fan of simple geometries.  "Less is more" and "more is more" and "more is less" and "less is less" may be seen as four combinations of probabilities. They may become misleading quantitative contradictions. Weird mumbo jumbo.  Life is complicated and there are many ways to reach heaven. Be yourself and pick whatever work for you. If you think deep about it, less can become more - example: less work, more free time to

Milky conecap - License our images  here .  Morning mushrooms that dwell in short grass and love high humidity. The white dunce cap or milky conecap ( Conocybe apala ) dies when the water is gone. What a short life from morning to midday.

"On the Art of Writing Fiction", a book from 1894. The convention says that reading is good because improves your writing. It helps with grammar, plotting, character development, etc. Technically, we get better under the influence of famous authors.  And of course, like anything else in life, reading may bring some negatives to a writer. It can make you a benign imitator, raise insecurity by comparison, and damage authenticity and originality. Reading too much can even stall your own writing - well, reading takes time.  Because all this, some say that writing is more important than reading. The belief is that novelty and the story always will trump grammar and structure. Besides that, creativity can't be taught or imitated - I agree 100% with this. And some writers even advice reading bad books to get clearly what doesn't work.  Any famous writer that didn't read much?  There is a small list mentioned here and there - some without credible sources. But my guess is

A lonely bull thistle in the Everglades -  License our images here .          Spines are the thing of this plant, that's why it's also called spear thistle. An immigrant from Europe, Asia, and Northwest Africa, the bull thistle is a weed almost everywhere.  Anything good? Well, it's a good pollinator. Butterflies, honeybees, and hummingbirds don't mind the sharp spines. For us, better to keep some distance.

Fang traders with ivory - Photo from "The Fetish Folk of West Africa". Robert H. Milligan wrote two books about his seven years as missionary in the West Coast of Africa. The adventure happened by the last decade of the 19th century.  The first book was The Jungle Folk of Africa  published in 1908. Soon after, he published  The Fetish Folk of West Africa  - in 1912. Both books overlap in their narrative but reveal interesting accounts of the life in Africa illustrated by some photos.  The Jungle Folk of Africa was well-received by the newspapers of the time. The New York Times wrote, A book that is remarkable for its vitality, picturesqueness, candor and literary quality. Mr. Milligan saw a lot during his seven African years. While The Chicago Tribune said,  A personal narrative, most realistic, most truthful, most fascinating—the author knows extremely well what he is writing about. The job of bringing Christianity to West Africa was dangerous. In the words of Robert H. Mi

In Spanish it's called "Freshness". Great name for this light green plant because looks very fresh. Even its flowers are green.  Artillery plant grows well between walking stones - License our images  here . Artillery plant ( Pilea microphylla ) is a ground cover perennial that prefers a light shade. Direct sunlight scorches the leaves. It may look like a fern, but it's not.  There are reports of medical use as diuretic and to heal sores and bruises. Science points to its traditional use for bacterial infections - source here . The study found antimicrobial activity from this plant but suggest the need of more research.  Frescura brings a happy look. May be the effect of the fresh green on our mind.