TOURISTS OF THE IDEAL (IGNACIO VIDAL-FOLCH) AND THE TAMARIND

 The tree on which you are set is called here rain tree . They give it this name because it collects the dew on its flowers and when it dawns and closes them to protect itself from the sun, it pours the water on the one below…if you fall asleep, it wakes you up with a great shower!

Tamarind, sampaloc… this tree has plenty of names. Trees, like birds, can be named in a great variety of ways, according to the place. Linneo´s intervention was very timely to bring order.

Althought the main use of tamarind is to offer shadow for the cattle and it can be comestible, it is best knowm for this hidraulic show described in the text. It is also famous its Majestic top, like the Dragon tree.

May this post serve to recommend the novel  which is good, but even better are the diaries by the same author, Illusion is what matters. In this book, every new post appears wiht a number, 19564 for instance, which means the number of days the writer has lived. It was difficult for me to understand it, but I liked it

ANY SON (EDUARDO HALFON) AND THE BOILED TOAD FABLE

 He told us tha if you put a toad in a boling water pan, the toad Will jump quickly out of the pan for salving itself. But if you put the toad in lukewarm water and you increase Little by Little the temperatura, the toad Will not noticed the gradual rise and it Will died eventually boiled.I am sure that nobody understood the fable and the teacher was writting on the blackboard the First Law of Themodynamics (∆u = q − w) next to the drawinf of a smiling toad

From my point of view, this fable would work pretty well to illustrate the risks of climate change. The average increase in temperature on the planet is so gradual, using a human life as scale, that we do barely notice it. But we might be like the toad which is being heated up little by little. When the old teacher keeps on writing down a formula, his students no longer pay attention to him. It´s something very well-known by teachers and science communicators. In fact, in popular science books, there is a premise of avoiding formulas and working with metaphores and fables. It´s  even said that some editors have quantified ( with a formula!) the number of readers that  would be lost if there were a specific number of formulas on a page.