Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

Well, we'll start with a classic, by this classic English author.
She was known to highlight the dependence of women on marriage, to secure social standing and economic security. Maybe she wasn't considered a feminist, like her contemporary Mary Wollstonecraft, but she was of a strong character, just as the heroines in her stories...

Pride and Prejudice (.PDF)
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Tangled: The Golden Flower

The other day, I was in the Taj Mahal, and I noticed something that caught my attention: the lily-like flower carved in the marble walls of the great mausoleum. I remembered that, in the Tangled movie, the Golden Flower was a Lilium, a very similar (not to say the same) flower. Why would they use a Lilium? The plant that Rapunzel’s mother ingested in the original fairy tale was a Rampion, that has a totally different flower... So I started researching. The first time a Lilium appeared in history was in a painting in Crete, in the year 1580 BC. For the Greeks, this flower was very precious: a myth says that it was created with Hera’s breast milk. For many cultures, this Lily symbolizes purity, chastity and virtue, and in a few cases death. In some others, it even represents Heaven on earth, or reaching a paradise in the afterlife. As for it’s pharmaceutical value, it was commonly believed to have magical qualities, using it to treat fever, wounds and arthritis in the Victorian Era. In E...

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Homemade Poisons

We all see how fast Snow White falls on an eternal slumber after taking one bite from a poisoned apple. In some versions, Snow White wakes up by unchoking herself after a good shake, other versions look up to the romantic version of true love's kiss ... Fairy Tales, always so unreal... I started searching for what kind of poison could have been the one that Queen used to rid herself from her stupid stepdaughter. It cannot be true love’s kiss, so what made her wake up from her slumber? Some while ago, I found a video from The Film Theorist , in which he explains what really saved Snow White , after having an amount of Deadly Nightshade poison. If someone else has done the research and posted the results... What am I doing with this?! Well, I became suddenly curious about how the hell could I do some homemade poisons. My studies changed from what poison did the princess took, to what poisons could I make in my home, just like the evil character in the movie. Some of what I found are...

The Book of Life: The Impostor’s Syndrome

Some of you may have seen the movie The Book of Life . I liked, one way or the other, all the characters presented in the plot: some of them are odious, some are lovable... And one of the characters that’s the most pitiest, for me, is Joaquin. In the movie, we see a fearless General, ready for whatever comes in the way... Is it? Actually, no. He is consumed by guilt, really thinking that he doesn’t deserve all the medals and achievements he has. Even when he no longer has his ‘special medal’ to protect him (we have to see how ‘special’ was... Maybe it was something to lift his self-confidence, like the ‘ beauty patch ’, or the trick that Harry Potter plays on his friend Ronald ) and fights along with Manolo, almost sacrificing himself on the way, he doesn’t feel himself worthy of a medal anymore. This kind of thinking, self-doubting your competence and capacities, the overwhelming feeling that you don't deserve your success, is what we call ‘Impostor Syndrome’. As Joaquin, pe...

The Green Papyrus

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