Today June 5 2016 is World Environment Day
“In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive
dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a
deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later
state. The name, coined by Edward Lorenz for the effect which had been known
long before, is derived from the metaphorical example of the details of a
hurricane (exact time of formation, exact path taken) being influenced by minor
perturbations such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several
weeks earlier.” (Wikipedia)
Vladimir Nabokov, ‘Lolita’, 1955:
“...She was musical and apple-sweet. Her legs twitched a
little as they lay across my live lap; I stroked them; there she lolled in the
right-hand corner, almost asprawl, Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her
immemorial fruit, singing through its juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the
heel of her slipperless foot in its sloppy anklet, against the pile of old
magazines heaped on my left on the sofa—and every movement she made, every
shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of
tactile correspondence between beast and beauty—between my gagged, bursting
beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock...”
Artist: Charlie Hankin, The New Yorker, May 2016
This picture is another example of how a good cartoon just spreads its wings, like an albatross!
Cartoonbank.com describes this picture with "Keywords: butterfly effect, bar, pick-up lines, dating, butterflies"
This picture is another example of how a good cartoon just spreads its wings, like an albatross!
Cartoonbank.com describes this picture with "Keywords: butterfly effect, bar, pick-up lines, dating, butterflies"
In recent weeks and months, there have been a few articles
on the subject of great Vladimir Nabokov and butterflies.
In one of them, from NAUTILUS, Susie Neilson says: "How Butterfly Genitalia Inspired Nabokov’s Masterpieces… The
work on the inner mechanics of butterfly evolution caused his works to develop
a much more complex inner mechanism. If we look at the three novels—Pnin,
Lolita, and Pale Fire—after he was doing his dissections, we see that he’s
created a nest of inner structures that are much more intricate than in his
previous novels, and hidden in the same way that a butterfly’s genitalia are
hidden. Butterfly genitalia are the primary means of classifying distinct
species, which is why Nabokov spent so much time examining them. So I think he
was in some ways trying to mimic nature, and the fine mechanical perfection he
found in butterflies, by crafting that very detailed precision into his works."
So it was quite amusing to read a butterfly's pick-up line in the cartoon: “Remember that hurricane a thousand miles away? That was
me!”