The Roll of the Ball

Old Game

So, what's with the ball? There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sports and games that are played with balls (and by balls I mean rolling sphere-like bodies like the one shown in the picture) which evolve from a wide variety of unrelated cultural backgrounds. How many man-hours have been spent globally in watching all kinds and sizes of balls just rolling around? The oldest known ballgame is allegedly de Ulama, a version of the Mesoamerican ballgame (of death) whose roots extended back to at least the 2nd millennium BC. And there must have been quite lot of rolling long before that. That makes me wonder, is it just the simplicity of the most beautifully perfect shape in nature, that adapts to every gaming purpose and environment? Or is there something hard-wired into our genes that makes it impossible to take our minds off the roll of the ball? Just like a kitten to a yarn hank.

Landlord's Gaze

Land tenure has ever been a problem in Mexico. Fewer than 11,000 haciendas controlled 57 percent of the national territory at the beginning of the 20th century, which became one of triggering situations for the 1910 Mexican Revolution. After the civil war, a mayor reform was introduced, and remained in force until 1992. However it has visibly failed to create a proper distribution of land, only succeeded in making it very complicated. Today, with greater demand an less availability for every natural resource you may think of, most of the usable land is employed in inefficient, medieval, extensive farming (if at all employed).

More on the subject:

• Structure and history of land tenure in Mexico;
  http://www.internal-displacement.org/idmc/website/countries.nsf/(httpEnvelopes)/EA3B6CB789BAE118C12573AD00534184?OpenDocument
• Mexico-Land Tenure Agriculture:
  http://www.mongabay.com/history/mexico/mexico-land_tenure_agriculture.html
• Land Tenure and the Ejido Program in Mexico:
  http://www.applet-magic.com/ejido.htm

She's not dead, she's glad

A happy spider

The tree trunks of this garden near de city of Xalapa in Veracruz, were covered with these cheerful kind of spiders. Most of them weren't quite red, though, and this one in particular caught my attention. While trying to get the best portarit of her, I did not realise how close I actually was to the joyful little beasts. Fortunately, all of their legs managed to stay on the trunk's surface and the subject here, gave me a beautiful blushing smile for my photograph.