Off to wordpress

Hello people. So I finally made the move to WordPress. It pains me greatly to abandon blogger – my first blogging platform, but hey, that’s what happens to the first wife when she stops taking care of herself,; gets all fat and ugly; stops wearing heels and starts wearing rubber shoes; doesn’t make her hair, you know, all that fancy stuff; and the husbands friends start complaining and at first he defends her but after a while, he can’t anymore and he has to out every day and see his friends with their pretty, young thangs and he knows he can get one but he still feels loyalty to his first and he resists and tries and then one day when the cup is full and overflowing and he can hold it no longer, he kicks the stup cow out of…er…I’m sorry I got carried away a bit. Anyway, now I’m on WordPress. Learning to love it now. That’s that. If you want to keep up with my random rubbish feel free to join in at:

http://thinktankt.wordpress.com/

Its been real.

(I will be reposting my last post X&Y on wordpress, since it got lost in translation between the two platforms)

X & Y

by @Nerdychique

I beg your pardon in advance so forgive me; this will be a bit of a nerdy post. Please read to the end, I promise it will be worth your while. Will you stay? Please....okay, you’re still here. Good.

I'm sure everyone reading this post did some sort of elementary mathematics; if you didn’t please accept my deepest condolences. if you did, the following question shouldn't be difficult.

Question: Given the two variables 'x' and 'y' and a constant '5'; how many mathematical relationships (equations) can you write to connect them (e.g x+y=5). Take 10minutes to try this and see how many you can come up with. Try it…No really, TRY it.

(-_-)

I apologize for putting you through the stress, but there is indeed a point to all this mathematical calisthenics .
Okay, are you done? Your basic answers should look something like this: x+y=5, x+5=y, x-5=y, xy=5, y/x=5; and you could have more complex ones like x^5=y, x=y>5, x=5log(y), y=Sin(x+5), ln(x)=y/5; and then some progressing toward even more complexity like: Cosh(x)+Sinh(y)=5 or even x^7+x^5+x^4-x^3+5x+5 = y, …continua ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

If you thought about it carefully, you would have realized early on that there are almost an infinite amount of relationships that can be constructed. Some of you might have also observed that the amount of mathematical relationships you come up with is also a function of a number of other indirect factors. These are:

i.) How much mathematics you've been taught.

I'm pretty sure that @ThinkTank (an engineer) would have more advanced statements than me (aBiochemist). This is because he has been taught; or rather he has had to learn more mathematics than I have.(@ThinkTank says: “You’re damn right about that sister! Do you know how many equations I have solved in my life time? You go fear if I write equations for you o, don’t let me start! We will not leave here till 2012! Jor oh!)

ii.) How much mathematics you've been exposed to.

This one is very closely related to the first. It differs only in terms of the fact that you may not have been taught, but you might have come across the math somewhere else, maybe from a friend or you may have had to use it to solve a problem outside school.

iii.) How much research and effort you put into solving the question.

For all I care, someone may have googled 'mathematical statements' and come up with a deluge of answers, while other people may just see no point, and answer based on residual knowledge.

My point is, our views on everything in life, much like our answers to the question above, are dependent on the same three factors: what we’ve been taught, what we’ve experienced or come across and what we are willing to find out. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm towing the line towards the third one which has to do with open-mindedness. How open minded are you? The Oxford dictionary (sorry I had to go there) defines open mindedness as “the willingness to listen to, investigate, think about, or accept different ideas”.

See, we are all different. Our ideas and opinions about different issues depend on our backgrounds, openness and natural predilections. It should be clear from this that everyone will have different views on the same issues.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but the great evil are the people with closed minds, who refuse to even think about the logic behind another person's idea or beliefs. I think this is what is referred to as rigidity. Using the Mathematical statement analogy, the rigid student would probably have been the person with the least statements and the rigid teacher would be the one who refused to accept a student’s statements just because he hasn’t seen them before.

Rigid people are everywhere around us, they are the people who argue about issues blindly, refusing to listen or even think. They don’t even TRY to think. Somehow, their minds have been blocked by something: outright stupidity, religion, culture or just a tenacious unwillingness to change.

We all know how annoying it is to argue with someone who keeps who keeps telling you 'that's how it’s supposed to be' or ‘It can never happen’. Personally, there's nothing that grinds my gears more than people who always stick to the status quo, nothing.

I believe we would be doing ourselves, and the whole world, a whole lot of good if we just took the time to open our minds a little; question things more. Read, travel (you can 'sort of' travel online), engage in conversations with people from vastly different backgrounds, ask questions, continually question the status quo, use your brain.

Personally, I have imposed the 'learn a new thing everyday' rule on myself. When I realize that I haven't learned anything, I go to the Wikipedia homepage, and just read. You can adopt whatever works for you. In the end, I believe that open-mindedness is what will bring us closer to unity as a species. But then that's just my opinion.

Tribal War

Allow me to start by saying this: If you think you are better than anyone by virtue of being born into a particular tribe, then YOU HAVE FAILED LIFE. Hello and welcome to today’s post.

So on Friday night/Saturday morning, for reasons yet unknown to me, some people on twitter started throwing around tribal slurs and making jibes at other tribes. I'm sure it started innocently enough but soon took on a life of its own. Apparently, the majority of participants in this semi-humorous exchange of ‘ideas’ were of the Igbo and Yoruba persuasions and they indeed proceeded to vigorously insult everyone and everything about the other tribes from the ‘Girls’ of the tribe (some did so with very colorful illustrations by way of twitpics) to the ‘Famous’ members of the tribe including Baba Sege OBJ, Old soldier Ojukwu, Patience Ozokwor…even poor little Kelly Hansome was dragged into the fray

The fallout of this collective foolishness under the guise of humor included several hurt feelings, unfollows, an unknown number of reported blockings and at least one severely retarded, though mildly entertaining, twitterfight between two people whose handles I do not care enough about to remember. However, the fight led to one of the participants receiving intense curses that I can only describe as being ‘deeper than rap’. If I were him, I would rededicate my life to Christ and go and see my Pastor tomorrow for special prayers.

Anyway, whilst all this was going on, I was getting my Switzerland swag on, you know, remaining neutral, reading the tweets and chuckling at some while sipping on some fine spirits (God bless the Russians for what they do with potatoes). But in all this alleged ‘jest’, I did detect a lot of latent tribalism boiling beneath the surface. I mean, the kinds of things that were said are not things that just come off the top of one’s head, no, I think not, they seemed more like deep seated distrust, misgivings and spite dressed up in the attire of jokes and fun.

I know some will say I’m taking the matter a bit too seriously but then again shouldn’t I? Think about it. These kind of things seem benign enough but they never end well. I’m going to go back to Rwanda circa 1994 and paint you all a pretty picture. The Hutus and Tutsis. 800,000 people killed in less than 100 days. Neighbors who had lived peacefully next to each other for 20 years, smiling at and greeting each other, woke up one day and start slicing and dicing each other up into suya-sized pieces with machetes. You think all that intense anger and hate just appeared overnight? You do, do you? (-______-) Use your head. They had a rich history of smaller tribal clashes and so the resentment and hate was already there, just waiting for an excuse to be unleashed.

Equally importantly though was the effect of public speech on the madness, the role of one radio station in particular, RTLM in the matter is quite poignant. They never broadcasted outright hate speech, but they did make plenty of jokes about Tutsis being ‘cockroaches’ and not being as strong as the ‘Hutus’ thus making it easy for the extremists to hijack the already existing hate propaganda and use it in their highly effective ‘Kill the cockroaches’ campaign.

Ok. Yeah, sorry I had to bring up Rwanda but I wanted to ram my point into your heads. Making statements like “My tribe is better than yours” is one of the easiest ways to begin brainwashing yourself into tribalism. Calling people “omo igbo” and “dirty hausa” is just the beginning of the dehumanization process that can eventually lead to widespread violence.

And if you think you are immune just because you are ‘educated’ or ‘civilized’, then I think you need to stop, park well and get a map because clearly you have ‘miss road’. Think about Nazi Germany circa 1939: filled to the brim with smart, young, civilized Germans. You think ALL Germans hated Jews with enough passion to bundle them off into concentration camps and attempt to exterminate them with all the industrial and economic precision and efficiency of a Petrochemical plant? Of course not. But they all told and laughed at the ‘Greedy Jew’ jokes. The ‘Witch Gypsy' jokes and they all stood by when the first torches were tossed into the “Jew Banks” and said nothing. Why? Because they thought they were better than the Jews. That’s always where it starts.

Oh Wow! See what I did there? I brought up Nazi Germany too! *Ghen Ghen* Did I just bring up both Nazi Germany and the Rwandan genocide (Two of the biggest ethnic disasters of the last century) in response to a paltry twitter event that no one will remember one week from now? O_O? Talk about over reacting O_o.

Is it really an overreaction though? Is it? Maybe. Maybe not. But I will conclude the way I began, if you believe your tribe is better than any other tribe on the planet by virtue of having been born into that tribe, YOU HAVE FAILED LIFE. People are people. All people have equal capacity for stupidity, wickedness, sluttiness, female facial hair growth, Ugliness, Cruelty, Greed and Evil. Just because you and you tribe members band together to attack/make jest of one tribe today doesn’t mean that they won’t turn on you tomorrow.

Think carefully on these things.

Feel free to spew your bile in the comment box below.

What those Kids taught me

by @NerdyChique.

For the past 3 months, I’ve been working with kids. I cannot begin to express how much joy I’ve gotten from this, but I can say that it has made me wonder why I grew up so fast, why I didn't enjoy my childhood as much as these kids appear to do.

On one of those days when I was having one of my 'lost childhood' pity parties, I had an epiphany (or maybe it was a stroke of insanity):

I wondered: 'is it not possible to bring back those days, those feelings?'

I heard myself ask myself (yeah, I know); 'how?'

'Study these kids, act like them' (voice 2) said.

'You mean you want me to act like a child in my twenty-something-th year of existence on this earth? When my mates have entered their husbands houses started having children of their own?'

Voice 2 asked again: 'Well, what do you have to lose?'

And finally I told myself: 'okay, let's give this a try'

Quick Fact about me: once I've made a decision, I stick to that decision with the tenacity of a militarized bulldog. So in the week that followed, I made up my mind to observe and study the kids who seemed to be that happiest of the lot, and I began to act like them (to a reasonable extent. I mean…I had no intention of being locked up in an institution for mental instability). I took this exercise very seriously, I even stocked up on biscuits and Capri Sonne to munch on and help get into character.

Luckily for me, they were on registration break, so I didn't have to wear a uniform and follow them to school (Yes, I think I would have done it, I was quite desperate). Anyway, during this seemingly inane experiment with my inner child, I learnt quite a lot. More than I expected to.

The first major lesson I learned was they don't let things bother them for long. In many instances, I watched Sa'id, one of my “observees”, fall down while trying to make his way from one point to another (usually on some absurd mission). As long as there were no adults to make a fuss about the fall, he would get up, dust himself off and keep moving. He didn’t stand there moaning and whining about falling or run around telling everyone how he fell, he just kept MOVING!

On several occasions, I have seen Sa'id and another one of my “observees”, Lizzy crying for various reasons. A lizard could have scared them, their older sibling hit them, or on one specific occasion, a car nearly hit Lizzy. In all these 'scary' experiences, one thing stood out to me: they immediately ran to locate their mums, dads or some older siblings and sometimes even Me :D. And immediately they reached the outstretched arms of whoever they were running to, the crying stopped. That was their system. Their support and anchor. We all need a support system. People who make your life better just by being in it. They plant smiles on your face constantly. Everything is better when you see them or talk to them. You need those people.

Several times, I have watched both of them filled with curiosity as they see or experience something new. An insect, an oddly shaped stone, a new toy, a new environment. I have watched their eyes light up in wonder and amazement as they reach out to the new thing and explore. This ‘exploring’ usually involves reaching out, rubbing their hands all over it, looking at it and in many instances …finally putting it in their mouths. That is, until an adult stops them.

Watching them, I ask myself 'where has all that curiosity gone?' A lot of us go about daily without noticing or observing the world, not engaging our senses. We use things and devices, the logic of which we barely have the faintest inkling. Worst of all we don’t even seem to WANT to know. When we finally summon the courage to explore, to ask, we let people discourage us.

'What you are doing, they ask?';

‘Why do you want to know’?

‘Just do what I told you’

‘Just follow the procedure’ …and immediately, just like that, we lose focus, interest, we stop trying to understand and just do.

I think the thing I observed that stuck out the most though was their capacity for unconditional love. These kids warmed up to me within minutes of setting eyes on me and I can boldly say that they love me, although I struggle to say the same about them. You see, somewhere along the long trek to adulthood, we have lost that welcoming ability, that willingness to let go and just be. Maybe it’s the result of accumulated negative experiences, excessive warnings from semi-paranoid but well-meaning parents and friends, stories we've been told or read about. But the hard truth is a lot of us are cold, plain cold to strangers. It’s almost inhuman.

During this observation/immersion experiment, there were experiences that were less than positive to me and if there was anything that really annoyed me about them, it would have to be the the never-ending barrage of questions about everything and anything. It tired me. But along the line, I realized that the reason this annoyed me was because I was impatient. I didn't want to take time to answer their questions and maybe, just maybe, unwittingly, I had started the process of killing their childish curiosity. Stealing their childhood from them just as adults before me had stolen mine. So, I resolved within myself to answer every question to the best of my ability, annoying though they may be. I'm still watching them. I learn something new every day. It surprises me how much these kids have to teach us, and how easily we put them down; ignore them; brush them aside without a second thought.

I know, in many ways, we can’t afford to be as carefree as these children. Life is hard and cruel; people can be evil. I understand. I'm not completely naive. But there is still something to be said for retaining your childhood sensibilities. What would it profit a man to be successful and yet unhappy as many of us young adults seem to be?

We’ve let worry take over our lives so we sleep in comfortable houses with restless minds.

We’ve cut off/lost faith in our support systems and are scared to let other people in due to our own trust issues. We are slaves to our own fears.

We’ve lost the sense of wonder that draws us to discover, to smile, to immerse ourselves in the world. Instead, we chase money desperately, doing jobs and things that we have no interest in or find deplorable. The mind slowly rots away.

Worst of all, many of us don’t even know what love is anymore. We’ve let life steal that carefree acceptance that we had as children. It’s a pity.

No wonder when many of us look back, we remember our childhood fondly and wonder how life became this way. But the truth is: in many ways…we made it this way. As children, life was an open field, but we built the walls of this present prison ourselves. I'm not saying we should take all the walls down, they do protect us but I think the least we can do is put in a few windows…let some air in…learn a few things from the children.

(This post was written by @NerdyChique and edited by yours truly. You'll be seeing quite a few posts from her on this blog for a while since I have exams and a trip to Thailand coming up over the next few weeks so yeah... I'm quite occupied. I will mostly serve as editor/publisher :D Have a great weekend y'all! and have a happy Easter. Rock your inner child!)

Awesomeness made flesh..

I was watching the movie ‘The Prestige’ with a group of friends (actually classmates) a few week

s ago and we were thoroughly enjoying the movie. Then we got to the part where the great D’anton Goes to meet Nikola Tesla for help with a magic trick and then someone asked: “Tesla was real person right? It’s like I’ve heard the name before…”

At this point I almost died of shock. How can anyone, much less an engineer, not know who the great Nikola Tesla was? HABA! No! My own personal person TESLA?!

I proceeded to lecture them all on the life and times of Nikola Tesla who is quite possibly the greatest scientist/engineer/mad bastard to have ever walked the earth.

I also tagged them in a facebook note I wrote a few years back about the man (admittedly, much of it was plagiarized from www.cracked.com, but hey, don’t judge me, it was written a while ago and I wasn’t yet the promising young wordsmith I am today :D -if you like be there doing Yimu, your tongue will catch fire. But a lot of the tone and emphasis is mine)

Anyway, I felt I should share this with you all as well so here, enjoy!

Apparently, surprisingly few people these days are familiar with the life and times of one of humankind's most eccentric, badass, and volumetrically-insane scientific super-geniuses. Its funny how so many people, even engineers and scientists, that use things he came up with seem to have little or no idea about who Telsa was.
First off, Nikola Tesla was fucking brilliant. And not just like Albert Einsteins "Bad guy siddon there dey look book" brilliant, either - I mean like, "holy shit! My head just exploded (from all the paraga awesomeness)" brilliant.

The Croatian-born engineer spoke eight languages, almost single-handedly developed technology that harnessed the power of electricity for household use, and invented things like electrical generators, FM radio, remote control, robots, spark plugs, fluorescent lights, and giant-ass machines that shoot enormous, brain-frying lightning bolts all over the place like crazy. He had an unyielding, steel-trap photographic memory and an insane ability to visualize even the

most complex pieces of machinery – the guy did advanced calculus and physics equations in his fucking evil head, memorized entire books at a time, and successfully pulled off scientific experiments that modern-day technology STILL can't replicate. For instance, in 2007 a group of lesser geniuses at MIT got all pumped up out of their minds because they wirelessly transmitted energy a distance seven feet through the air. Nikola Tesla once lit 200 lightbulbs from a power source 26 miles away, and he did it in 1899 with a machine he built from spare parts in the middle of the desert. To this day, nobody can really figure out how the hell he pulled that shit off, because two-thirds of the schematics only existed in the darkest recesses of Tesla's all-powerful evil madman brain.

Of course, much like many other eccentric giga-geniuses and diabolical masterminds, Tesla was also completely insane. He was prone to nervous breakdowns, claimed to receive weird visions in the middle of the night, spoke to pigeons, and occasionally thought he was receiving electromagnetic signals from extraterrestrials on Mars. He was also obsessive-compulsive and hated round objects, human hair, jewelry, and anything that wasn't divisible by three. He was also asexual and celibate for his entire life. Basically, Nikola Tesla was the ultimate mad scientist, which is seriously bloody awesome.

Another sweet thing about Tesla was that he conducted the sort of crazy experiments that generally result in hordes of angry villages breaking down the door to your lab with torches and pitchforks a la Frankenstein. One time, while he was working on magnetic resonance, he allegedly discovered the resonant frequency of the Earth and caused a bloody earthquake so powerful that it almost obliterated the 5th Avenue New York building that housed his Frankenstein Castle of a laboratory. Shit was flying off the walls, the drywall was breaking apart, the cops were coming after him, and Tesla had to smash his device with a sledge hammer to keep it from demolishing an entire city block. Later, he boasted that he could have built a device

powerful enough to split the Earth in two. Nobody dared him to prove it. I mean Dem dey crase? Nobody wanted to test the Nigga.

Tesla also ordered the construction of the Wardenclyffe Tesla Tower, a giant building shaped like an erect penis that would have housed the largest Tesla coil ever built. The massive structure, ostensibly designed to wirelessly transmit power, has been cited as a potential cause of the mysterious 1908 Tunguska Event – a ten-megaton blast that detonated in the wastelands above central Russia that completely obliterated and deforested everything unlucky enough to be located within a several hundred mile radius. While nothing has ever successfully proven

Tesla's involvement in the ass-destroyingly huge explosion, it's pretty awesome that this guy could potentially have detonated a weapon 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and have done it back before they'd even invented the submachine gun.

During his adventures blinding half of the world with science, Nikola Tesla harnessed the power of Niagara Falls into the first hydroelectric power plant, constructed a bath designed to cleanse the human body of germs using nothing but electricity, and created a 130-foot long bolt of lightning from one of his massive coils (a feat which to this day remains the world record for

man-made lightning), but perhaps his most badass invention was his face-melting, tank-destroying, super-secret Atomic Death Ray. In the 1920s he claimed to be working on a tower that could potentially have spewed forth a gigantic beam of ionized particles capable of disintegrating aircraft from 200 miles away and blinking most men out of existence like something out of ‘star wars’. His weapon, known as the "Teleforce Beam" allegedly shot ball lightning at 60 million volts, liquefying its targets with enough power to vaporize steel, and, while it could shoot further than 200 miles, it's effectiveness beyond that range was limited only by the curvature of the Earth. Luckily for all humans, this crazy shit never came to fruition – most of the schematics and plans existed only in Tesla's head, and when he died of heart failure in

1943, little hard data on the project existed. Still, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI confiscated all his personal shit and locked it away anyways, just to be safe.

Despite being incredibly popular during his day, now Tesla remains largely overlooked among lists of the greatest inventors and scientists of the modern era. Thomas Edison gets all the glory for discovering the lightbulb, but it was his one-time assistant and life-long arch-nemesis, Nikola Tesla (yes, Tesla worked for Edison and invented most of what people attribute to Edison today), who made the breakthroughs in alternating-current technology that allowed for people

to cheaply use electricity to power appliances and lighting in their homes. They constantly fought about whether to use alternating or direct-currents (their bitter blood feud resulted in both men being snubbed from the Nobel Prize committee), but ultimately Tesla was the one who delivered the fatal kick-to-the-crotch that ended the battle – at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, his AC generators illuminated the entire experience, marking the first time that an event of that magnitude had ever taken place under the glow of artificial light. Today, all homes and appliances run on Tesla's AC current and Edisons DC is used for batteries. Lil’ Tommy Edison had to go home and cry like a little baby bitch.

Nikola Tesla was one of those super-genius badasses whose intellect placed him dangerously on the precipice between "great scientific mind" and "utter bloody madness". He held 700 patents at the time of his death, made groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of physics, robotics, steam turbine engineering, and magnetism, and once melted one of his assistants' hands by overloading it with X-rays - which isn't really scientific, but is still pretty bloody awesome. And honestly, if there were one man on this planet who was ever capable of single-handedly destroying the entire planet through his insane scientific discoveries, it was Tesla. That alone should qualify him as a pretty righteous badass worthy of your undying respect.

Overdose.

by @NerdyChique

I saw a tweet the other day that said something like religion has become sort of like a culture for Nigerians. It drew my attention immediately. It went further to say that Nigerians thank God by default, for example, statements like: ‘thank God I was home when you came’, ‘thank God PHCN restored the power’…and many other instances. I am not one easily given to making generalizations, but sometimes they are necessary for simplification and thus a better understanding of some cases so I shall.

Religion is not an issue I like to bring up because, well, it brings out the crazed fanatic in a lot of us. Some people adopt the “Off with her head” approach to religious debates and I still like my big head the way it is. I’ve had it this way for a while now and it think it quite suits me. But I will just attempt to brush upon a few issues surrounding religion (deep breath)

First off, in my opinion, religion is NOT faith. Faith is belief, plain and true. It requires nothing but an unwavering belief in certain things, even (especially) without proof. A religion is supposed to be a set of principles or directives guiding a person’s behavior, habits and character. Being the ‘religious’ people we claim to be, something must have failed spectacularly somewhere because I do not see many Nigerians living like there’s any particular set of principles guiding any of our activities. Yet, on Friday afternoons and Sunday mornings, we troop out in our millions to our various places of worship to sing the songs, dance the dances, pray the prayers and perform the rituals which constitute our chosen ‘religion’.

Who exactly do we think we are deceiving? Our neighbors? God? When communities and countries that do not claim to be half as religious as we claim we are seem to perform better on the corruption scale than we do. Who are we trying to fool exactly? Excuse me if I’m wrong, but I believe one of the things religions claim is the potential to transform live for the better by giving them meaning and order and principles. Where then is this transformation our religions claim?

Just in the middle of that thought, I realize something. Religion, for a lot of us, is our means of escape. It is little better than an addiction, our drug; as the German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx once claimed, it is the “opium of the masses”. You know, when human beings go through hard times, they look for a means of escape. Some turn to alcohol, some drugs, some food, and in the process become addicts. In Nigeria, it seems we turn to religion. As with other addictions, religion is good in small doses, (in fact it works perfectly if we mix in a little true faith) but many of us, especially in Nigeria, overdose on it in its raw form and have to keep going back to our dealers for refills. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, we are in the church, the mosque, the synagogue, shrine or whatever place we have chosen as our place of our worship, begging for a hit.

One question you may ask is: “is it a good addiction?” True, some addictions are good or at least harmless, music for example; some are bad, like alcohol, drugs or even food. Addiction to religion can be deadly. Holding on too tightly to the rituals, procedures and dogma of a religion without any actual faith and understanding is what leads to religious abuse. Religious fanaticism stems directly from this abuse. Religious fanatics are the pawns that are manipulated in the many so-called ‘religious’ wars, we humans seem to engage in so frequently. Sadly, many of these wars and battles are more economic than religious but that is a debate for another day.

“What then is the solution?” you may ask. I will be the first to admit that I do not know if there is a solution in sight. I am pretty sure, however, that education sheds light in dark areas. So if we spent a little more time educating ourselves on what our respective religions actually entail: The origin, the faith, separating the true faith from the adopted culture of the religion and understanding that many religions are based on the same tenets and principles, accepting that we are human, fallible and all prone to fall from grace. This kind of education would help many of us realize that the faith is infinitely more important than the religion and hence we would be less likely to fall victim to this addiction. But then again this is just my opinion.

N.B: I wrote this in church (yeah, I know)

(This post was written by my friend @Nerdychique. I merely edited, christened and published it here because well...I agree with a lot of it and Its my blog and I can do whatever I like. )

A letter to my Mother...

Olu-mummy.

That was my reply anytime you called me by my full name: Oluwole, either in jest or in anger. It seems just like yesterday we were watching movies together, discussing issues and joking with each other and just like that 9 months ago, Olu-mummy was gone. The proud smile, the listening ear, the nurturing hands, the loving gaze and jovial countenance that were my Olu-mummy are gone forever. We all know that one day, we will all pass away but I never imagined it would be so soon. If only my tears could bring you back, I would cry forever. But you have gone to rest and I miss you terribly. To me, to us, your children, you were more than a mother; you were a great friend, a confidant, a rock to lean on. There is much we have learnt from you about life and love. I cannot bring myself to write of them all, I would weep for days.

The months leading up to and since your passing have been difficult beyond belief; I can only describe them as a ‘Season of Mists’ and your departure made them even more difficult. But I know you are resting, liberated from the troubles of this world, looking down on us, making intercessions on our behalf, guiding, smiling. While I wish you could have tarried a little, stayed with us long enough to dance with us at our weddings and smile your radiant smile at our children, God saw fit to call you to him then. So it was with bitter acquiescence, I did bid you goodbye and sweet rest in the Lords bosom, farewell, my absent friend, my departed mother.

This mother’s day, all I pray is that we, your children shall soon conclude the season of mists, live joyful, fulfilled lives too make you proud and that we all be reunited when the time is due.

Happy Mother’s Day Olu-mummy,

Your Son, Oluwole.

The Reason

@NerdyChique sent this to me a few days ago and it touched me in a very special way. I feel its something we can all identify with in our own different ways so read, enjoy, share.

"The Reason:

Everybody needs a Reason.

A reason to roll over, place their feet on the floor and heave themselves out of bed every morning. Some people know what their Reason is, some people have it handed to them at the same time they draw their first breath, or speak their first word or kiss their first love.

Some people do not know what their Reason is, and therefore the search for it becomes the Reason. Some people can’t see their Reason, couldn’t even name it, if pressed, but yet that doesn’t matter, because it stands in front, beside, behind them, lives inside them.

To have no Reason is to observe, to exist only without participation. A very unlucky few are born without A Reason and never find it, or lose it somewhere along the way..the death of a loved one perhaps, or the obstacles of life- those are known as the Damned, the Soulless.

The strong among those find another Reason and continue to participate in life. The weak, who sometimes were not even aware of their own frailty until that point, retreat into themselves. They too become Soulless, waiting only until Someone draws their name from the Hat and they can lay down and sleep without waking."

---Reasonable Beings, and their Reasons for Being by Alla Comptoir

The value of an education

Education! Ah! Sweet education. The parents’ legacy, the duty that every parent owes to their offspring, the difference between civilized men and savages…education.

In the middle ages, once a man had received any measure of an education, even apprenticeship at the hands of a skilled craftsman in metal working, weaving, painting, any of these things was enough to change his family fortunes from the lot of peasants – little better than slaves- to something vaguely human.

Even in our villages as recently as the mid to late 20^th century, education was highly sought after. With education came respect, power and the opportunity to vastly improve the lot of one’s family and people. Indeed, entire villages would boast of the son/daughter of “Mama Chukwudi” or “Mama Tope” and such as being an educated person from the village. Such an individual would be hoisted and held up on a pedestal for all others to see, envy and aspire to. In many situations, an education was one way to guarantee an instant chieftaincy title. Those were the days…

Today, education counts for little. Money is now god. Nobody cares about what you know; only who you know and how much money you have. The evidence of this is abundantly clear. Pity that…because contrary to popular skeptical belief there is still something to be said for the value of an education (a proper one anyway) far beyond anything money can buy. But that’s not my point today. I’m more concerned about the feeling of apathy toward education that I’ve sensed, felt, seen and which seems to prevail among many young adults today.

Personally I couldn’t care less about what Webster, oxford or any other learned fellow defines as ‘education’, I have my own views and seeing as how this is my blog and all, I will proceed to impose them upon you my victims…err..erm..…readers. In my opinion, an education is not the ability to reproduce industrial quantities of equations off hand or recite entire passages of the constitution by heart. An education is not the ability to write lengthy, terminally boring epistles on “the role of segregated mutant turtles in post world war 2 cotton industry economic recovery” or some other such obscure, uninteresting rubbish which modern day academics seem to churn out endless quantities of every year. To me, an education is receiving instruction in the ways that a civilized person in a chosen craft should think. It is being taught the basics of a “discipline”, the things required in order to understand, question and utilize the basics and knowledge from this discipline in whichever way is most beneficial according to your riches in intellect.

What I’m saying is: The purpose of an education is not to tell you why and how but to make you question why and how, to inspire you. Case in point: the first Universities in ancient Greece were simply places where intellectuals gathered to discuss. ‘Students’ were those that gathered to listen and learn and QUESTION and thus be inspired. That is the most important part of the entire exercise. This little piece of wisdom has somehow gotten lost in translation over the past few millennia.

The reason so many of us do not enjoy education anymore is because that piece is missing. The desire for knowledge, the inspiration, because if you truly desire to know, nothing can stop you once you have been inspired.

Having studied for my undergraduate degree in a Nigerian federal university – Obafemi Awolowo University (The Not-so-Great Ife) I can safely tell you I was not spoon-fed knowledge. There were many courses where instruction was nonexistent and some of my lecturers must have been Ninjas because they were allegedly teaching us but somehow I never saw them or heard from them. Still… for some courses…I taught myself, I found books, practiced questions, debated and argued with my classmates. I even used to watch some lectures online from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and attempt their questions (most of the time I failed miserably. If you like be there saying Olodo, as if your IQ is up to a two digit number, silly fellow). Even now at Imperial College London, I find things to be much the same. Except now the lecturers can ignore you with better technology (sorry to break it to those of you that keep blaming the Nigerian education system for everything, but it’s not necessarily better on the outside). Some of the lecturers are great, but still, if you don’t ask, or investigate, you will not know.

This desire, the fire is what’s missing. And it’s what we need good teachers for. A good teacher not only teaches you the mechanics of what to do, but why you should do it and also what is wrong with it and why you should want to know more. And this starts at the basic and earliest school level. It is only at this stage that the natural childish inquisitiveness can be harnessed and channeled towards ‘wanting to know’.

Seeing as how the education system constantly and consistently fails to do this, I guess it’s up to us, the parents of the future to do this for our children. It sad to still see parents in this day and age utter statements like…”You must be a doctor/lawyer/engineer!” why? Why must the child be any of these things? Because you couldn’t do them yourself? Because you want to be able to brag that your child is a doctor? So that what will happen? You will enter VIP section in heaven? Bullshit and Rubbish.

A parent’s job is to introduce the child to all the aspects of life. Show them possibility, expand their minds, then set them free to ask why and discover for themselves. Else you will simply breed a home of resentful children with low self-esteem, whom have been forced into doing things they do not wish to do and indeed some cannot do. It qualifies as rape. Rape of the mind. Then my friend you will have wasted all your time and money sending your children to school and you will have educated no one.

That is the worst part, people who have been to school and not been educated. There seems to be so many of them today. Filled with regret, anger, resentment and always wishing they had done something else; filled with the despair that only lost opportunities and murdered dreams can bring. They are majority of the ones who do not see the point in having gone to school and as a result do not see the value of an education.

For some brief moments in my life I have been one of those people. But every now and again I discover something that reignites that interest and passion that was originally planted in me by my parents and some of my teachers and lecturers, that thing that fascinates, amazes, makes me question why and want to know…makes me realize why I want to be an engineer. I guess that is kind of why I wrote this. To remind us all that the value of an education is not so much in the details of what you have been taught but more in what you have been inspired to do. It may be in the same field or not, as long as someone, somewhere has made you wonder why, question, investigate, create…you have been educated…somewhat. What you do with that education is up to you.

Love, Bananas and Self-Inception

“one banana,

two banana

one for me and one for you banana

count three or four or even more banana

cause banana cannot live alone…”

Those of you that had a worthwhile childhood might recognize the song above from the TV program 'sesame street'. I first heard it when I was a child and for some reason unknown to me, its been stuck in my brain ever since. Although the song was meant for children I believe that there is a very deep message behind it, the magnitude of which I have only recently be made aware of and will share with you shortly. But first…

I have been studying the human mind for some time now and as a result of my detailed and thorough research I can confidently say with scientific certainty and accuracy that we are all screwed up. (Yes, that is my professional opinion) In fact, the human race as a whole can be considered as one big idiot made up of a myriad of many splendored variations of foolishness just as many different bits of DNA make up a person. But don’t worry, I’m not judging the human race for our UnGodly portion of Olodo-ism, on the contrary, I doubt we would have made it this far in our history without certain stupidities.

(Please note that I refer to STUPIDITIES and not RETARDATION. Retards are a subset of the human race that look, act and talk like the rest of us, but who are actually sub-human wild animals that should be locked away in a zoo. They lack basic reasoning skills and typically frequent such IQ desolate places like Facebook and in extreme cases- Hi5. They can usually be identified by their names. e.g Hollabourdey Horhluurhwarhthorkhunbor “SexyBoiBlackBerryKingNeedleFlyBarbie" "KingoftheZangaIeatbangaAnd MakeMoniesWhileIdoit” Hoodutorhlar. It is important to know that such retards are NOT human and destroying them with fire or by decapitation is legal and in fact considered doing the work of God.)

But I digress… where was I? Yes, stupidities. stupidities are very important in to the human race and in my opinion, without them love would not exist. Believe it or not there is actually a point to this tirade of mine. Just bear with me a little.

So, Let me ask you this…what makes us human? The fact that we walk on all fours, that God loves us more than the other animals, our enlarged brains…depending of which side of the science or faith debate you swing, I’m sure you have a different answer to that question. The more sentimental ones amongst us will say it is our capacity to love and be loved, to do special things for those we love, to make huge sacrifices in the name of love…at which point I will call bullshit! (Once I finish vomiting)

What is love? Love is gentle, Love is kind...well so is the old lady that lives down my street and I dont think she is Love. What do any of us REALLY know about love? Would you lay down your life for the one you love? Catch a literal version of the poetic grenade which Bruno Mars sings so passionately about? Would you? If you wouldn’t then please STFU because you have not yet found true love and even if you would it doesn’t mean much because police officers, firemen, soldiers and many other members of noble professions routinely put their lives on the line to save friends, colleagues and even ordinary citizens. Is that love? Will you say firemen love everybody they risk their lives to save? Maybe, Maybe not…but that’s exactly my point. Love is such an intangible thing it can only be described as the ultimate Self –Inception.

For those of you that haven’t seen the movie yet, ‘inception’ is the movie about the process of ‘inception’ which in turn is the process of planting an idea in a person’s mind without them knowing where it came from. Apparently it can only be performed by Leonardo di Caprio and his team of badass homeboys while his wife (from his subconscious) just likes to hang around and screw shit up…by the way, why have you not seen the movie yet? What rock were you under for the last half of 2010? My friend, you are a Class A slacker! You are so stale that you’re starting to ferment and give off a repugnant odor… shift! Self-inception as applies to human stupidities is the act of planting an idea in your own head and then forgetting that it was your idea in the first place and that you CHOSE to embark on this path.

Anyway, this Self-Inception as regards love starts with you WANTING to ‘love’ someone so much that you convince yourself that you ARE in love and then begin to wonder why you are acting like a lovestruck puppy. The truth is…you know exactly why: Because you want to. And you can only love as much as you decided to when you first started your self-inception. Once the idea of ‘love’ has been planted in your head, you conveniently forget that it was your idea in the first place and carry on with your ‘mugu-licious’ behavior, going deeper into the layers of your own created love world until you decide to wake up (this may never occur if you get so lost in the world that you have created and thus forget that it is of your own making).

Personally, I have no issue with engaging in the stupidity of self-inception in order to find love.In fact I do it to myself all the time just like the rest of you. I just wonder why as humans we feel this burning need to find someone to be with. So much so that we routinely deceive ourselves into it. But maybe the words of the banana song are all the answer I need…because humans like the banana of the song…cannot live alone. We need to find someone simply because we cannot live alone. To do this we ‘incept’ ourselves, make mistakes, get taken advantage of…whatever we feel we need to do, we do in the name of love.

This is of particular importance to me because it plagues me regularly. I want someone to be with, talk to, to cuddle, to make love to; someone that understands my weirdnesses and strangeness, and has some of her own. I cannot explain why but I want just want her. Recently, I thought I found someone I could be with but she wasn’t interested. After being rejected, I thought I had snapped out of my self-inception. But not long after I found myself on the path to self inception again. And again, and again…It irks me and pisses me off because I know that I’m doing it. I can feel my mind tricking itself into believing what it wants to believe but I can’t stop it. Maybe I am just a hopeless romantic (aka professional Mugu) or maybe, just maybe like the banana of the song, and like most of us…I just cannot live alone.

*sigh*

[Coming up next... Love, Hate, Sex, Pain]

THE FINE ART OF VOLUNTARY STUPIDITY (A SATIRE, or something like it. V.2.0)

Back home, before I embarked on the self-torture called an MSc program, I used to wake up everyday and immediately put on the TV to try to find out what was going on in the world around me. This foolish action inevitably led me to turn to CNN, BBCNews or when the weather was really bad or things were very hard, – NTA. And then it would usually begin. Bad news in industrial quantities: The financial crisis, bomb blasts, a plane crash, stories of both government and private corruption, chronicles of fools: some poor fool who has just been blown up in the name of Allah, another fool who is trying to spread freedom and democracy around the world and some more fools who are spouting varying grades of propaganda; ranging from Innocent white lies to premium brand, Class A Bullshit. Generally I would endure 60 minutes of this sensory assault on my intelligence before giving up and turning toward MTV or one of the Series/Movie channels for some mind-numbing, meaningless drivel to help me try to forget the mental torture I’ve just been subjected to.

Unfortunately, this usually didn't help much since all the music and shows are laced with hidden intentions telling me what to think and how to think it. Young girls wearing next to nothing shake their bodies in ways that would be of concern to medical professionals with the message 'sex is good' while 50cents latest song is telling me ‘to get rich or die trying’. Beyonce is subconsciously trying to make my girlfriend leave me with her ‘Put a ring on it’ nonsense, Bruno mars is looking for trouble by singing about catching grenades (Who the hell would do that anyway? Pls refer to @CapoeiraPandas blog for more details on this...) and some bloody Nigerian is asking me to ‘Dapada’ and/or ‘farabale’; 'groove utunu' and or 4kasibe'. The TV shows are not much better, every episode presents some half-baked, hashed out ideology which it tries to sell to me as a life philosophy. Examples: all problems can be solved in an 30 minutes or an hour, Bad guys always get caught, follow your dreams, Obey your parents, Sex sells, Ok, don’t always obey your parents, humour is good, gays are not so bad, Always consult your pastor for advice, Blah, Blah, Blah... Usually, there would be only so much my brain could take before I call my friend –Mr. Remote control and finally help the environment by switching off the appliances I’m not using.

Unfortunately, with all outside influence gone, my mind would inward and begin to think (a process which I’ve been told is quite high risk, and should be attempted only by trained professinals) . But it is the result of this thinking which led me to write this note to my victi...er..erm...i mean friends and followers; lamenting the state of this world we live in and the nation we call home. Why is everything so confusing? Why is the world so disorderly? Why would some fools blow up innocent people for no good reason? Why would Jim Iyke try to rap? These are genereally the kind of thought i would think at these times. Luckily, while writing this post I came upon a revelation, it was like a vision (well more like a hallucination caused by excessive exposure to differential calculus... but whatever....) but it made clear what must be done to navigate this morally twisted world without overheating your brain engine. It is called VOLUNTARY STUPIDITY.

You see, I read once in a book (okay, fine, it wasn’t a real book, it was a comic but who wants to split hairs right now?) that comedians are the saddest people in the world. They see what’s wrong with the world but when they stand-up and try to tell the rest of us we just laugh at them. This is an example of the universal law: “It’s not smart to be too smart” as Illustrated by the lives of Galileo and Leonardo da Vinci. You see, i think stupidity is good for you, as long as you don’t exceed the prescribed dosage. And if you are asking yourself right now: “Pray tell, o wise one, how do I obtain a prescription for the stupidity I so desperately need”, then don’t worry, I have the answer, just read on….

Voluntary stupidity is the fine art of ignoring things that are real but make you feel unhappy or depressed. It is my analogy of the old concept that is referred to by the esteemed Buddhist monks as the ‘if-we-ignore-it-then-it-will-go-away’ philosophy. Just as faith is defined as the "belief in things not seen", voluntary stupidity is the "disbelief of things seen, heard, experienced and even known." If practiced well, it can increase your level of happiness exponentially within a few seconds. I have been accused of the horrendous and evil crime of 'being too smart' more than once in my life and having repented from this crime i can attest to the efficacy of this method.

On a serious note however, we do this every day. We overlook things like our friends' bad habits, the religion of others which we don't believe, the fact that we are not as rich or happy as we want to be, the parts of the bible and the constitution that we don't like, etc. It is a self defense mechanism to protect our fragile psyches from the trauma of unfulfilled dreams, failures, limitations and things we cannot understand or do anything about.

So the next time some smug, self-righteous, smarty-pants starts talking about the war in Iraq, Who is sponsoring the bombing in the Nigeria, the environment and global warming, traffic situations, the plight of democracy, ASUU strikes or the appalling Suckiness of the new Black Eyed Peas album, just remember, he will die a sad, depressed old fart while you relish in your self-built, sky-castle of blissful ignorance, surrounded the lovely aura of VOLUNTARY STUPIDITY.

Thank me later #NoDrake