SOME RAMBLINGS ON THE HEAVENS, THE DEVIL AND THE UNIVERSE.

Life is so full of pain and suffering. Sometimes, you wonder why we care to endure life? No wonder so many persons crave the cold comfort of a peaceful, comfortable free-from-care life in heaven. That thought, of heaven, brings smiles to my face. Why? Because I’d rather think of what is observable and possible than what is unobservable, beyond the imagination and not of my control.

Although science has achieved so much, everyone knows there are things science cannot explain. Like unobservable things in the universe. Do you believe there are living beings on other universe? Is it because your eyes cannot see beings on planet Mars, Jupiter, Venus etcetera that you believe there are no beings on these planets? I shudder to think that is impossible, because it would go against the grain of a designer for the universe. Why should an all wise creator create this vast universe and want planet Earth to be the only universe with living beings in the Milky Way galaxy? It is quite inconceivable. But if life was to be found on any other planet and we make contact with them, then what is heaven and where is heaven? Can you imagine heaven without going there? If you had to go, wouldn’t have to die?

Just some foolish rambling of mine. I think Nigerians are deeply religious, so I do not want to disturb their brains with thoughts like these.

First Shot at the moon, after sunset

The picture above was shot with a Kodak camera, 4.0 megapixels. If you look very carefully, center right, top, you will see a very small whitish dot. That is the moon while I am standing on ground level. I thought I could catch a sharper glimpse of it. I really tried.

Second Shot at the moon, after sunset

Fifteen minutes later, I took another shot. You can see that the sky is getting darker. I had to move closer to the moon. You can see the balcony of an upper floor on the background.

The moon, sun, earth – my, all these works are lovely. If they are all created by a designer, what would the anti-designer have done? Destroy them?
When I reflect on the Devil, the Devil whom we all abhor, I think he is not a creature to be abhorred. I think he should be recognized as a designer in his own class and right, because only a designer can destroy another’s design. Imagine a non-programmer hacking at and introducing bugs into a software program? That is not possible.

If you don’t respect the Devil, I do. I think he is as intelligent as Jesus Christ! I am not talking about the Hebrew Devil, or the Bible Devil, but the Devil in general, a being or force that works against creative design. That is how I see him. Sometimes I wonder why, during the heavenly ceremony before Job’s trials, he had to appear in heaven? Why? Why? Because although he was out of favor, he still has INTERESTS or FUNCTIONS to perform which no other being up there can. You cannot trifle with interests and functions. If you ask me, I’d place him as the second ranking angel in heaven, if you are Christian and believe the Christian bible, directly after Jesus, that is why only Jesus had the power to throw him down. You do not trifle with that! Only Jesus had the power to throw him down? You don’t trifle with an anti-designer, rather you learn lessons of survival and subterfuge from him.

Because Nature abhors a vacuum, he wouldn’t have been thrown out of the heavenly places if Jesus didn’t learn the power, skills and function he serves, replace them and make his welcome distasteful. I think that is why it took him so many years before he could accomplish that feat.

Third Shot at the moon, after sunset

The picture above is the third shot of the moon. You can see that the view now is darker. It’s getting close to seven p.m. I really had to strain to get this shot before dark. I wish I had a better camera.

Just in the mood for some religious ramble and deep meditations about religious beliefs. You don’t have to agree with me. Would love dissenting views and comments.



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NEIGHBORHOOD PEOPLE: UGO, BARBER AT TINO BABY BARBING SALON

How often do you remember your local barber? Not often right, or maybe not until your hair looks shabby and dirty.

Unfortunately, the barber is always there, waiting for you, whenever and wherever you remember him. A local joke I used to play around with is whether the barber barbs himself? Well, not to worry, it’ll never be your problem because he’ll surely be barbing your hair if you walk into the salon and ask for a haircut.

That is what I did one sunny Saturday. I asked Ugo for a haircut, and so because I had to wait for some minutes before it was my turn, I thought: “Ugh, why not make my local barber the blog feature for the future?” So I asked and he agreed.

Ugo barbing a custome. credit: nnaemeka david

You can see Ugo holding the clippers on a customer’s hair. He told me the profession itself does not pay skyrocketing salaries but he can take care of himself, especially by supplementing his income. But it does pay well in terms of personal satisfaction and living a simple lifestyle.

“I supplement my income at Filterland,” he said. Filterland is a local company close to Satellite town, Ijegun precisely, that makes filters for cars, buses, motorcycles etc.

We joked about life in Satellite town. “I close late here,” he said. I had the opportunity one night to see him close shop at about ten o’clock late. The store does not only render haircuts as a service, it also rents local and foreign movies burned onto Blu-ray discs. “It’s what everyone does these days,” we joked. He also sells music CDs.

Front view of Tino baby barbing salong. credit: nnaemeka david

The picture above is a shot of the front of the salon. You can see the salon’s name painted on the right gate. The two loudspeakers are not imported; they are the ingenious creation of some local engineer. Do they blare out great sound! The two racks are where the Blu-ray discs for the Nollywood and foreign movies he sells are placed. Ugo just opened shop when I walked in. And the table is the place where he keeps the music CDs.

Some of ugo's customers while i was there. credit: nnaemeka david

The three children on the above picture were waiting for a barb while I took the pictures. They are some of the lovely children you can find at the neighborhood. How lovely they look. Chinasa, the first girl, the one at the left, was dancing to some music as the shot was taken. It really was a great atmosphere.

How to find Tino Baby Barbing Salon at Satellite town?

It’s simple. The salon is on Kessington Broadway, it’s among the low cost shops one sees on the left, before the woman who fries akara and yams, before Lizzy’s Business center where recharge cards are sold.

You can call the barber yourself. His mobile lines are: 07041348401, 08185540406, and his name is: Ugochukwu Ugkwuoma. His email address is: UgochukwuUgkwuoma@yahoo.com.



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SPECIAL PEOPLE AND WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A DISJOINT SET IN HUMAN ABILITIES

A set is a collection of things where each thing in the collection is supposed to be unique. A collection of students in a class where each student has a distinct name is a set. As respects human abilities, a collection of the skills humans possess can be likened to a set because each individual, with a name, can be the set itself and the abilities and skills that individual possesses the objects or the elements of the set.

In brief, your abilities are a collection where each ability is unique within you and the control for each of them resides in your nervous system.

Usain Bolt showing off his lightning pose.

The set for human abilities is finite. This is because the abilities or skills follow biological, chemical and physical principles which of themselves are constant, well defined and unchanging. What is infinite is the ability of individuals to enhance these skills. A good example is Usain Bolt, the fastest man on earth. Running fast is a skill which many persons possess but they possess it to varying degrees. Because the focus is on the generality of skills and not the specific, “Fast Runner” skills is a single element in a set. This observation is pertinent because a set can be the element of or contain another set.
Therefore, we can visualize a universal finite set of human abilities which I choose to call the UniversalSkill.

What is a disjoint set? If two sets do not have any common element(s), then they are said to be disjoint. That means disjoint sets do not intersect. In human language, they do not share anything in common. They are unique. Some examples are the set of local governments in Lagos state and that of local governments in Imo state.

We humans can be likened to disjoint sets if an individual possesses skills or abilities that are common only to him or herself.

In a situation where people are interdependent, is this possible? I think it is not, but the possibility could arise in some situations. There are cases of people who are termed mavericks or eccentricities because they have a way of doing things that are common only to themselves. It turns people off, not so? Such persons are usually thought to be self-centered, people who refuse to share what they have, who refuse to participate in the master mind network of intelligent persons, hiding whatever they have as to discoveries and research.

I think someone who tends towards the disjoint should be a superman or superwoman. I wonder how such a person can survive? If you look at the situation closely, a disjoint set is expected to know nearly everything that he needs to in order to solve his problems; he should not rely on anyone but himself. He should be a closed object, impervious to intersection. But is that possible in a networked interdependent world?

I was watching a game on television, football precisely, when my mind drifted to these thoughts. I was so bent when I realized one point: special people are persons like you and I. They did not fall from some planet. They share the same skills and abilities like all of us but they have so practiced and trained themselves over the years on these skills that they have fine tuned them to a high degree of sophistication.

The implication is that there is no special person who can claim to be a disjoint set. Special people are persons who have been helped by all of us to succeed. A good example is Jose Mourinho, who is presently coaching Real Madrid. Without the support of the players in all the teams he’s coached, the management of those teams, the media, his coaching crew, FIFA, and time and experience , he would not have honed his coaching skills to the high degree of sophistication for which we admire him today. Same also for Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and so on.

On very close observation, one should realize that as the set of special persons intersect with other sets, these other sets who are unknown and mediocre, help the special persons to solve problems which are of a less important degree so that the special one can concentrate on solving the problems that are more important and more abstract.
That is why special people are paid better.

On the other hand, one contribution of having disjoint sets in leadership positions is that they tend to increase the level of powerful nucleuses in a region. These are the men called Great, but of what use is a Great person where he is unapproachable, narcissistic and highly selfish? What use is an autocratic to the survival of the greater society? Surely no one appreciates any of these so they need violence and force to succeed.

This is my working definition of a special person: Someone whom the society has helped to succeed more than others by solving his less abstract problems so that he’ll ensure the survival of the greater society or of other persons in the society by solving their more abstract or sophisticated problems.

Can we make some nominations from Nigeria? There are so many: Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Tafawa Balewa, Doctor Nnamdi Azikiwe, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Professor Chike Obi, etcetera. Unfortunately, all these names are from older generations.

It’s so difficult making a nomination from my generation. Can anyone help me out?
I promise to send a prepaid recharge card credit to anyone who nominates someone for the position of special person, according to the working definition above, who is below forty (40) years i.e an individual of our generation, someone born after 1970. Read my lips. Send your answers to my twitter account or my mailbox: nnaemeka.david@gmail.com; note the dot between both names.


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