On twitter, a moment of symmetry

I'm finally learning how to use the thing :)

Better get a pre-nup, hahaha

Love In The Future (John Legend) is such a perfect album, yet I hate it so much. Today, for a change of pace from Janelle Monae and Pitbull, I decided to treat myself to a little Legend.  

The album is genius really, great compositions (although All Of Me/All of You is, as I like to say, akin to a great ten-ingredient salad: it would likely have been even better with just the first six ingredients) , extremely capable voice, a confident and assured message...  

This message is what I hate so much - who can stand all that romance, love and marriage? Sometime in the future, when governments need a campaign to get people loving and procreating again, yeah, sure, grab this sappy album with its excrutiating cover - bloodred flowers on a plain white background - and honeydoused lyrics. 

The album is a great illustration of what I call thematic unity; not only do the titles, cover, lyrics and style, match, but the songs actually bleed one into the next - delightful! ) Anyway, moving on - the one thing more gag-inducing than this music is its official video, I'll spare you and just show a (much saner) live performance instead.  
 
I didn't want to puke at All Of You on this latest listen.  I managed not to think of the near-inevitability of divorce maybe, like hey, Monsieur or Madame Stupid-In-Love, you'd better get a prenup hahaha. I kept my mind away from the many musical transitions and my theory of salad ingredients. I was using the good speakers and having a good time. ( Speaking of which, I need to get rid of every poor audio machine in my life soon...equipment quality really matters when listening to music. )  I was really enjoying myself. 
To summarize, Love In The Future is a perfect album about...Love In The Future.  It believes in love and wants you to believe too.  Technically, it's flawless.  It should have won whatever the big award is.  
But by the eighth track just now I had to stop the music.  It was getting to be too much sap for my delicate mind to bear. 
 Makes me immature, I guess. I mean, who hates John Legend?

My latest pastime is laptopera

This week was...ugh.  No power from Monday to Friday.  My inverter was dead too.  No internet, and sometimes no water.

On the first no-electricity day, I read The Flannigans.  I expected an Irish novel and had in fact bought it in part for its unapologetic green cover.  Instead I found a simple telling of small-town politics and a family conflict in Newfoundland, Canada, far from their original Irish homeland.  This novel was indeed a little "literary treasure" with its wise measured observations and clear presentation.  P.S. I bought it used but nice and shiny, probably unread, and signed by the author too :)     

The Flannigans, by M.T. Dohaney

Before the extended power outage, I'd been drowning in music; listened to almost all of Chocolate City's oeuvre - M.I.'s two albums, his brother Jesse Jagz's two albums, Ice Prince's latest album, Brymo's album.  Then I moved on to Omawumi's albums.  Tuface was supposed to be next.  There is so much good music in the Nigerian pop/entertainment space these days.  Love it.  

I'd also finally done something I've been meaning to do for months: watch opera on my computer.  I live in the-megacity-with-no-opera-house Lagos, so why not?

I found this Carmen: 

And this Rigoletto:

Enjoyed both verrrry much.  

I may never go to the movies again.  There is so much entertainment that is superior to the movie-theater experience...I think.  

One week ago, just before reading The Flannigans, I finished two really really cool novels.  

Better Times Than These.  

Nanjing 1937: A Love Story.  

 

Many great things about both these works:   

I love the humour of the latter...oh the sharp ending too.  I would read it again.  It's one of those repetitive, not-really-about-the-plot novels.  In fact I didn't read it in a straight line because it got boring sometimes but you would like parts better after peeking a chapter ahead.  But I liked the quirky main character and the sarcasm of the writer Ye Zhaoyan.  I laughed out loud often. Making fun of marriage is fun.  

The first is a Vietnam war story by Winston Groom, of the Southern USA.  It was most excellent in its descriptions of moods, motivations, long-festering emotions.  I associate such emotional intelligence with the South.  Its Chapter Two made me say yes, that is how I felt, when I lived in a fishbowl thinking I was brilliant goldfish and being disoriented at seeing upturned noses instead.  First time I saw my feeling about that period so understood anywhere.  It could be the first time I even understood it.  So of course I didn't want the guy at the center of this beloved chapter - Frank Holden - to die.  He'd been a Princeton tennis star.  He was probably great to look at.  I overlooked his flaws.  Well, he died.

Reading Vietnam and reading China.
The Nationalists of China alongside the Viet Cong organization.
The US excusrsion into that SouthEast Asian theater vs the cool detachment of the upper crust months before and up until a gigantic war on China.
...All this makes me want to learn a little more Chinese.

Read some other stuff in between too: a poetry/motivational/fiction thing that I liked and read twice (Dream Maker).  Some stories from a giant collection by William Trevor (again, I trust Ireland.)  And so on.  But when there was no electricity, I was so miserable I just read newspapers and such, and waited...  

Besides all the usual books, music, movies, blogs and online courses, I have this new hobby: laptopera.  New word.  Next up to watch: an old Tosca (in black and white) and (after all these years of anticipation) Madame Butterfly.  

Let's Misbehave!

They say that Spring means just one thing to little lovebirds We're not above birds Let's misbehave!!!	They say that bears have love affairs And even camels We're merely mammals Let's misbehave!!!
There's something wild about you child That's so contagious Let's be outrageous Let's misbehave!!!
Now listen, Hon, a little fun Would be attractive While we're still active, Let's misbehave!	It's getting late and while I wait My poor heart aches on Why keep the brakes on? Let's misbehave!!!

Words from Let's Misbehave, by Cole Porter
Images from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Next up, in online course world

My MuslimWorld course ends next week.  My Alexander course starts now. 

Alexander pictures

What is it about? 

"This is a course about the life, leadership, and legacies of perhaps the greatest warrior in history and certainly one of its most effective, if controversial, leaders.  The course invites you to ask and answer a number of questions about Alexander’s story that are just as fascinating and relevant today as they were 23 centuries ago.

First, how did Alexander conquer the Persian empire in less than a decade, without ever losing a major battle? The Persian empire was the largest and most successful empire in the long history of the ancient Near East. Before Alexander conquered the Persian empire, no one believed it could be done, let alone by someone in his early twenties. It just can’t have happened; but it did. Over the next few months I’ll explain how.

Second, we’ll ask: what were the leadership qualities that Alexander possessed? What did Alexander know, what did he do to get tens of thousands of people to risk their lives repeatedly on battlefields to help him achieve his goals? Perhaps more importantly, how did he get people who had been enemies to put down their weapons and work together? Were – are - those leadership qualities passed down in the genes? Can leadership be taught or learned? If so, how?

Third, we will take on one of the most controversial questions about Alexander: was history’s greatest warrior gay? Straight? Bisexual? Can we understand Alexander’s sexuality using modern terms such as gay or straight or bisexual, as some historians have argued? Or are such terms fundamentally misleading when applied to an ancient culture?

Finally, we will look at the question of Alexander’s legacies. Is it really true, as some scholars have claimed, that Alexander appeared at the end of the fourth century B.C.E. like a kind of fiery comet that burned brightly for a short time and then exploded, leaving nothing but a trail of mythic vapor? Or did he fundamentally change the world in which he lived in ways that are still being felt today?"

- Was Alexander Great? The Life, Leadership, and Legacies of History’s Greatest Warrior is HIST229x on edx.org  .  The course instructor is Guy MacLean Rogers, Professor of Classics and History at Wellesley College.  Come on, join up. 

On constitutional struggle and the challenge of modernity, with Iran as an example

Iran is a nation-state that is descended from the Persian empire of Biblical times. 

In those days, more than 2000 years ago, kings like Nebuchadnezzar and Darius conquered lands as far as the Levant, in the historic home of the Jews. Wikipedia has that "Iran reached the pinnacle of its power during the Achaemenid Empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BCE, which at its greatest extent comprised major portions of the ancient world, stretching from the Indus Valley in the east, to ... the northeastern border of Greece, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen." 

To cut a long history short, over the centuries, this civilization has seen ignoble defeats in war and also the self-inflicted malaise of incompetent civil administration.  In fact, in this course, we learn that a state's achievement in war and in administration are closely linked in a mutually reinforcing, or mutually eroding, cycle. 

So for Iran, times have changed.  Their landmass is greatly diminished.  They boast impressive ruins, ancient architecture and ancient feats in technology and the arts, but are not today first or best in anything.  How does a people so aware of their majestic history handle such a discrepancy between their great expectations of themselves and their mediocre reality?  If they could do it before, why are they not doing it again? 

In the 19th century, Iran was under the rule of the Qajar dynasty, and by the early 20th century, this largely incompetent rulership had for "neighbours" the clever Russian and British empires.  Iran was losing badly - not just land, but even the labour of the people, the wealth of the remaining territory, was committed to servitude and debt payments. 

The British, and later, American meddlers were of course not their traditional rivals - say Ottoman, Arab, or their conquered minority tribes.  Modernity in the 19th and early 20th century meant that a country that lay oceans away could 1. have commercial or martial interests in your own country and 2. actually cross barriers in communication and transport to realize its aims.  That is, to say, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the challenge of modernity came to many of our territories in the form of European colonialism. 

Modernity does not have an easy definition.  Wikipedia employs these subheadings in the attempt to define it: politically, sociologically, culturally and philosophically, secularization, scientifically, artistically!  The explanations then focus on the use of reason and loss of "God" concept, and the incidence of a prescribed set of institutions in government and economics.

Basically this verbosity exposes the term as a weak one.  Being centered on the experience of those who use it, its meaning may change from one place to another and from one decade to the next.  In fact, the discussion forum for this course has featured some debate or complaint over the use of the word "modern, not modern, or modernity." 

Still, it is a reasonably useful term because I know what it means, you likely do too: it relates to things of the new age that are not things of the times past.  It relates to things from the bringers of new things (USA, say) and not things we have known for generations (the customs of my people, say.)  I think it is easy to get annoyed with the term if one does not identify with the European dominant culture that defines it.  This may be the case for Iran, as it is often the case for Africans, Muslims, Texans, and others who are beset and besieged by this new dominant power. 

In this course, we learned that there are four idealized responses to modernity that have been adopted in the Muslim world, and that they are Secularism and emulation, religious Reformism, traditionalism, and fundamentalism.

Turkey has tried to jettison its own culture to chase after the West.  It changed its writing and dress, abandoned its religion, adopted new laws, bureaucracies, and secular rationalism.  Today, it has a strong economy alongside a nagging feeling among citizens that it should "be itself" sometimes.  Who knows if the Europeans will ever admit Turkey into their club - the EU - or if Turkey will stop caring? 

Iran had its phase of emulation, when the royals enjoyed foreign travel and racked up debts to finance it.  Perversely, they even "emulated" the tactics of their tormentors in 1951 by nationalizing (claiming their rights to) their own oil. 

Egypt, like Turkey and Iran, has a grand ancient history.  It has had a Western-backed secular leadership over a largely religious population, with a constitution that was nominally Islamic but allowed reform and interpretation to suit the modern elite.  Today it's in the midst of a bloody struggle and for six months has been ruled by the military. 

The people of the Gulf, in Saudi, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and so on, may not have had great civilizations, but they are proud of their fiercely independent history in the desert.  So far, they trade with the West - oil for modern goods - but have not adopted its laws.  Will they need to change from their traditionalism to Western laws and bureaucracy to manage modernity, defined here as close contact with the rest of the world and its objects and ideas?  I believe that process has already begun, as they purchase state-of-the-art education and financial centers.

Iran too is no slouch technologically (two words: nuclear weapons) but how quaintly Islamic its constitution is!  It permits a bureaucracy to function, but at all times inferior to and checked by the ayatollah.  I can't imagine how, except through fear and force, the Iranians have maintained this government for more than 30 years.  The Iranians I've met are barely Islamic in lifestyle, so why do they accept the authority of a purported voice (sign) of God?

References:
1. Wikipedia: Iran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran
2. E. Afsah's video lectures: https://class.coursera.org/muslimworld-001/lecture/index
3. Course discussion forums
4. Wikipedia: modernity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity
5. My experience in Western, Muslim, and other countries.
6. Aljazeera.com and Al-Jazeera TV.

Note: I wrote this essay this week as part of an excellent online course on 
Constitutional Struggles in the Muslim World

Here was the writing prompt:

This course has presented four distinct response patterns to the challenge of modernity. These four Models of Adaptation are, to recapitulate:

1. Emulation/Secularism
2. Religious Reform
3. Traditionalism
4. Fundamentalism

In the preceding weeks, you have been presented with one country or sub-region that embodies each of these response patterns. But do remember that these models are ideal types, that is that we can generally see elements of all four simultaneously at play in any given society. Iran, that you have just learned about in this week, is a good example of this general fact: we can find elements of all four models of adaptations throughout its modern history.

YOUR TASK:

Write a well-argued, clearly structured, exposition that addresses at least three key questions:

1. What is special about modernity and which challenges does it generally pose to traditional societies?
2. Which challenges did Iran face from the 19th century onwards and what had these to do with modernity?
3. Which elements of the first three response patterns can you make out in modern Iranian history, and what accounts, in your view, for the ultimate success of the fourth in the shape of the victorious Islamic Revolution?

REQUIREMENTS FOR YOUR SUBMISSION:

This is a short writing task of maximum 1000 words (less is acceptable, INCLUDING references)
...

Is this the future of the internet?

 According to the material in this course, it has been about twenty years since the internet was founded.  The internet and world wide web seem to have changed EVERYTHING since then.  We buy and sell online.  We meet friends and get news online.  We work in many cases by getting on the internet.  Then we play on the internet too.  Could this technology get any more pervasive?  Will the internet of 2033 be much different from the web today? 

Yes, obviously. 

The interfaces will be different, I think.  Today, many internet users don't connect through clunky teletype machines, large computers, or even small laptops, but through little, brittle smartphones.   I remember just five years ago working with a colleague who was developing a touchscreen and about ten years ago the research news pieces on haptic - touch-based - interfaces.  In the next five, ten, years, users will communicate their intent to the computer world without needing to use a keyboard.  They will wear their interfaces - in their gloves, for instance, or implanted in their heads to sense neural signals.  They will wear their interfaces as glasses, as in Google Glass and all the knock-offs and pirated versions that will develop. 

The availability will be different too.  Today, a lot of the world is not online but is rapidly getting on.  For instance, I live in Africa where it is very palpable how the available bandwidth is small but increasing from month to month.  In my newspaper today was a pullout advertising "swift networks" with a new unlimited speed plan - they don't really mean that, but at least they mean it will be fast - for only 50% more than the plans advertised at 1Mbps which actually deliver about 100kilobits per second.  A couple of companies invested in submarine cables to the coast of Lagos and in the past three years the news has covered the so-called last-mile challenge - that is, the difficulty in getting all that available bandwidth to the end user.  Hundreds of kilometers inland, in my land-locked home state, the government wants to lay fiber at least in a small part of the state capital.  My point is that there will be internet everywhere in twenty years, not just in the US and the wealthiest countries.  To not have reliable internet will be a mark of poverty, as it is a mark of poverty now to not have electricity (for the record, where I live we barely have electricity, we get maybe 10 hours a day on-and-off unpredictably every day), or to not have pipe-borne water (ditto, we have our own private water system - bore-hole, pumping machine, overhead storage.) 

The uses will be different, more democratized.  The elite first users came up with elite uses for the internet: research, geeky games, stock-market trading, bookselling.  The masses will come up with different uses.  I can imagine hysteria about the illuminati and the end of the world.  Incomprehensible doodling all day - already the users of the internet have degenerated from theses and paragraphs and correct spelling to " sup, aw u 2day gr8 tym i no der is."  Ah well, now they'll just scribble a line straight from their brains onto the doodoo wall.   On the other hand, the potential for craftspeople in the middle-of-nowhere to reach their markets in New York, or for a design from a teenager in Hawaii to be adopted by a multibillion yen company in Tokyo will remain, and will grow dramatically. 

Because location will become less important, the world will seem even more to be one uniform place.  Today we have multinational brands in Dubai, Paris, Johannesburg, Mumbai - the same hotel names, the same clothing lines, same sandwich shops.  By 2033, it will be sickening just how the same every city is.  It will take effort to find a place with character.  Maybe by this time, people will have so much material things that they'll finally stop chasing after material things.  Local, and by this I mean national governments will work hard to get their people some time off the internet to create local relationships, national cohesion and culture outside the global internet.  Please marry, they will say.  Please exercise.  In a few years, the most modern governments will finally cut down the workweek to four, then three days to encourage such perceived greater goods as the workplace efficiency being too high will produce more unemployment, more unhappiness, and - unless someone can come up with a large project to mop up human effort - more utterly useless goods. 

What sort of project might that be, the modern day great pyramids, like industrial automation in the 20th century or business-process automation in the last twenty years?  Would it be a space-travel, space-energy and stardrives program or a down-to-earth training/indoctrination/acculturation program utilizing software to help us learn everything from programming and kung-fu to languages and pottery?  Would it be a program to end death as we know it or a program of mass aggression?  Ha, I can't tell you that.  I don't exactly have a crystal ball.

 References:
The reference thing is irrelevant to this essay because I read a lot a lot a lot, so how can I say the ideas came from these two to five places? 
1. Coursera (Inside the Internet - this course)
2. Google Glass (a proposed product)
3. The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded (movies)
4. Technology news sources

Note: I wrote the above essay in November 2013 
for a massive open online course on

Internet History, Technology, and Security.  

This was the writing prompt:
Write an essay that imagines how the Internet will be different 20 years from now.  Justify your answer by connecting your ideas to the history of the Internet that we have learned in this class and through outside materials.  Your answer can focus on how technology will change or how people will change or how governments and policy will change or even how society might change.
--- For references:
Please enter your references here. Only use this space for references (i.e. don't continue your essay in this space). There is no specific citation format. While there is no minimum nor maximum required references, most essays will have somewhere between two and five references. If your references are web sites use the URL. If the references are papers include enough information to identify the source using APA http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ format. Graders will not take points off for syntax errors in references, but they are welcome to suggest how the syntax of references can be improved.

Like my hard-working students, I earned this

Crazy girl

Was at Unilag earlier and bought myself this novel for 500 bucks.

Mema, by Gabonese writer Daniel Mengara

Back at home, gave this look ooh yeah, look at my present from me to me.  Then I airkissed it.   
That's love.  The book had better be good.

2013 music-video experiences: My A++ list

1. Blurred Lines: Headbobbable, Legshakeable awesomeness. 

2. Redemption: Originality and perfection.

3. Feelin' Myself: Gahdemi'yurtheshi'yurtheshi'yurtheshi'

That's all.

will.i.am and others (Miley Cyrus, French Montana, Wiz Khalifa) in Feelin' Myself


Robin Thicke, T.I., and Pharell in Blurred Lines.


Jesse Jagz in Redemption

Do you want to see some regular A+ music and music videos?
Here's a little list:

Started From The Bottom, by Drake.  His happiness was overflowing and infectious in this video, so much that I easily aped his dance moves when I heard the song again, and I could see why it won BET Best Video Awards.


Rich and Famous, by Praiz was actually released in December 2012.  Beautiful voice.  And he did make good and buy his mum a Range soon after the video :)


Suit and Tie, by Justin Timberlake from January 2013.  This preview "lyric video" is many times better than the later "official video" for the track.   Enjoy it.  Learn some cool from the master.

Girl Power!

Let's check out some music videos to end the year.
This first one will make you dance.  I love it.  It's called Somori.  By Omawunmi.  She's dynamite!
What in the world does Somori mean anyway?

I just found this jazzy tune and artsy video by a Malian (Malinese?) singer named Inna Modja.  She's such a hottie.  It's called French Cancan or Monsieur Sainte Nitouche.

Then there's a new artiste in Nigeria named Seyi Shay.  I love her dancing in this video for Irawo (Yoruba: star).  She has some other excellent music and drama-filled videos too.  

This is only the beginning: I want to put up my best five (music videos) of 2013 in a couple of days.  Hint: none of these three makes the list.  What are your top five?
Happy holidays.

Coursera, edX, ...

You may have noticed my new obsession with free online courses, the so-called MOOCs.
Here are the courses I'm actually taking/seriously considering: 

My current online courses - Coursera

 My experience so far is recounted here. 

My upcoming online courses - Coursera

I have ambitious plans (too many courses) for January/February.  Will probably drop something.

My upcoming edX courses

Happy holidays!

The world has gone mad again?

It's hard to believe these headlines are from 2013: purging and executing, ignoring refugees,protesting and barricading, executing by hanging, captured rogue CIA.  Crazy day in the news.

Ready to form Voltron

Activate interlocks! Dyna-therms connected. Infra-cells up; mega-thrusters are go!
Let's go, Voltron Force!
Form feet and legs; form arms and body; and I'll form the head! 

This is still how I think about collaboration; I like to say "let's form Voltron." 
I wasn't a HEAVY Voltron watcher, but I noticed the usual story-line: the individual lions might try and fail to defeat the powerful enemy but - gen-ghennn - after forming Voltron, the evil ro-beast was soooo dead.

Of course I identified with the pink lion - what was her name???

Missing iGoogle

We've had 16 months notice, but I'm still going to miss my iGoogle page.  We've come a long way together.

I'm using an alternative portal called igHome. Who knows, I may come to love it too.

Lagos swallows up Kano three times

For those who have been in Kano, can you report on the underground dwelling places of the good people of Kano?  Or perhaps the city is organized into highrise buildings?  I ask these stupid questions because of the stupider fact that according to official records repeated everywhere from wikipedia to a website of professional urban planners (I won't be asking their services, thank you very much), Kano and Lagos states are in a dead heat for greatest population in Nigeria. 
Hmm.
An eagle flew over the country and said no freaking way.
Check this out:
This is the densest of Kano, and contains almost all of the city.  Outside the "city" of Kano shown here, there is no spot of dense population in the state, i.e. you'll just find one "main street" with no branches/junctions. Let me zoom out and show you:

 Here's a photo of the crowded city of Kano that I nabbed from Google Maps.

Now let's compare with a few other Nigerian cities.

Aba, with its famously dense city center, seems to be close to the same size as Kano, or at least you'll agree that pop_Aba + pop_Ilorin > pop_Kano.  That's quiet Ilorin below.  Its population may be close to half that of Kano. 

Here is Ibadan, with its famous "brown rusted roofs" - great novel of that title, get it. 

When I was a kid (the 1980s), Ibadan was said to be one of the "largest cities in Africa."  Today, it is far from the largest, but in size and population it certainly dwarfs Kano.  This is nothing to be proud of or ashamed of; it just is so. 

Above is the Northern half and below, the southern half of most of the city of Ibadan.

Putting these two maps together, I'll just go ahead and guess that Ibadan has twice as many people as Kano.  What do you think?

And now for Lagos
Lagos is massive.  Lagos is growing.  Oh Lagos has parts that you never knew were there.  In Ikorodu, there's practically a brand new city sprouting.  Lekki-Ajah - disgusting how fast the place has become crowded.  Neither of those places made it into the three non-overlapping maps of some of the most densely populated parts of Lagos.  Also doesn't show West of Festac all the way to Badagry.

This is some of Lagos north of Ikeja.  Note that all of these maps, from Kano to Lagos, are at the same scale.

This is Lagos around Ikeja.   

Lagos around Surulere-Apapa-Yaba, south of Ikeja.  On the bottom right is a peek of Lagos Island, but not including Victoria Island, Ikoyi, and all the way to Epe.  

My credentials
I went to school, plenty of school, that's true.
But what you didn't also know is that I once won a contest to guess the number of candy pieces in a large (maybe two feet high) bottle.  I won hands down.  I guessed almost to the exact count of like a thousand pieces of candy.  Really, just apply a little geometry and it's not that hard - area/circumference of a circle, volume of a cylinder and whatnot.  My prize was the candy-filled bottle, which I moved to my dorm room, and then to my friend's room since I don't actually eat candy and might have never finished it.  Hi Z.I.!

False figures
Here's hoping somebody does the more detailed estimation before I have to.  There are satellite images that could be used to make very good estimates of the population and settle this needlessly contentious matter of how many people we are in Nigeria and how many in each state/region/so-called geo-political zone. 
Until then, this data is thrash.  There is no universe in which Kano has a larger population than Lagos state. 

 Links:
Perform your own investigations (before somebody rigs the satellite images lol) using these interactive maps of Nigeria.
Read a brief history of census attempts in Nigeria

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Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with Muslims

Religions are composed of best intentions to create law and order, knowledge and enlightenment, peace and unity.  History shows us that they have also been the banner under which wars were fought, ignorance was enthroned, and corruption institutionalized from Europe to Asia and everywhere in between.

The video above shows a lady named Malala Yousafzai who speaks up for the right of women to be educated in her Taliban-infested/infected country.  She is only sixteen years old and is a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize since she was targeted and shot for continuing with the simple message "let us girls go to school."

It is in the name of Islam that some are saying don't let women drive, keep them inside the house, they must not read.  But is that what Islam, the religion of peace, is for?  Did you know that 'Talib' as in 'Taliban' means 'student' in Arabic.  This makes it all the more surprising that they are opposed to education. 

In parts of Nigeria, some claim to be in a group called 'Boko Haram' which translates to (Western-style) education is haram (forbidden by Islam.)  But clearly, it is Boko Haram that is haram, as their activities are wicked. 

From August 2011 to May 2013, I kept a little blog titled Boko Halal that covered facets of the argument that education is halal (permitted in Islam) and needed in our society.  For instance, quoting V.S. Naipaul, Modern Society needs more than just Islamic knowledge.  In fact, some Muslims will tell you that the first word revealed in the Qur'an is this: READ, and therefore Islam can not be a religion of ignorance, but one in which study is highly valued. See Suratu-al-Alaq, verse 1: Read! In the name of your Lord who created...

اقرأ iqra.  Read. 

The Islamic leaning of the Boko Haram terrorists is questionable; you would be surprised that they wear T-shirts and western clothing and don't have the time or interest to read or memorize their Koran/Qur'an.  Ordinary Nigerians have seen through them and now co-operate with the civil and military authorities to root out the terrorists.  Many would say that Boko Haram leaders are Islamically-confused, especially since even Muslim leaders and Imams embrace and break bread with Christians in Nigeria.

In BokoHalal, we ask the tough question, could it be that Muslims, their very name being 'people of peace' are called by God to kill unbelievers?  
Wafa Sultan is angry with Islam because people killed those dear to her in a frenzy of what would seem like madness, shouting Allahu Akbar all the while.  This experience is something many have seen or heard of, and people ask why such should happen. Does it not mean that Islam is a violent religion?

Wafa Sultan believes that Islam is not only a religion, [but also] a political ideology that preaches violence and applies its agenda by force.
If that is so, then how come premier Muslim institutions such as Al Azhar have protested against such acts?
If it isn't so, then how come when someone draws a cartoon of The Prophet Mohammed PBUH, or makes a video somewhere, violence is unleashed all over the world?  How come we all know what a fatwa death sentence means?  Who sent all these Muslims to fight for Islam?  A Muslim who reads widely might find that the answer is: No One.  Leave God to fight for God. 

Paolo Coelho was quoted as saying that rather than fight for God, we should be busy wrestling with God.  Says Coelho:

Fighting for God we see now: Christian fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism… They give their lives because the message is a powerful one: you are martyr. I’m a Catholic so I know what I’m talking about, because my Church was founded on the blood of the martyrs.
People start justifying their lives because they need raison d’etre – they need a reason to live. They are trying to convince themselves about their faith.
Fighting against God: it is everywhere in the Bible. Even Jesus – fought against God. When He says, ‘God, why did you forsake me?’ on the cross, or when He asks “Take this cup away from me”.

 I agree that there is enough room for us to improve our own lives with religion, and to sympathize with others who are facing the same life struggle, rather than feel superior to them or use religion to torment them.  When you really think about our prayer formulas in Islam and Christianity, one person says In The Name of Allah the other says Heavenly Father.  Both pray lead us in the path that of righteousness, keep us from sin, same story, really not worth fighting over the difference or converting from one path to the other. In Must Religions Be In Competition, this point is made clearly with a fable involving four travellers fighting over whether to buy inab, angur, uzum, or isitafil; only to find out that all these words mean grape, only in their different languages.

It is not God that is causing the clash between the civilizations, but what Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk (of Turkey and the US) calls a "fear of counting for nothing."  Pamuk says that literature has a responsibility to enlighten those who may feel self-satisfied and those who may feel humiliated and left-out in the western culture's ascendancy.

But perhaps we all really need, particularly in the poorest Muslim communities, first of all, before cultural pride, is our daily bread.  In fact, as B.R. Fashola, the governor of Lagos State prayed for peace at Ramadan, he emphasized how peace and prosperity go together.  It seems there is some disagreement between modern thinkers and Islamic culturalists about the primacy of life and such mundane things as food and water, and maybe there ought to be some debate on this.  What is a life worth?  Should wretchedly poor people accept it as their destiny?  Is it better to die than be humiliated?  Are there really forty virgins on the other side? 

You can tell from the title of my blog "Life Liberty Happiness" what I think is at the core of existence and inexistence.  As a woman I believe I am a human being as you are.  Let the women participate in bringing us our daily bread, our laws, and our greatness.  Let us use religion positively, not let it explode in our hands.  As a teenager, Malala already understands this.  This is why I can  not call her a child, but a sage, a wise person. 

Ephemeris - anybody else a little bit psychic?

Just now I closed my eyes and guessed Uncle Toni's sign, from all I know about him and his coaching/family relationship with his nephew, Rafa Nadal.
I settled on Pisces strongly.
2nd option Libra.  But also possibly Virgo or Scorpio.
I have the hypothesis that Rafa the Gemini has been 'not himself' having grown with the strong influence of a person so unlike him.  He will change when that influence ends, or is possibly already quite different when he is outside of that influence (which is almost never).
And the hypothesis that the uncle is repressed in some way.  This feeds such loyalty and humble dedication to another person. 
Then I asked google, and got February 21, 1961 for his birthday.  I said, yeah baby, that's Pisces, right?  So I searched and it IS Pisces.

Click for 1000 amazing pictures of Rafa Nadal and Uncle Toni

Why is this important?  Because nowadays I'm trying to understand Rafa (who is my one and only esposo, as y'all know ;) but why Gemini, of all signs that don't naturally harmonize with me?) 

But also, I'm suggesting that astrology is not crap.
I use it in my life; it helps me understand people.
Further, I can sometimes guess the sign of a person after some interaction.  I just get a sense.  Then it turns out that it's correct.  This test makes it unlikely that one's sign is just random, since then I'd have less than a 1 in 10 chance of guessing.

I sometimes try to guess what the strong influences are in my sisters who are twins and both Scorpio.  I think one is quite the Cancer, absolutely, in addition to her real scorpio Sun Sign.  What's left after the water signs (Pisces too, so all three) done filled up her days with moon and mood and drowning, is a tiny hint of air: Aquarius, Libra, maybe THERE is her room for expression.  But it's such a tiny window.
The other twin has an active Aries in her somewhere, and a little Leo that keeps us from locking horns as I normally would with Aries.  If you know any Leos, she has their heart - not a very involved/engaged heart, but a heart big and capable and able to give without lacking, especially to their 'subjects', the ones younger or weaker, and indeed all the rest of us - the fans that adore the Leo.   

The astrology thing is great for relationship advising.  Once I 'finally' went out to lunch with a guy I'd been really eyeing (trust me, you'd eye him too - sweet GoD!) and while the place was beautiful, ...our chemistry was rubbish.  That lunch he told me he was Sagittarius, I basically told him 'no wonder' and explained that emm, it would be easier not to try to make our natures harmonize.  He liked another Taurus girl, they went out for a few years, it must have been harrrrd work.

Definitely, I'm not satisfied to simply separate the world into those I "flow" with, and those I don't; I try to learn how to love everybody; and as we know, anti-flow itself is an important energy/force.

Still I usually choose the easy, lazy, boring way.  The Taurus/Taurus relationship for instance, two mounds of sand side-by-side is what I read, and indeed it was in my experience with one darling Taurean.  We were completely content, feeding each other fat, sorting out money matters, forgetting to 'do it' really for months, never needing to argue, complain or explain.  We argued by saying Honey this or Babe that, practically laughing underneath.  Like honey why do you want to go to that dangerous place alone, you could wait so I can take you.  Basically saying "I care about you."  Or babe that's a lot of rice.  Basically saying I know how your body works. 

There was one Taurus/Taurus relationship that till today makes me wonder when someone will tell him his real birthday because he's "at least" a Sun Sign Gemini, switching this way and that, probably even Aquarius, considering the hectic asynchronicities between us, the excesses of excitement and of stress.  I vote Aquarius: he was even good friends with the Sagittarian.  And I said once to him: you have to choose one way OR the other, but he'd throw another curveball thinking it was such fun and so I chose 'one way, or the other' because I (we Taureans) are just not that nimble.  We need a steady, plodding sort of direction.

Once I met an angel on a train and her sister.  I think she was a brunette or red, I think her sister was blonde.  I can't even remember which train - California?  East Coast?  The ladies were neither - they were from somewhere in-between I don't remember - Midwest or South. She advised me that one does need some tension in a relationship, otherwise "nothing gets done."  I know now what she means.  But give me just a tiny little dose of the tension, OK? 

I met somebody last month that I really really badly like.  I got home and was like: Pisces.  Checked his facebook and I was wrong: his sign is Cancer.

But I have to say that is sort of like being right, since
1. both signs are quite alike; and quite alike to me, being two months away from Taurus either way, and
2. maybe I don't have enough experience with both (esp Cancer, I had just an officemate and a PhD adviser with that sign) to tell the difference easily.
So what's he like?  Well, definitely takes softness, sweetness, patience, and sensitivity for him to try peeking out of that shell; I haven't seen the crabby moodiness although I've been prepared for it; and for us as a pair it's completely easy to click, like a very easy sibling relationship.  Really, Pisces and Cancer to a Taurus are like the flowiest friends ever. Like Aqua and Sag. Like any so-called 3-11 pair (two signs apart)

Conversely, another friend of mine is a source of education and a distant curiosity for me.  He's a bit like an alien complete with antennae and all sorts of ideas that I never hear anywhere.  Yep, Libra.  But instead of the differences being too great for us to get along, I can just access (in small doses) that which is far from my experience.  We're supposed to meet this week.  Which may end up being next month or next year.  I think I'm growing, because five/ten years ago, me and a Libran would have hit a wall.  My Libran officemates eeew.  They gave me very bad vibes.  Come to think of it, even this year me and a Libran hit a wall.  I just didn't know "how" to apologize in a way that he would understand.  I wonder where he's hiding now.  

Maybe one day I'll tell you where these characters go in my writing, they're everywhere, and one day too, insha'Allah, you'll read THE NOVEL in which the quarks, the signs sort of show their properties and make their music(s).

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Action. Action film and making things.

I've been watching IRIS.  Not sure how at one point while in bed focused on the images of this spy movie on my little screen (it's a little like 24, Bourne, even NUMB3RS sometimes), I got this vision of a doughnut, big enough to advertise a donut shop, big like a car tyre; and rough, aged, contoured on the skin, extremely doughnut-like in texture.  I want to make something, sculpt with my hands with foam or some plasticine thing and colour it.  The sad part is that I/we generally don't know how.
Now I know:  Get tyre.  Coat with something.  Colour with something. Till it looks like this

Nowadays I'm obsessed (in my mind only) with sculpture.
It doesn't help seeing these interesting buildings in the Korean films I've been watching.
Contrast with how I don't go out and even if I did, there isn't so much attention to art in the spaces called Lagos.  It's a beautiful city in its own weird way, but I wish for a new weird way.

I wish everything wasn't so "practical" and copied.  

Italian-labelled and imported

I wish architects actually had new designs.  

I am pleased with the creativity in some music videos around here...maybe objects and spaces are next.  Who knows how to interact with materials?  Who cares, unless the material is money, around here?
At least I can interact with words and the internet.  But now I want to touch and mould stuff beyond cooking (rare) and sewing (pinning or mending at least not the whole so many yards...)

You know who makes things all day long?
 My sister.

   And this Lagos artist.
   
How about you?

I may not make the big crinkled O right now, but what I shall do is use poster colour to draw/write some Chinese words in my sketch book.  Not sure why I think that's so exciting.
 
IRIS is a very good film.  I kept thinking it's not nearly as good as some of the other Korean films I've been gorging on, but hey I still went out to buy parts 2-4 and finished part two (10 hours +) in one day.

A Thousand Kisses is also good yet not as utterly captivating as some of my first K-drama.  I even managed not to hunt like mad for more episodes/seasons after about 20 hours.

Sea God (or Emperor of the Sea) was quite an education.  They could have condensed the fifty-something hours into ten hours, but ok, I lapped it all up.  By the time I'd finished I'd watched like 200 hours of Song Il-Gook.  He is a very very like really very good actor.  I can spell Song Il-Gook. 

Before I got to the point where I could actually take my eyes off the screen for five seconds with K-Drama, without rewinding to catch the all-important subtitles or wistful stare that I might have missed, I had watched these:
- Jumong 
- Kingdom of the Winds 
These are the early founding stories of the Korean people.  (Yoruba : Itan isedale awon omo Korea) A bit like the Bible; they have everything - poetry, power, birth, death, slavery, archery, murder, jealousy, travel, ambition, kingdoms, gods, costume, myth, ... and a swordfight every twenty minutes.
- Personal Taste
- Coffee Prince 
A pair of cheesy captivating romantic comedies.  Made me laugh, cry, wish, understand, forgive, reach out... Only about twenty hours each.  Slightly gender-bending and the more adorable for that fact.
Those were some absolutely wonderful movie marathons. 

Holidays end in two weeks.  What to do?  Because I still have: Boys Over/Before Flowers, (parts of) Yi San, GRACHI: Playful Kiss, MIDAS, Nine-Tailed Fox (action), My Girlfriend is a Nine-Tailed fox (comedy) , Full House, The Fugitive Plan B, Viral Factor, Master of Study (maybe a little boring) , and Unchained Love.  That's more hours than I have in the month.  I know: I can prioritize.  Midas+PlayfulKiss is doable in a week.  But first finish IRIS?