Posted by Jane Okinedo on December 22, 2009 at 11:07pm
The Palace of Benin Kingdom on Monday gave the Esama of Benin, Chief Gabriel Igbinedion, one week within which to show remorse by apologising to the Omo N’ Oba, Uku Akpolokpolo, Oba Erediauwa for his sin against the palace.advertisementPublic Relations Consult to the Oba of Benin, Obi (Dr.) Martha Dunkwu, conveyed the palace position on the face-off between the palace and Igbinedion during the quarterly media briefing with the Benin monarch.Igbinedion, who was suspended from palace functions 18 months ago by the Benin Council of Chiefs over allegation of parading himself as the Oba of Benin outside the shores of the country among other offences, was advised to do the right thing by going through the palace chiefs to apologise to and seek forgiveness from the Oba.In the same vain, the Independent Television station (ITV) owned by the Igbinedion was asked to also tender unreserved and unconditional apology to the Oba of Benin for allegedly despising the Oba of Benin.The palace also on Monday asked the Benin Market Women Leaders Association led by one Mrs. Josephine Omoregie, to come to the palace of the Oba and tender apology to the monarch over their conduct and utterances at the palace ground two weeks ago.The women were said to have protested to the palace in their bid to seek forgiveness for Igbinedion by the Benin monarch.Their action, which was given wide publicity in electronic media reportedly, angered the palace, which had queried the behavior of the women.Meanwhile, chairman of the Edo State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Friday Obanor, however tendered apology to the Oba over comments he reportedly made in electronic media when the market women protested to the palace.Reports had it that journalists who had gone to the palace to cover the protest were restricted by palace security, but the NUJ chairman reportedly berated their actions, which were said to emanate from palace authority.The comments of the NUJ chairman on television, it was learnt, angered the Oba of Benin.Consequently, the palace on Monday during the parley demanded apology from the NUJ Chairman and he was subsequently forgiven by the Oba.Vice Chairman of the Edo NUJ, Ms Flora Bassey, who stood in before the arrival of the chairman, had earlier urged the Benin monarch to continue his good relationship with journalists in the state, noting that no other traditional institution in the country was doing what the Oba of Benin was doing to journalists in hosting them quarterly for the past 11 years.
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BARCELONA star, Lionel Messi, has been named FIFA World Footballer of the Year to complete a stunning 2009 for the Argentine forward.advertisementThe 22-year-old, who helped Barca win the Club World Cup on Saturday, their sixth trophy of the year, also won the Ballon d'Or award this year.“A magnificent year for me and Barca has ended in the best way,” Messi said after the presentation of the award.He beat off competition from last year's winner, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Xavi and Andres Iniesta.Messi becomes the first Argentine to win the award, which was inaugurated in 1991 and it completed a stunning year for the brilliant winger.He helped Barca to an unprecedented treble of Champions League, La Liga and Spanish Cup last season, scoring the second goal in their 2-0 win over Manchester United in May.This season, the Catalan club added the Spanish Super Cup, European Super Cup and Club World Cup to its roll of honour, beating Argentine side, Estudiantes, in Abu Dhabi to complete a stellar year.At the start of the month, Messi beat Ronaldo to the European Footballer of the Year award by a massive margin, 473 points to 233 and has now succeeded Ronaldo to win the FIFA award too.However, Messi has played down the attention, saying: “No, please, I am not king of the world now, nor the number one, I don't believe in those things.“I am the same person as always and I have the good fortune to play in a great team. It was an historic year for Barca and for me, but thanks to the work of everyone.”At a glittering gala at the Zurich Kongresshaus, England stars, John Terry and Steven Gerrard, were named in the FIFPro World XI, voted for by their fellow professionals.Fellow Premier League stars Patrice Evra, Nemanja Vidic and Fernando Torres were also picked, along with former Manchester United star, Ronaldo.Real Madrid's Iker Casillas was picked in goal and Barca quartet Dani Alves, Xavi, Iniesta and Messi completed the line-up.Ronaldo won the inaugural FIFA Puskas Award for the best goal of the year for his stunning 40-yard strike while playing for Manchester United against FC Porto in the quarter-finals of the Champions League in April.Brazilian Marta won the Women's World Player of the Year for a record fourth consecutive time, beating off competition from England striker, Kelly Smith.The 31-year-old Smith, who played her club football in the United States, starred in the England side that reached the final of Euro 2009.The prizes were voted for by the captains and head coaches of the men's and women's national teams.
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Posted by 9jabook.com on December 22, 2009 at 8:53pm
Tragedy struck last Friday at about 11:30pm as a 54-year-old man, Mr. Patrick Omini Ewoh, died having marathon sex with his 20-old heart throb at a guest house in Ugep, Yakurr Local Government Area of Cross River State.
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The late Mr. Ewoh was said to have met his untimely death when on that fateful day, he decided to have fun with his little damsel.
An eye-witness told Daily Sun that the lover-man after he had gone out with his wife to visit one of the family friends, who lost the husband decided to drop off the wife and then called up the girlfriend on phone to meet him at their usual sex zone that evening.
A few minutes after, the account continued, the young girl showed up at the guest house, located in the outskirts of Ugep, where they had treated each other to some bottles of beer spiced up with cans of energy drinks and suya in apparent readiness for the marathon.
Having done with little entertainment, Ewoh, who was the treasurer of Ugep General Hospital, proceeded with his ‘baby girl’ to his hotel room for a short time. But barely 30 minutes, the young girl quickly dashed out of the room and headed for the road pretending she wanted to buy something outside.
However, the burble burst when after about one-hour and-forty-minutes the man did not come out. One of hotel attendants tapped at the door persistently, but was shocked that there was no response from inside.
The attendant forced the door open and saw to his chagrin the fun-seeking man panting and gasping for breath, perhaps after a round of sex. He quickly called up the owner of the hotel, one Mr. Thomas Eteng, a retired military officer, who in turn reported the incident to Ugep Police Station for necessary action.
When police arrived the scene, they rushed Ewoh to Ugep General Hospital where doctors on call battled to resuscitate him but to no avail.
Fearing that he might die at the same hospital, where he served as treasurer, the doctors advised that he be taken to Calabar General Hospital for urgent medical attention.
However, 30 minute after they took off to Calabar, the ‘lover man’ gave up the ghost. A close relative, who was in the pick-up jeep that brought him back, confided in Daily Sun that the corpse had been deposited at Ugep General Hospital mortuary while arrangements are on to bury the late Ewoh.
The relative, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the family is trying to fish out the girl and that they have reported to the police for necessary action, adding that the death of his uncle is a shameful thing that does not deserve public attention and wondered how the news leaked out to a journalist.
When Daily Sun visited the Ugep Police station, the authorities refused to comment on the matter claiming that the matter has at Calabar Police Command.
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BE yourself in this season, don't be rough, arrogant insteady be diligent & vigilant, self-control, christmas is the reason for the seasons telling the birth of Christ also given out for the less privilege, orphanage. As the year is coming to an end, so God help us through another years!!Happy Christmas.
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Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Brittany Murphy, the bubbly, free-spirited actress who appeared in such films as "Clueless" and "8 Mile," died Sunday, apparently of natural causes, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said. She was 32.Murphy was pronounced dead at 10:04 a.m. PT Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Sally Stewart told CNN Radio.An autopsy had not been scheduled as of Sunday night, but Captain John Kades, a spokesman for the coroner's office, told CNN that there was no sign of foul play or trauma. He added that it's not unusual for a younger person to die of natural causes.The coroner's office is looking into Murphy's medical history. A final report could take up to eight weeks.The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating the death, and robbery and homicide detectives will be at her home, LAPD spokeswoman Norma Eisenman said."The sudden loss of our beloved Brittany is a terrible tragedy," her family said in a statement issued by her publicist. "She was our daughter, our wife, our love and a shining star. We ask you to respect our privacy at this time."Funeral arrangements are pending, the family said.Murphy starred in several movies, including "Just Married," "Don't Say a Word" and "Riding in Cars with Boys." She also voiced the character Luanne on the animated TV series "King of the Hill."She is survived by her husband, British screenwriter Simon Monjack, whom she married in 2007.Fans took to Murphy's official Facebook page Sunday to issue their condolences."She was a great actress and was going to go far in her career! She will be greatly missed!" read one post.Murphy's former boyfriend and "Just Married" co-star Ashton Kutcher posted his reaction to the news via Twitter."2day the world lost a little piece of sunshine. My deepest condolences go out 2 Brittany's family, her husband, & her amazing mother Sharon," Kutcher posted.He added later: "see you on the other side kid."Singer-actress Jessica Simpson tweeted: "Brittany Murphy was an incredible ray of Light to so many people. Her smile was contagious. My prayers are with her family and loved ones."Actress Alyssa Milano, who did a USO tour with Murphy in 2003, wrote on Twitter: "She was a sweet soul, with a lot of talent and heart."Murphy was best known for her work in a string of romantic comedies in the early 2000s, including lead roles in "Uptown Girls" alongside fellow Georgia native Dakota Fanning, and "Little Black Book" with Holly Hunter and Kathy Bates, but her movie roles had declined in recent years.Last month, Murphy reportedly was fired from "The Caller," a movie she was working on in Puerto Rico. Her representative issued a statement to news outlets disputing the report, saying: "She was not nor has she ever been fired from any job big or small. ... [Due] to creative differences Ms. Murphy and the production mutually parted ways," according to People magazine.In addition to her "King of the Hill" role, she lent her voice to a number of animated works including the TV series "Futurama" and the 2006 hit movie "Happy Feet."Her work as troubled teenagers in "Don't Say a Word" and "Girl, Interrupted" also gained her critical acclaim.Murphy was the subject of tabloid gossip after she transformed from a pudgy brunette in 1995's "Clueless" to a petite, lithe blonde who graced the cover of such magazines as Cosmopolitan in 2005. She frequently denied rumors of an eating disorder and plastic surgery.Her love life also was fodder for gossip sites as she broke two engagements in 2004 and 2006, then married Monjack after only four months of dating."All these ridiculous people came out and said all this nonsense when we got married, [but] thank God we had the substance and the history within that to [say], 'Yeah, whatever!' " Monjack told People magazine in a 2008 interview. "We still don't understand what happened. It's made us laugh, it's made us cry, but it's made us stronger."
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This is the short list of how the women of “Fela!,” the Broadway musical about the Nigerian Afrobeat musician and political agitator, do not see their characters: victims, go-go dancers, sex objects.The nine women in tight outfits, elaborate hairdos and painted faces represent the 27 real-life co-wives of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, who married them collectively in what he considered a personal and political gesture as he fought against Nigeria’s corrupt authoritarian regime and defended traditional African culture.The women have no individual lines. In any other show they would be considered part of the chorus. Yet they maintain a constant, magnetic stage presence, dancing and singing at Fela’s nightclub, the Shrine, in the Lagos of the late ’70s. While their stories are not told, their characters have been thoroughly studied and embodied by the performers, who see them as an integral part of the complex and contradictory tale of the man who inspired the musical.“The relationship is more intricate than just a bunch of passive women who let a man do whatever he wanted,” Aimee Graham Wodobode, a dancer who plays a wife named Sewaa, said during a recent interview with five of the wives, called queens, at a Midtown restaurant. “They believed in his mission and were ready to die for him.”Iris Wilson, whose character, Najite, met Fela when she 14 and described him as a combination father, mother and comrade in the fight for African democracy, said, “These were women who stood for something, who spoke out with Fela against the corrupt African government.”Abena Koomson, whose character, Funmi, a former dancer, is pregnant in the musical and hangs back with the band, said: “Fela could not have done what he did by himself. Afrobeat music really takes a community. What it requires is polyrhythm, many different sounds. In many ways that’s a metaphor for community, for the call and response of African music. The queens are that sound, that affirmation.”Fela’s collective marriage in 1978 to the women — many of whom had been teenagers when they first came to the Shrine and then his home to escape their families or find personal fulfillment — takes only a few minutes onstage. Fela says to the assembled women, “Will you marry me?,” and they respond, “Yeah, yeah.”What the audience might not know is that the marriage — often described in prurient terms by the news media over the years — had been publicly described by Fela as a gesture of political solidarity and emotional support for his women after a devastating 1977 raid on his compound in Lagos, called Kalakuta.One thousand soldiers swarmed Kalakuta, beating Fela and raping and viciously abusing some of the women — an episode depicted vividly onstage. Fela’s 77-year-old mother, Funmilayo Anikulapo-Kuti, herself a political counterforce to Nigeria’s authoritarian regime, died the following year from injuries suffered after the soldiers threw her out a window.Within the musical’s kinetic framework the queens’ flourishes are subtle. “One slaps his hand away, one is like his pet, another does not look at him,” said Bill T. Jones, the show’s director and choreographer.The audience has to look closely. None of them like Fela’s African-American lover, Sandra Isadore (played by Saycon Sengbloh), so they maintain a physical distance from her. And even though the performers crowd the theater’s aisles, Mr. Jones instructed them not to “bat your eyes or wiggle your hips at the audience.”Ms. Wodobode, whose character is from Ghana, said: “If you look at our faces and attitudes during the play, it’s not a ‘look at me.’ We are not grinning and gyrating and trying to please. We are there to create a community, to make a statement, to help create music.”Ms. Wilson said one of Fela’s friends helped develop her character. “He said my role in the play is to always be attending to Fela because that is what she did, so you see me lighting his cigarettes, giving him his saxophone, wiping his brow.”Afi McClendon, who plays Ihase, the youngest-looking, smallest queen, said she saw the women as rebels. “In this day and age, feminine energy is so understated,” Ms. McClendon said as she got into her makeup for a show. “They were women who had the courage to define themselves as individuals in a society that was so corrupt and did not allow them to be the individuals that they were."Lauren De Veaux, who plays Alake, discovered that her character was 17 when she met a 35-year-old Fela and went to school with his eldest daughter. “Some of them were D.J.’s at the Shrine,” she said, dismissing the notion that the women were political accessories. “They did choreography.”Nicole de Weever described her role, Adeola, as an intellectual young woman from Ghana with artistic aspirations, from a polygamous middle-class family.Although the women had some dialogue in an early workshop incarnation of “Fela!,” Mr. Jones decided to streamline the show with 9 wives instead of 27 and to present them through Fela’s eyes.“It was unwieldy,” Mr. Jones recalled of attempts to use dialogue. “The people we were working with were primarily dancers, not actors, and I didn’t want to fall into the trap of this being a fascination with polygamous lifestyle.”Like the real-life queens, the performers come from various places. Ms. de Weever is from the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Maarten, and Ms. De Veaux is from Chattanooga, Tenn. Ms. Koomson’s parents are from Ghana, but she grew up in New England. Ms. Wodobode was born in the Central Africa Republic and grew up in Paris. Ms. Wilson was raised in Queens; Ms. McClendon was born and reared in the Bronx.With the exception of Ms. Koomson, the women — most of whom are making their Broadway debuts here and had appeared in Off Broadway incarnations of the show — knew one another through other performances.Much of their information about Fela and his queens came from the “Fela: This Bitch of a Life,” a biography by Carlos Moore, an ethnologist and political scientist who knew Fela. (The book was published in Europe in 1982, and in the United States this year by Lawrence Hill Books.)Mr. Moore met with Mr. Jones and the performers. “I did not want them to appear as they were often portrayed in the media, practically as prostitutes,” Mr. Moore said, speaking by phone from his home in Salvador, Brazil. “It is extremely unfair to these women who suffered so much for their political beliefs. He really loved these women. I saw that.”At the same time, the interviews in his biography show Fela as a man who slapped his wives to maintain authority and used profanity to talk about the centrality of sex to his relationships with women. He was both sexist and savior, pushing the women to educate themselves and using them as political agitprop at times. In the biography the wives talked about their love for Fela and their wish to have his children, and also about their shared battle against corruption and repression anywhere in the world.During 30 years of protests Fela was imprisoned at least a dozen times. After one such stretch, about eight years into the collective marriage, he pronounced the institution of marriage a fraud, and some of his wives left him, according Mr. Moore’s biography. Other relationships frayed over the years as Fela endured prison and later suffered from AIDS. He was 58 when he died in 1997.As far as Mr. Moore knows, the co-wives bore four or five of the children fathered by Fela, and perhaps three of the women died of AIDS. (In 1961 he legally married Remi Taylor.) Today the former wives are scattered around the world, with at least one in London and a handful still in Nigeria, he said.The women of “Fela!” all said they hoped the future would bring a more thorough telling of the stories of the women behind the man. Until then, “it’s O.K. if people go home making up their own stories,” Ms. Wodobode said. “We have a lot of fantasies about the queens too.”
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Posted by 9jabook.com on December 20, 2009 at 9:56pm
1. Quantum Mechanics for Beginners
- An Introduction -
How the Princess began to Feel the Pea.
Science is exciting because it is always in trouble. No matter how excellent a theory is, it always misses some point or other. Even our most precious ideas about the universe are not able to explain everything; there's always a blind spot. And when the hopeful folks zoom in on that blind spot it pretty much always turns out to be a lot larger than anybody thought, and all of us a mere bunch of naive beginners.
At the end of the eighteenth century the blind spot of regular mechanics (=the library of dogmas that teach the ins and outs of objects moving and colliding) covered the behavior of very small objects, such as electrons, and the behavior that light caused when it hit small things like electrons.
Light had been a mystery for centuries. Some experiments proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that light was waves. Some other experiments proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that light was particles. The truth about light was obviously hidden and it wasn't until 1900 that people began to understand that there was something very weird about the world of the small. Something that required a complete revision of understanding.
It was decided that the world of the very small was governed by rules that were different from the rules that governed the world we can see, and regular (or classical) mechanics begat Quantum Mechanics. And that unanticipated breach in mechanics spawned this very important rule:
Hold that thought (1):
Individual quantum particles are subjected to a completely different law than the law to which large objects made from quantum particles are subjected.
The introduction of the quantum
The Quantum Mechanical era commenced in 1900 when Max Planck postulated that everything is made up of little bits he called quanta (one quantum; two quanta). Matter had its quanta but also the forces that kept material objects together. Forces could only come in little steps at the time; there was no more such a thing as infinitely small.
Albert Einstein took matters further when he successfully described how light interacts with electrons but it wasn't until the 1920's that things began to fall together and some fundamental rules about the world of the small where wrought almost by pure thought. The men who mined these rules were the arch beginners of Quantum Mechanics, the Breakfast Club of the modern era. Names like Pauli, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Born, Rutherford and Bohr still put butterflies in the bellies of those of us who know what incredible work these boys - as most of them where in their twenties; they were rebels, most of them not even taken serious - achieved. They were Europeans, struck by the depression, huddled together on tiny attics peeking into a strange new world as once the twelve spies checked out the Promised Land. Let all due kudoes abound.
Believing the unbelievable
One of the toughest obstacles the early Quantum Mechanics explorers had to overcome was their own beliefs in determinism. Because the world of the small is so different, people had to virtually reformat the system of logic that had brought them thus far. In order to understand nature they had to let go of their intuition and embrace a completely new way of thinking. The things they discovered where fundamental rules that just were and couldn't really be explained in terms of the large scale world. Just like water is wet and fire is hot, quantum particles display behavior that are inherent to them alone and can't be compared with any material object we can observe with the naked eye.
One of those fundamental rules is that everything is made up from little bits. Material objects are made up of particles, but also the forces that keep those objects together. Light, for instance, is besides that bright stuff which makes things visible, also a force (the so-called electromagnetic force) that keeps electrons tied to the nuclei of atoms, and atoms tied together to make molecules and finally objects. In Scriptures Jesus is often referred to as light, and most exegetes focus on the metaphorical value of these statements. But as we realize that all forms of matter are in fact 'solidified' light (energy, as in E=mc2) and the electromagnetic force holds all atoms together, the literal value of Paul's statement "and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together (Col 1:17)" becomes quite compelling.
Particles are either so-called real particles, also known as fermions, or they are force particles, also known as bosons.
Quarks, which are fermions, are bound together by gluons, which are bosons. Quarks and gluons form nulceons, and nucleons bound together by gluons form the nuclei of atoms.
The electron, which is a fermion, is bound to the nucleus by photons, which are bosons. The whole shebang together forms atoms. Atoms form molecules. Molecules form objects.
Everything that we can see, from the most distant stars to the girl next door, or this computer you are staring at and yourself as well are made up from a mere 3 fermions and 9 bosons. The 3 fermions are Up-quark, Down-quark and the electron. The 9 bosons are 8 gluons and 1 photon.
Like so:
But the 3 fermions that make up our entire universe are not all there is. These 3 are the survivors of a large family of elementary particles and this family is now known as the Standard Model. What happened to the rest? Will they ever be revived?
We will learn more about the Standard Model a little further up. First we will take a look at what quantum particles are and in which weird world they live.
(If you plan to research these matters more we have written out the most common quantum phrases in a table for your convenience. Have a quick look at it so that you know where to find it in case you decide you need it).
Summary 1: Quantum Mechanics for Beginners; an Introduction.
Everything is made up from little chunks called quanta.
Small particles are completely different animals than large objects.
The visible universe is made up of 3 fermions and 9 bosons (not counting gravity)
The matter that makes up the visible universe is part of a larger family of particles called the Standard Model.
2. Big Rules for Small Particles
- Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle -
Uncertainty.
A scientific model or theory is supposed to be a cascade of certainties and whenever someone uses the word 'uncertainty' most scientist will run for the nearest airlock.
Great therefore was the consternation when uncertainty appeared to be one of the most characteristic qualities of quantum particles. Einstein even went as far as to boldly state: I don't believe that God plays dice!
But God did. Or so it seemed.
The year was 1927 when a brilliant 26 year old German named Werner Karl Heisenberg postulated a principle that would go down in history as the Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg. It goes like this:
A large object that moves along a trajectory has, at any point in time, a certain speed and a certain position. Both speed and position for any point along the track can be accurately calculated or measured. But of a quantum particle that zips through space the speed and position can not both be accurately known. Either the position of the particle is known or the speed. And when one of the two is known accurately, the other one is hidden. When we know the speed, we have no idea where the particle is situated. And when we know the position of the particle, we are oblivious to its speed. And that is not because we're not smart enough, or our instruments are not accurate enough. It simply does not exist!
Hold that thought (2a):
The Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg:
Of a quantum particle, speed and location can not be simultaneously known.
We like to think of speed and position as two separate things but in fact they are two sides of one thing. Just like space and time are really not two but one: spacetime. Einstein was right when he said that God doesn't play dice. He doesn't. In stead He created the universe on a principle of sovereignty. Quantum particles are allowed to surround themselves with mere blurs of their intentions. No one is to know their true speed-position, not even God, because it does not exist.
The Famous Slot Experiment
Quantum-uncertainty has a very peculiar consequence. It can not be predicted where a particle will end up when we shoot it at a target. Particles are sovereign and can not be coerced.
Take a look at the following installation:
A particle canon shoots particles at a screen with a slot. Behind the first screen we place a recording screen that marks the place of particles impact with a black dot. We let the installation run for a couple of hours, or at least long enough to have fair coverage of possibilities.
If particles were regular objects they would have been easily directed through the slot
and on to the same spot on the recording screen. But particles are not regular objects and our recording screen shows a blurred black smudge at the spot we were aiming at.
Obviously most particles hit the recording screen somewhere in the vicinity of our target. Particles can not be coerced but they seem nevertheless quite willing to join the fun.
But the black blur does not have a boundary. It smudges across the entire recording screen, graying out radially until at the edges hardly any impact shows. It appears that some particles chose to avoid the mainstream and steer for the edge. In fact, if we would have placed recording screens all around the canon, we would have seen impacts everywhere, even behind the canon! Some particles simply tear a U-turn and hit a wall 180 degrees opposite the one we were shooting at.
We decide to count the number of impacts directly behind the slot in an area with a certain small radius. Then we count again but cover a larger area. We count more hits of course because we've added surface to the first count. Then we count again, and again until we have a pretty accurate picture of the spread of particles. We plot the numbers in a graph and find a curve that never becomes zero (since particles hit everywhere). This curve was plotted for the first time in 1925 by an Austrian named Erwin Schrödinger and has been called the Schrödinger Wave ever since.
Schrödinger solved the troublesome particle/wave duality paradox that had plagued scientists for so long. The question whether things such as photons were waves or particles was answered with a loud negation across the board: they are neither, or rather: both! Quantum particles are particles that propagate through space by means of chance-waves. That is the wave some scientists had detected. This wave does not propagate through some kind of medium, like water or air, but emerges from the individual sovereignty of quantum particles. Before quantum theory waves always ran through a medium, like the ocean. Take away the wave and you still have water. A quantum wave does not use a medium; it uses chance. Take away the wave (which are the particles) and you'll be left with nothing.
The Famous Two Slots Experiment
If quantum particles that burst forth from their source behaving like a wave, we should be able to observe interference. Interference happens when two waves collide and some parts of both waves cancel out and other parts add up. (To construct a resultant-wave we add up the amplitudes of both waves for all points - above the gray line is positive, below is negative).
And to make two waves in order for them to interfere we take out the slotted screen of our previous experiment and insert a screen with two slots. We fire at will and wouldn't you know... interference! Indeed many particles ride the wave of their identity.
But! we're not happy so fast. We decide to fire off one particle at a time with an interval of one minute between particles. Quantum particles are those things that can not be divided.
Particles must go through one of the two slots, our intuition dictates. Firing off particles one at a time should not produce an interference pattern, we think.
A few hours later we return, and find the recording screen adorned with yep! an interference pattern. How is this possible?
Well, apparently we have stumbled upon the heart of quantum weirdness. The rule is easily derived, but not easily swallowed. We'll have to choke it down: Quantum particles are per definition individable, but they travel through space according to all the many possibilities that they have to choose from. They are not compelled to choose one specific trajectory, but are allowed to travel all of them, according to the chance that they will.
Particles will travel everywhere from source to target, like a smear, thick where the particle is most likely to be, and thin where it is most likely not to be. The smear by which they travel is called a path integral: the total area covered by all possible trajectories.
Interpretation
In the two-slots experiment the following is true:
The chance that the particle goes through slot 1 is x%. The chance that the particle goes through slot 2 is y%. Chance x and chance y are both Schrödinger-waves and they will engage each other to form an interference pattern behind the two slots.
Quantum particles are indivisable but will interfere with themselves to form complex patterns when they encounter obstacles. When we repeat the experiment we will find the same results. Approximately the same number of particles hit in certain areas. Uncertainty appears to have its certainties after all. Or...doesn't it?
What if we shoot one hundred particles at a target and the first ninety nine of them 'choose' to fit the pattern. Then, if certainty existed, the hundredth particle would be forced to land in the only spot left by its predecessors. No way Jose. There's no way of telling where the hundredth particle will go. The last one's freedom will always infringe ultimate certainty.
The more particles we fire off the more accurate we can predict how the spread of particles will be. If we shoot off a million particles, we can quite accurately predict the percentage of hits per area. If we shoot of a hundred particles we can still predict how the spread will be but not very accurately. And if we shoot off one particle we can not make any sound prediction where it will end up. All we can talk about is the chance that our particle will end up in a certain area.
If 95% of one million particles ends up in a radius of 50 centimeter from the projected heart of the slot we can say that there is a 95% chance that particle number one-million-and-one will end up in the same area. But this says nothing about the actual destination of the particle.
Hold that thought (2b):
A large number of particles will display a pattern that is near equal to the initial possibilities of a single particle.
A quantum particle can not be coerced. If it chooses to do so it will end up there where only 1% of the particles ended up. It might even boldly go where no particle has gone before. Nothing is certain. Everything is possible.
Which brings us to another phenomenon: quantum tunneling, which allows a quantum to simply up and leave and show up somewhere else. In fact, there is a very real yet astronomically small chance that all particles that make up you and your computer suddenly decide to zip to Mars. The chance that this happens naturally is so small that we don't incorporate it in our daily experience of reality. But it is certainly not zero. Quantum tunneling is a very real thing, like say electricity.
Before electricity was comprehended and harnessed by man, all natural manifestation of it (lightning, static electricity, magnetism) must have seemed miraculous and magical, but nowadays we don't look up from a illuminating light bulb. Same with quantum tunneling. If the principle is understood and a pact is sealed with the world of the small, large objects such as a human being may be freely transported instantaneously over great distances. Like Philip in Acts 8:39, or the disciples in John 6:21. No magic. No super natural goings on. Just a utilization of one of nature's freely available principles.
Still, even sovereignty is limited. Freedom seems to be something that exists between borders. Freedom has its parameters after all.
Summary 2: The Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg.
Freedom is the most fundamental principle of the universe
The Uncertainty Principle: Speed and position of a quantum can not be simultaniously known
Quanta move along according to the chance that they do, and can interfere with themselves.
A large number of particles will display a pattern that is near equal to the initial possibilities of a single particle.
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Posted by 9jabook.com on December 20, 2009 at 9:30pm
* 38 others critically injured
Lokoja-IT was a gory sight yesterday in Dekina, in Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi State when a truck carrying fertilizer lost control and crashed into a market in the area, killing about 90 people.
Sunday Vanguard gathered that 38 other victims, mainly traders, were seriously injured and were, at press time, being treated at the intensive care unit of a private hospital in the area. The zonal commanding officer of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) in charge of Anpka Division, Abdul Adejo, who confirmed the auto crash, blamed it on brake failure.
Governor Ibrahim Idris, who was scheduled for an official assignment in Abuja at the time of the incident, cancelled the trip and immediately proceeded to the scene of accident. The governor, who battled to hold back tears, directed that the injured be immediately taken to the Federal Medical Centre, Lokoja, for proper treatment.
Idris, who described the incident as a “tragedy” that calls for a state mourning, promised to offset the medical bills of the injured persons. “This is a very terrible situation. I can’t understand why the blood of human beings will spill in this manner,” Idris said.
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Olu Maintain sang his way to the top of A-list acts in Nigeria when he released his celebratory track Yahoozee, but this season seems to be short of celebratory reasons for the crooner. News reaching BASELINE is that Mr. Olu has sold his Anthony Village three bed room flat that served as his residence.A copy of the transfer of ownership made available shows that Mr. Olu had secured a loan from a new generation bank to finance the purchase of the house with the agreement to service the loan periodically. After servicing the loan for a period of time, we gathered the singer couldn’t sustain payments for the house any longer, hence his decision to allow the bank to take over the sale of the house.As you read this, the house has been sold and Olu has been settled with the deposit he paid for the house. As for his new residence, we will surely keep you posted.We’ve Turned Up Our Game - X-ProjectThe trio of Majeed, Saal and Sleez that make up the boy band X-Project say they are not only ready to release a new album, they are also ready to take their game to the next level. The group’s album tagged “Turn it Up” was released under their founding label SKP and us a 14 track album that features a blend of old and young acts in the music industry.From the older generation and the street music scene is the ghetto king Daddy Show Key. The incredible one MI represents the new generation and Hip-hop acts on the album that has beats from the likes of OJB, Chris Okoro and the group’s in house producer Majeed.On why it took the band over two years to return with a single after the success of “Lori Le”, one of the band member had this to say: “We saw the way our fans accepted our last album and we did not want to let them down, that is why we decided to take as much as a year plus to work on this new album and by the grace of God and the support of our label, we have put down this 14 tracks that would prove to our critics and fans alike that we are not a one hit wonder act.”To show their desire to take the game to higher heights, the band is set to release 11 videos from their new album.Cabasa Hits Benue State for New TalentsPlay Me Entertainment has picked prolific music producer Id Cabasa along side yet to be disclosed other music personalities in the country to search Benue State for new music stars through “The Star in Me” talent show hunt.The show which is organized to search Benue State for new talents will berth in other northern states in the near future to help discover young talents from the Northern part of Nigeria. Benue State, according to Ladi Ogungbemi, is a state that has produced great musicians like Tu Face Idibia, Terry G, Black Face, Zaki Azee and Bongos Ikwe, hence “our decision to search the state in search of fresh talent because for every Tu Face you have today, we have about ten undiscovered ones in Benue State.“That is why we want to give them the opportunity. I will like to say a big thank you to our state governor, Gabriel Suswam who has shown great support for the empowerment of young people,” he concluded.Play Me Entertainment is an entertainment outfit that provides content for radio and television in Nigeria.New Kids on the BlockAlthough she might be married with two lovely daughters and once worked for a new generation bank before resigning, Anne Emmanuel Ibrahim who performs under the stage name Anny says “I am ready to fulfill my dreams.” The beautiful mother of two who loves making friends and meeting people, is set to release her second video “You Are too Much” to compliment her first video “Alleluyah” that featured the soulful South-south Keffi.Aside from shooting a new video the gifted singer says she is set to go on a nation wide tour to promote her new project even as she offered a word of advice for other female singers: “No matter what you do as a young lady in show biz, always remember your self worth because your pride as a woman can not be bought with silver and gold.|Anny’s new video is directed by Bobby Hai of Sauti Cinemas.Read more…
It’s that time of year! During this Christmas season, I heard several sermons on the birth of Jesus. Now, in our Western culture that is rapidly losing its once-Christian worldview, Christians and Christian leaders need to use this time, more than ever, to challenge non-Christians. But will they give the vital message people need to hear at this time of history?
I was thrilled to be able to bring a friend who has struggled with the Christian faith for his entire life to church this Christmas season. Just before we arrived, he asked me a question that has been troubling him.
I was fascinated to note that he didn’t ask about Jesus and the manger, or about the shepherds or the angels who proclaimed the birth of Jesus on earth—instead, he asked, ‘Why do many Christians use organ transplants to prolong their life or try to prolong the lives of their children when they’re born with problems when God has deemed it was their time to die?’ He continued, ‘Why wouldn’t a Christian accept their death that comes from God? Shouldn’t they just accept it if they are true Christians and want to go to heaven instead of trying to survive on this earth?’
Now, why would he ask questions like that? The answer is that increasingly, the culture is losing the true meaning of Christmas because the education system and the media continues to indoctrinate people to reject the Bible as absolute truth. Instead, the Christian faith and the Bible is attacked and ridiculed and condemned as a ‘book of stories’ because so-called science has supposedly proved it cannot be true—particularly in its history in Genesis.
I’m sure my friend wasn’t expecting an answer. After all, such questions as the ones he asked have been leveled at Christians for years. (Sadly, many Christians don’t know how to answer such questions, because they, like him, have not believed the true history of the world from Genesis—which explains the origin and meaning of death.)
Now, I was sure the sermon we were about to hear would be from a pastor who assumed people believed the Bible. I thought he would remind them of the babe in a manger and why He came to earth. I realized that my friend needed answers, so he would know that he could trust the Bible before he even heard the sermon. I was pleased he had asked me what was on his heart and what was obviously stopping him from considering the Christian faith.
My friend had viewed death, suffering and dying as something God must be responsible for. He did not understand that death was an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), an intrusion due to sin. Death wasn’t something that God made and declared ‘very good’ in Genesis 1:31, but a result of sin. I explained that God created a perfect world, and because the first man Adam sinned, death entered the world as the punishment for sin. I had to explain that the earth was not millions of years old as he had been indoctrinated to believe, and thus there was not death, disease and bloodshed for millions of years before man’s existence.
I continued: When man sinned, God as a righteous and Holy creator had to judge sin with death. He also withdrew some of His sustaining power to cause man to experience a taste of what happens without God. Thus God is permitting things like disease, suffering etc., to happen, but He isn’t the one to blame for this—man is. Then it was like a light bulb came on in my friend’s head. With this new view of God, the Bible started to make sense to him.
Sadly, there are many people within the church who accept the supposed millions of years, instead of the truth as given in Genesis. Because of this, they don’t have valid answers for people like my friend, but instead would ignore his questions and instead relate the story of the babe in the manger in the hope my friend would start believing this. [See The god of an old earth.]
Many people struggle with accepting the truth of Jesus and the Bible because they have the wrong view of history. They, like my friend, have been indoctrinated to reject the Bible as a true account of history and the meaning of life. This is a major stumbling block for so many people believing God’s Word and being saved.
Knowing that many non-Christians view God like this and also knowing that they only set foot in church about once a year, I’m praying that Christian leaders will take advantage of this opportunity and address these issues, that are relevant issues for where the culture is at today, while speaking during this Christmas time. This could make such a difference in the lives of many who have a faulty view of God, and thus challenge them concerning the truths of the Bible.
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Posted by 9jabook.com on December 17, 2009 at 8:29pm
Supreme Court says Soludo is Anambra PDP candidate
The camp of the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Chukwuma Soludo, erupted in excitement this afternoon after the Supreme Court vacated the order barring Mr. Soludo from parading himself as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate for the February 6, 2010 governorship election in Anambra State.
The victory comes a day after the Federal Court of Appeal, sitting in Abuja, Wednesday, refused to lift its interim order that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should not recognise Mr. Soludo as the PDP candidate.
Mr. Soludo was taken to court by some members of the party after the controversial decision of the National Executive Council of the party to choose the former CBN governor without any recourse to a primary election. A lower court in Abuja backs Mr. Soludo’s choice.
Although, the Appeal Court is yet to rule on the substantive suit on his candidature, the Supreme Court’s decision means Mr. Soludo will fly the flag of the party in the February elections against other confirmed candidates such as the state governor, Peter Obi; former governor, Chris Ngige and Andy Uba.
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Posted by 9jabook.com on December 17, 2009 at 8:15pm
ONE HUNDred and Seventy ! ! Not One touch am !
The Federal High Court in Asaba today discharged and acquitted the former governor of Delta State, James Ohanefe Ibori, of the 170-count charge of corruption filed against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
The presiding judge, Marcel Awokulehin, had adjourned the judgment three times in the past before today’s ruling.
The trial of some associates of Mr. Ibori at the Southwark Crown Court in London was put on hold to allow judgment to be delivered in the case before the Asaba High court.
The London trial involves Udoamaka Onuigbo Okoronkwo, Adebimpe Foleyinmi Pogoson and Christine Ibori-Ibie, who are charged with conspiracy to defraud Delta State, as well as related money-laundering charges regarding Mr. Ibori’s alleged theft of $140 million belonging to the state.
ONE HUNDred and Seventy ! ! Not One touch am !
Online Comments from some News WebsitesIKECHUKWU OKWUOSA
"THIS IS ANOTHER FAILURE IN THE NIGERIAN JUSTICE SYSTEM, IT IS NOT A SUPRISE TO KNOW THAT IBORI IS DISCHARGED OFF ALL COUNT CHARGES, IBORI WHO LOOTED ALL WE HAD IN DELTA STATE, AND WHO WAS CONVICTED AS A CRIMINAL BEFORE HE BECAME GOVERNOR IS TODAY LET GO OF ALL THOSE MONEY LAUNDRY CHARGES, IN SOUTHWARK CROWN COURT, WE BARELY HAVE SPACE IN COURT AS NIGERIANS TO WITHNESS THE CASE OF IBORI ASSOCIATES, BUT INSTEAD LITTLE INDIAN AND PAKISTANI BOYS ARE PAID £100 EACH TO OCCUPY THE SEATS IN THE COURT ROOM. IF ASABA HIGH COURT CAN PUT UP THIS JUDGEMENT, WHAT ABOUT THE EVIDENCES HELD IN LONDON, THIS IS WHY THERE WILL NEVER BE RESPECT FOR OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM, AND THE COUNTRY NIGERIA WILL NEVER SEE RESPECT ANY WHERE IN THE WORLD, THIS CASE WAS CLOSELY WATCHED ALL OVER THE GLOBE, AND THE ADJOURNEMENT IN LONDON IS JUST TO TEST OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM, IT IS A SHAME, EVEN THE DEAF AND DUMB KNOWS IBORI STOLE OUR MONEY, AND THIS HAS TESTED YARADUA'S GOVERNMENT, THEY ARE JUST DECEIVING NIGERIANS, AND AS FAR AS THERE IS STILL IN-SINCERITY IN GOVERNANCE, WE ARE GOING NO WHERE, THAT CASE WAS DECIDED IN ASO ROCK, HENCE IBORI WAS SET FREE."
Posted by Eleniyan omo london on Dec 18 2009
Na padi padi gofument be this o egbami o , na arrangee gofument be this o yeparipa o. This is infact a sad day for nigeria , with this govt we have embarked on a journey of no return where the forces of evil have triumph over good,we all know the start of the journey but no one knows the end. Marcel Awokulehin , James Ibori and Co looters know that we bring nothing to this world and and we will leave with nothing one day all men will be answerable to the almighty where the ultimate judgement lies. Marcel Awokulehin remember what happen to late Justice Bassey Ikpeme of the june 12 midnight ruling! Marcel Awokulehin the man has finally died in you and you have murdered sleep. My people wait and see a bloody revolution is brewing up where all the blood of all saboteurs,vultures and all their collaborators shall be shed to cleanse the land , we are getting there.
Posted by bio on Dec 18 2009
The ruling should not amaze anyone who understands this country called Nigeria run by criminals and a cabal that should have all its members rounded up and jailed for life, if shooting them dead is too callous an option. Remember this barawo called Ibori is still wanted in the UK? So can i hear anyone say Ibori 2011?
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Posted by Jane Okinedo on December 17, 2009 at 1:40am
As Twitter began to fail on a regular basis, many of its users turned to other micro-blogging services to continue on with their 140-character lifestyle. Some returned to Jaiku or Pownce, others starting plurking, and just recently, an open source Twitter clone launched called identi.ca which has people "denting" (Yes, really - it won the vote). And then there are the true social media addicts who joined each one of these services as they launched. For these folks, maintaining a presence in all the communities can be difficult, which is why finding a universal status updating service can help.To update your social status on multiple services, there are several different options to choose from. We've listed some of the most popular ones below:HelloTxtHelloTxt was one of the first status updating services to arrive and still has the biggest list of supported services - currently 21 - to choose from. This list is the largest thanks to HelloTxt's support of several Twitter clone services that were either built for or that have attracted a non-English speaking userbase like the popular Italian service Meemi, the German and French Frazr, and the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French beemood.HelloTxt is also available on the go on your mobile at m.hellotxt.com, via email, and via SMS. There's a facebook application, too.Supported Services: Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook, MySpace, Brightkite, Bebo, LinkedIn, Hi5, Plaxo, Tumblr, Meemi, Beemood, Plurk, Gozub, Frazr, Numpa, Mexicodiario, Feecle, Fanfou, Identica.Ping.fmPing.fm is a newcomer, still in private beta (get in with the invite code "pingyoulater"), and is fast becoming a popular competitor to HelloTxt. It doesn't have any of the smaller, foreign language services, but it still has a long list of services available - 17 in total at the moment - including a couple that HelloTxt misses like Xanga and Blogger.In addition to the Ping.fm Facebook app, Ping.fm integrates with IM services like AOL, Google Talk, and Yahoo! Messenger. There's also an iGoogle Gadget, a mobile web page, and an iPhone web app available. Profilactic uses Ping.fm's API to power their status updating service.Supported services: Bebo, Blogger, Brightkite, Facebook, hi5, Identi.ca, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, Xanga.SendibleSendible is the latest addition to the list of social media message-sending apps, this one more focused on the ability to schedule your messages than to do mass updates. Although the service supports several different services with more on the way, they have not yet provided an easy way to update all the services at once. However, the fact that messages can be scheduled is Sendible's unique feature, which is why it will have some draw - at least until another competitor comes along offering this and universal updates, too.Supported services: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, SMS, and email. They will also soon be supporting Friendster, Hi5, Orkut and Xing.Read our review of Sendible here.SocialThing!Somewhat mistakenly hailed as a competitor to FriendFeed, SocialThing's goal is really to be more of a "digital life manager" instead. Yes, it does stream your social media a la FriendFeed, but it also allows you to interact with that stream by sending data back to the supported services. In addition, you can use SocialThing! to update your status at any time by clicking on the "Post" link found on the top-right of the homepage.Supported services: del.icio.us, Digg, Last.fm, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, flickr, Pownce. In progress are LiveJournal, MySpace, and RSS. Users can also vote on what services will be added next.Read our interview with SocialThing! founder, Matt Galligan here and a review of SocialThing! here.MingglMinggl is a social interaction manager that comes in the form of a browser toolbar for Firefox 1.5+ and IE6+. With this toolbar, you can auto-login to your social networks at once and stay updated with the latest info about your friends' activity on the various services. Via its "Status Blaster" feature, you can also easily update all the multiple social networks Minggl supports at the same time.Supported services: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, DiggApps!There are several apps out there that allow you to interact with the various social services you use without logging into the services' web sites. However, the problem is that most of these apps focus on just one or two services, usually FriendFeed and Twitter. If that's all you need, then there are tons of apps to choose from including Twhirl, Alert Thingy, bTT, feedalizr, and mySocial AIR. (Plurkers can use Plurkair or Plurk It.)Mac OS users have it even better, though - they have access to a downloadable app, MoodBlast, which updates Twitter, Tumblr, Pownce, Jaiku, Facebook, Skype, Adium, and iChat.However, what we're really in need of is a cross-platform app that does the same. For example, Ping.fm or HelloTxt on AIR would rock. Someone build that please?Read a review of Twhirl and Alert Thingy here.http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/six_ways_to_update_your_status.phpRead more…
Posted by SULE BELLO on December 17, 2009 at 1:35am
Controversy over missing corpse at UCH17.12.2009There was a drama at the University College hospital (UCH), Ibadan Oyo State, over a missing corpse of a woman that her relations came to collect from the hospital’s morgue.The drama, which occurred late Wednesday afternoon, arose when a family came to claim a corpse and the corpse handed over to the members of the woman’s family was not the one they had initially deposited at the morgue.It was gathhered that the corpse, brought by the family, was a female who had undergone a caesarian operation, before her death, but had been taken away by another family in November for burial.Rather than collect the corpse of another woman the family members insisted that the hospital should produce their own corpse for proper burial.According to the eyewitness, the mix-up arose because the names of the two dead women were similar and the fact that the identity of the collected corpse was not ascertained before it was buried by her family.By Sade Oguntola
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Posted by Jane Okinedo on December 16, 2009 at 10:03pm
A 35-year-old housewife who mindlessly hawks human parts in Port Harcourt has been arrested. The suspect simply identified as Modina, an indigene of Agbolo Town in Ibadan North Local Government Area of Oyo State but resident in Port Harcourt, was picked up from her shop at the Mile 3 Market in Diobu area of the Rivers State Capital.Police detectives acting on a trip-off had approached her, feigning to be prospective buyers of her weird goods.Unknown to her that she was hosting the wrong guests, the suspect was said to have haggled with her ‘customers’ who had approached her for a human skull for quite some time before she finally fixed the ‘last price’ at N45,000.It was in the process of producing the skull that the housewife- from- hell was arrested.It was gathered that several human parts and the parts of some special animals and birds were later recovered from her home during a search conducted by the police.The suspect who had her primary and secondary education in Port Harcourt allegedly later confessed that she had been on the filthy trade for more than 11 years. She was alleged to have told her interrogators that a penis goes for N60,000 while a female breast attracts N30,000.Similarly, a human tongue and hand cost N40,000 and N25,000 respectively at Modina’s shop.The suspect who said she arrived in Port Harcourt in 1985, was said to have made useful statement to the police on how she gets her supply of human parts.When contacted, Police spokesperson in the state, Mrs Rita Inoma-Abbey (DSP) confirmed the arrest and told Daily Sun that investigation was still in progress.
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Posted by 9jabook.com on December 16, 2009 at 1:59am
JTF closes 600 illegal ‘refineries’ in N’Delta
By Olamilekan Lartey, Yenagoa and Obinna Ezeobi, Abuja, Published: Wednesday, 16 Dec 2009
The Joint Task Force in the Niger Delta raised the alarm on Tuesday that illegal refineries might soon spread to areas outside the oil rich region.
The JTF Commander, Maj.-Gen. Sarkin Bello, gave the warning after his men destroyed over 600 illegal refineries in different parts of the Niger Delta.
Bello said that intelligence and overfly reports had indicated that there were over 1,000 illegal refineries in different parts of the Niger Delta.
The JTF boss said the rising wave of illegal refineries was of great concern because of the economic and environmental impact on the nation.
He said, “It is a new menace with grave dimensions. Since people now know what people do with crude oil, it may move to other parts of the country where there are oil installations, don‘t be surprised.”
Bello said before now, kidnapping was restricted to the Niger Delta, but that it had spread to every part of the country.
According to him, ”Illegal oil refining is like any other crime, it mutates as the criminals try to find other means of livelihood.”
He stressed that aerial photographs had shown vast areas of devastation as a result of the activities of the illegal bunkerers and refinery operators.
”I can‘t see how such areas can be useful in the near future with the level of degradation,” he said.
Bello added that operating illegal refineries was an economic crime that involved people from all levels in society and not necessarily ex-militants.
The JTF commander, however, urged those engaged in illegal refineries ”to re-channel their talents to legitimate endeavours that will benefit not only themselves, but their communities and the nation at large.”
He said the JTF’s Operation Restore Hope would continue to destroy illegal refineries and arrest their operators anywhere they were found in the country.
Our correspondent learnt that between October and December 2009, the JTF identified and destroyed 600 illegal refineries.
Meanwhile, petrol stations across the country must henceforth fill the tanks and disregard the order to sell a maximum of N2,000 worth of fuel to private cars and N1,000 to commercial bus drivers, the Minister of State for Petroleum, Mr. Odein Ajumogobia, ordered on Tuesday.
The shortage of petroleum products in some parts of the country had been compounded by the directive by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to ration the quantity of petrol to be sold to motorists, a situation which forces car owners to return to refill frequently.
Speaking after taking a tour of several filling stations across the Abuja metropolis, Ajumogobia regretted the persisting queues in filling stations despite claims by the NNPC that there was adequate petrol in the country.
Ajumogobia said, “I came to personally assess what is going on. All the people around me tell me that there is enough fuel and yet I see queues. I am going to investigate who gave the authorisation for the rationing. When you ration it means there is not enough supply.”
He stressed that rationing of petrol did not make sense, wondering why an individual should wait for hours and then be subjected to buying only N1,000.
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The head of Nigeria's anti-corruption agency, Farida Waziri , recently voiced her frustration with the slow progress her agency is making in its quest to reduce fraud and corruption in the country. Waziri opined that Chinese-style capital punishment for corruption convicts,
"is the only thing that will save the country, truly. Because corruption is much and the people are not concerned. If someone steals public funds, they will honour him without condemning the person. With this, our country will continue to be backward."[sic]
The real question is, would the death penalty be an apt deterrent to those considering ro already participating in corruption?
Nigerians are known to be very happy people who love life. There is even a common joke that Nigerians like life too much to die or do anything to quicken death's door. However, that mentality has not stopped Nigerians from committing crimes that have the death penalty as the final repercussion. Consequently, there is little reason to believe that the death penaly will be a true deterrent to those who practice corruption.
The same Waziri who would want the death penalty for the corrupt, once argued that the legal system delayed the ability of her agency to bring more individuals to justice. So, would it be this same legal system that Waziri believes will issue death penalties for the many individuals her organization is yet to charge or even take to court? Particularly the big fish who wantonly steal from the people to finance their expensive lifestyles. The very issues Waziri allegedly faces in trying the corrupt, particularly those with the money to hire very efficient counsel, will be present whether or not the death penalty is the punishment of choice for corruption convictions. As such, the death penalty will not deter the powerful, many of whom reportedly hire young touts to carry out online scams, from engaging in fraudulent activties.
Unfortunately, the only thing a death penalty for corruption convictions will do is skew the number of poorer people who are arrested and judged as corrupt, thus increasing conviction rates, executions and statistics for Waziri to claim success. As is typically the case, the disadvantaged usually suffer the negatively overwhelming effects of such punishment schemes.
While it is understandable why Waziri or others might consider the Chinese execution-for-corruption style as enviable, it must not be forgotten that China's legal system, while swift does not provide much room for accused to actually get a fair day in court. The Chinese system is known to favor the objectives of the Communist party which uses individuals as examples to retain an image of control and stability not just for citizens but for foreign observers. If Nigeria is to be a democracy, it cannot aspire for Chinese-justice, no matter how delectable it might initially appear.
The EFCC would do better to work harder, and get more funding so as to hire better lawyers with more resources so as to successfully tackle the corrupt in court. Doing that will improve the agency's reputation and possibly create more goodwill and trust of its actions and intentions. Most importantly, whether or not the death penalty ever becomes the punishment for those convicted of corruption, the hard work needed to reduce corrupt practices in the country will still need to be done. No amount of executions will ever reduce that burden.
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Posted by Jane Okinedo on December 15, 2009 at 5:25am
It's amazing what a difference $60 million U.S. can make, but is that sum enough to keep Tiger Woods and his wife, Elin Nordegren, together for another two years?Following the last week of crazy-go-nuts reports about the golfer's infidelities, Woods and Nordegren have revisited their pre-nup agreement, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. And the changes they've allegedly made would give Nordegren the right to walk away from the marriage with nearly $60 million — so long as she sticks with Woods for two more years.When the couple married in 2004, their pre-nup stated that Nordegren would be entitled to $20 million U.S. if they split after 10 years of marriage. According to the Sun-Times, that original pre-nup has since been rewritten so that Nordegren would take an extra $55 million if their marriage weathers a full decade.Plus, the Daily Beast reports that Woods — whose fortune is estimated at close to $1 billion U.S. — transferred $5 million U.S. to his wife's personal account around the same time the pre-nup was revised.The couple has been bunkered down inside their home, undergoing sessions with a marriage counsellor "several times daily," the Sun-Times reports, and various sources speculate that the revised pre-nup is a bid to preserve what remains of the Woods family's home life. (Good luck with that. The paps have already put $250,000 on the heads of Nordegren and the couple's two young kids, the Daily Beast reports.)As for the alleged shenanigans that have led to more bad "hole-in-one" jokes than you've heard outside of senior's day at the country club, there's plenty of headlines being generated about Woods' purported mistresses. (But then, when half of Las Vegas' service industry has come forward with affair allegations, that's to be expected.)First up, Woods is rumoured to have offered Jaimee Grubbs — the one who confessed to an affair earlier this week — a job and a condo, RadarOnline reports. "From what she told me, he said she could stay there for free and sort of manage the property," one of Grubbs' former co-workers told the website. (He promised her a sweet future of groundskeeping and harassing tenants? What woman could say no?) The snitch also says Grubbs also used to wear a red shirt to work when Woods was playing a tournament because it was "something special that they shared" — much like their bodily fluids, allegedly.Another alleged mistress, Las Vegas nightclub manager Kalika Moquin, is denying affair rumours to Us Weekly. "It's completely untrue that there's anything more than a professional 'How are you doing? Are you enjoying your time in Vegas conversation (with Tiger)," she explained to the mag. However, one of Us Weekly's sources says, "She was absolutely sleeping with him. She brags about it!" — perhaps noting that you don't need to have a conversation to have a good time in Vegas.As for Rachel Uchitel, the alleged mistress whom we've been hearing about since Woods yanked U.S. smuthounds away from their Thanksgiving dinners, she cancelled a news conference scheduled to take place earlier Thursday, TMZ reports. Uchitel — who previously denied the affair — now tells TMZ she was lying about the denial (confusing!). And, according to various outlet, it was her texts to Woods — not Grubbs' — that led to the argument between Woods and Nordegren, which preceded him smashing up his SUV.
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Posted by 9jabook.com on December 14, 2009 at 8:07pm
Okechukwu Agbanama, 27, might forever regret meeting Judith Chukwu, a lady he dated for merely two weeks.
Mr. Agbanama is an interior decorator who is being detained at the homicide section of the state criminal investigation department for allegedly killing his friend, Udoka Ibemesi, over a tussle for the affections of the young woman.
"Barely two weeks into our relationship, Judith had brought bad luck to me," Mr. Agbanama told NEXT.
How it happened
At about midnight in Tuesday, December 8th at 16, Orison Street, Ilemba Ajagbadi the deceased allegedly stormed the residence of Mr. Agbanama protesting that the suspect was dating his girlfriend, Judith Chukwu.
"I was in my house on that fateful Tuesday night after a hard day's job when I heard a very loud sound on my door. I jumped up suspecting that thieves had visited me, but I was surprised when I saw my friend Udoka standing in front of my door with a beer bottle," Mr. Agbanama said.
"I cannot say what he used, but he broke my door and entered my house forcefully. Even the neighbours heard the noise and came out I shouted and demanded to know what he was doing there. He replied that he was going to kill me that I am dating his girl friend Judith. Judith was with me that night and he ordered her to go out, that he will deal with her for dating me after he is done with killing me. I was confused and I said ‘we can settle this', but Udoka was very furious."
Mr. Agbanama said it was the deceased that introduced him to Judith and even encouraged him to go on and date her. "Udoka was my friend and we lived in the same compound," he said. "He was the one that introduced me to Judith as his in -law. He said that she is a good girl and I should date her, but I am surprised that he was the same person coming to fight over Judith. I do not know if he dated her and Judith said they never dated that Udoka was like his brother."
‘I did not mean to kill him'
During the interview, Mr. Agbanama displayed deep cuts all over his body and it was apparent that walking was a difficulty. He attributed the wounds to the fight he had with the deceased.
"Udoka was ready to kill me, before I could say anything, he broke the bottle and used it to stab me in the eye, and he rushed me and started stabbing me with the broken bottle. When other neighbours saw how he was stabbing me, they ran away. He was on top of me stabbing me all over my body.
"When I saw that he meant to kill me and there was nobody to rescue me from him, I started looking for something to defend myself; a knife was close by and I grabbed it but as he wrestled to collect it from me, the knife then pierced him in the neck and blood started gushing out.
"When I saw the blood, I quickly removed my vest and tied it round his neck to stop the bleeding; I shouted to my neighbours to help me take him to the hospital but nobody came to my rescue. Udoka was a big and tall man and I could not carry him, but I made efforts to save his life but he died shortly after. I feel bad about his death but I do not mean to kill him."
The Lagos state police spokesperson, Frank Mba, said the police will soon conclude their investigation into the case.
"This case is under investigation at the state criminal investigation department at Panti Yaba," he said. "The policemen visited the scene of the incident immediately it happened and the corpse has been removed to a public mortuary for autopsy."
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Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think.
One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the "many-worlds" interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the 'multiverse').
A new scientific theory - called biocentrism - refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling - the 'Who am I?'- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?
Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time.
Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it's still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection.
According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air - if you take everything away, what's left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can't see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.
Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, "Now Besso" (an old friend) "has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us...know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.
This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine's husband - Ed - started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time.
Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldn't make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldn't make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christine's life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away.
Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow.
"Ed," she said "I can't feel my leg."
She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum.
After the death of his son, Emerson wrote "Our life is not so much threatened as our perception.
Whether it's flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, it's the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sister's dream house.
Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It's going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.
Robert Lanza, MD is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is the author of "Biocentrism," a book that lays out his theory of everything.
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