I'm sorry, but I can't die for anything or anyone. I have only one life to live, and I don't believe in any afterlife.

Does this mean that if I were to hold a pistol to your head I could make you do anything I wanted?

You know the problem with your analysis?

Everything depends on Rwanda - in short, there is not a lot that Nigeria can do itself to save itself from disaster (except to beat Zimbabwe).

Having said that, I would sleep very well tonight if Nigeria crashed out. If this is what it takes for Nigeria to completely reform the organisation of football, then so be it.

Smartsoft,

It's a good idea... just two issues:

1. As Kazey has mentioned, it's not a good idea to tie yourself down running up and down and taking calls because someone has seen a car they want to buy on your site. What would be better is if your site offers partial information, with the rest to be revealed on payment of money. The problem is that there are no established e-commerce solutions to make this easy, so perhaps the only solution is for them to pay money into your account, for them to give you their phone number and for you to text them a pin that they can use access the rest of the info. Then they can do their own legwork.

2. The second issue is that you are going to need to achieve a critical mass of car dealerships on your site before (a) car dealers take you seriously enough to want to list their dealerships on your site and (b) prospective car owners take you seriously enough to want to search your site and pay money for the info. As an example, look at how seriously computer shoppers and sellers take the Guardian on Wednesday.

You can do this by doing a lot of legwork and going from dealer to dealer to get all the information and list it on your website for free, and then letting everyone know that they can access the site or free (for a limited period). Once the word spreads that your site is the place to go to for cars, then you will be in a position to charge money for access. But it will take a while to get to that position, though...

I don't get it.

I really don't get it.

Why is it that of all the many, many important and life changing issues and topics there are to discuss and debate in this world, romance and relationships always come out on top?

I mean, look at songs - I'm sure that over 95% of songs out there are about romance/relationships. I've never heard a song about Budget 2005 (which definitely affects our well being) or about soccer (which I'm sure you will agree is very popular in Nigeria).

And it's not like there that many different things you can talk about concerning romance. There are generally only six main kinds of sub-topics:

- Boy/girl is attracted to girl/boy within a first few meetings, but girl/boy is not sure/interested/not interested.

- Boy/girl is deeply in love with girl/boy, but girl/boy is NOT interested.

- Boy/girl is deeply in love with girl/boy, and the feeling is mutual. (This is the most popular of the sub-topics.)

- Boy/girl is getting tired of the relationship with girl/boy, and the feeling is/isn't mutual.

- Boy/girl has split up with girl/boy and it was an amicable/acrimonious split.

- Boy/girl can't get over losing girl/boy.


So all you romantics and relationship aficionados come and explain why you worship at the altar of romance, because I truly, honestly, seriously...

[size=14pt]...DON'T GET IT!!![/size]

Good day, and peace be to you all in the Sacred Name of the Coconut.

It seems that the general consensus is that the Temple should definitely reward its members with privileged positions and general benefits. Even though I, as the Founder, would prefer to focus on the spiritual than the material, I have already mentioned that this is a 21st century church with 21st century values, including the principle of participation.

Therefore, I have decided to declare a benefits bonanza and a title 'throway'. With effect from this moment, the following members are hereby ordained as follows:

Seun - in addition to your title of Royal Prophet, you shall also been known as Supreme Evangelist. You shall be in charge of creating love in the Temple.

Whiteshark - not only will you be known as Most Holy Evangelist, but I now confer on you the title of Apostle-General. You will be charged with spreading peace in the Temple.

Scorpio - I hereby confer on you the titles of High Priestess and Commanding Archbishop. Increasing the amount of joy in the Temple shall be your work.

WesleyanA - You shall be known as Leader of the Faithful, and as the name implies, increasing faith in the Temple shall be your role.

Enigma - Your title will be Pastoral Apostle. I am putting you in charge of raising the level of patience.

Vexxy - You will known as Absolute Overseer-at-Large. I expect you to promote gentleness in the Temple.

Hot-Angel, your request is a suitable one! You shall indeed be known as Superlative Sister-Universal, and you shall be in charge of spreading the message of the Temple to places as far away in the universe as Pluto, Sirius and the Outer Milky Way.

As for me, I shall be content to shoulder the heavy burden of the responsibility of dealing with all matters relating to finance, money and investment.

If you have not been included in this list, then it is because I have determined that by your utterances, you have not shown sufficient enthusiasm to be considered a worthy member of this most Select Group. I urge you to change your attitude and join the Rising Star in the Firmament of Spirituality!



Now to the suggestions made by Seun...

- There will be no sickness, no death, no sorrow, no pain - but lots of coconuts to eat!

I approve of this. In fact, even here on earth, as a member of the Temple, there is no sickness or pain anymore! If you feel something that you think is pain, then I assure you that you are wrong!

Open marriage and swinging will be allowed in Coconut heaven, but heartbreak will be impossible!

In fact, in Cocosia (where people go to when they die), every person will have their own personal heaven where they will be surrounded by people who share their beliefs. So everyone will be happy!

Every wish of every Sacred Coconut Believer will be granted, continouosly, for ever and ever!!

The caveat is that a wish cannot cross the boundaries of a person's personal heaven.

- Unbelievers will cease to exist after death, because the Sacred Coconut is very merciful - no hell!

Not quite. From time to time, anyone who has grievously wrong a member of the Temple shall be woken from his sleep of death, given six strokes of the cane, and then sent back to death again.

- Each convert will be able to summon all unbelieving family-members to join him/her at Coconut Heaven!

Obviously, if they do not wish to join, then they will be liable to suffer the fate of unbelievers (see above).


My fellow members, that is the Word for Today. I journey now to seek a higher mountain than I have hitherto prayed on, because I see that the work ahead of me is even more arduous than I thought. I will leave you all in the tender care of the Royal Prophet (Supreme Evangelist), the Most Holy Evangelist (Apostle-General) and the High Priestess (Commanding Archbishop). But remember - this is a DEMOCRATIC TEMPLE. If you feel they are not performing their roles properly, you may vote them out and replace them with more suitable persons.


May the Fortune and Fellowship of the Frond and the Knowledge of the Kernel be with you all.

((Very Reverend) (Ordained Elder (Evangelist)) (High Prophet ) (Commanding Cardinal (Sanctified Priest))) Ka.

I don't quite understand their pricing structure. I would have thought that the price per kbps would drop for a faster connection. What's the incentive to order the 600kbps connection over the 300kbps if you have to pay more than double the price? Anyway, na dem sabi...

Good day, and may the Blessings of the Coconut be upon you all.

First of all, I am deeply, deeply outraged, shocked and saddened that my most noble endeavour is being interpreted as something as sordid as... as... (excuse me while I compose myself...) as a cash-making scheme! Imagine!!

It just goes to show how much work needs to be done to raise the level of spirituality in Nigeria if a man cannot found his Temple without it being viewed as a 'business' or 'investment' and without people jockeying for the positions of 'treasurer', 'financial consultant' or 'investment manager'. Fortunately, the Temple of the Sacred Coconut is more than prepared for this arduous task that lies ahead.

But first of all, I must make it unequivocally clear that no person is authorised on my behalf to solicit for donations or investment of any kind. In addition, at the time of writing, there has not been any official appointment of any kind, so beware of charlatans and fraudsters who may try to cash in on the Temple's rapidly growing popularity. All persons claiming to represent the Temple are hereby order to desist or face the full brunt of supernatural forces that I can summon at a moment's notice.

I will respond in due course to those who have responded to my call to participate in the World's First Democratic Temple. To reward them for their prompt contributions, I shall be awarding them titles. In fact, it will a cornerstone of the Temple's policy to dash titles out left, right and centre so that our members feel valued and recognised. So Royal Prophet Seun and Most Holy Evangelist Whiteshark, await my reply.


Yours in Sanctity,

(Cardinal (Reverend) ((Deacon) Apostle)) Ka

The One and Only Founder, the Temple of the Sacred Coconut

Dear all,

I have looked long and hard at the current faiths and religions in the marketplace, and while I believe that they by and large do a reasonable job of satisfying the spiritual needs and aspirations of their followers, I do not feel that they quite in keeping with the needs of a 21st century world.

Specifically, they are not democratic enough - they do not encourage user-participation and leadership accountability.

Well I have decided that this should change. So I hereby announce the formation of the Temple of the Sacred Coconut by myself, (Reverend (Evangelist) ((Prophet) Pastor) (Apostle (Dr.))(I'm not sure if there's still an unclosed bracket out there somewhere)) Ka.

The one thing I have decided on so far is that the symbol for this new faith shall be the Coconut, as it symbolises accessibility and utility.

However, in the spirit of democracy, I have decided to encourage user participation in the drawing up of the tenets of this new faith. So I would like to know what ideals you would like the Temple to exhort people to abide by.

Remember that by participating and joining in, you are joining the fastest growing religion in the world today - over the last second, our membership has grown from 0 to 1 person (i.e. myself). If we can grow by 1 person per second, imagine the potential for growth!

Looking forward to your responses,

Yours sincerely,

((Elder) (Priest ((High Prophet)) Evangelist) (Cardinal (Most Reverend))) Ka.

Can you provide more details about what exactly you've done to try to connect?

Inyang,

Subsidising something is not simply be a matter of selling something at less than the price that it cost you to produce... it's also selling it at less for what you could have got elsewhere. Let's first remember that the meaning of the word 'subsidy' is 'financial assistance given by one person or government to another'.

So let's say I buy a tuber of yam at N100. I have the option of selling it for N150 at the market. However, someone comes along and begs me to sell it to him at N120. I may be making money, but really I'm losing N30 that I could have gained by selling it elsewhere. So in effect, I'm giving this person a subsidy of N30 (because he could easily take the tuber of yam he has bought at N120 and sell it at N150, thus making N30).

I've met a few ex Mormons and I've been slyly handed their "Awake!" magazine.

Awake magazine? You're sure you're not confusing them with Jehovah's Witnesses?

So marrying one's kin is legal in China? I never knew!

No, it's not (and has never been) legal. I don't know how goodguy got hold of this information.

....then u'll land in hell

Go to hell for saving the lives of millions of people? Not even the most inept human judge would pass such a sentence.

Die in my sleep? How dull! How utterly, utterly boring!

No, if I could choose how I could die, I'd like to die like a hero flying a plane in a suicide mission to destroy an intercontinental ballistic missile that has been sent to destroy Lagos by one of Nigeria's enemies.

Why do people have to go to mountians (ori oke) to pray.

There's nothing silly about this.

As the Founder, Prophet and Pastor of the Temple of the Sacred Coconut, I personally seek out the highest mountains available to do my praying, and I encourage my followers to do the same. The benefits include:

- On mountain tops, you are removed from distractions that could disturb your communion with the Creator. This allows you to focus as much attention as possible on your prayer.

- Typically, mountain tops are untouched by things like buildings, electricity, etc. So people who there to pray can appropriately reflect on the pure and untarnished handiwork of the Creator, and this inspires them to a higher level of praise.

- Praying from a mountain top means that you are closer to Heaven, and so your prayer will be better heard by the Creator. In addition, there won't be any noise from traffic, hi-fi stereos, etc. to drown out your prayer, so the Creator will hear it even better.

So if you wish to pray in the future, I urge you to ascend your local mountain first. If you cannot find a mountain, then climb a hill. If you cannot find a hill, then hire some unemployed young men to create a pile of sand so that you can pray on that!

Yours sincerely,

Prophet (Evangelist ((Dr.) Pastor) (Most Reverend) ) Ka

I'm surprised at the lot of you. Richest person on earth, and all you can think of is buying this car or that house. You know, you could use your money (and the power that it confers on you) to remake the world according to your tastes.

Anyway, if I was the richest person, I would use my money to establish a foundation that would award an annual prize (like the Nobel prize) for the most innovative, wealth creating idea thought of by a young African in that year. The idea is to encourage young Africans to stop the 'follow-follow' trend and start to be inventive and creative.

If there was any money left over, I would offer 1,000 dollars to each person who agreed to walk up and down the main street where he lived and crow like a chicken repeatedly for a week (just to show that human beings will do all sorts of stupid things for money).

Oh, I forgot to add - the capital of Canada is actually Ottawa, WesleyanA. Quebec is a troublesome French-speaking region that is always agitating for more autonomy.

Somalia? Ah, well, that is a very k-legged situation. First of all, the country has virtually split into three parts - Somaliland, Puntland (which have some semblance of rule of law) and the rest of the country (which is generally lawless). The capital of Somaliland is Hargeisa, the capital of Puntland is Garowe and the 'capital' of the rest of the country is Mogadishu (or Muqdiso, to give it it's local spelling).

Oh, and the currency? Well, in theory, it's the Somalia Shilling, but really pounds, dollars and euro are welcome, I guess.

OK, let someone else do Micronesia...

What would be your reaction?

I would say that you've got a good thing going on, and I would ask you to appoint me as your treasurer when you finally set up The Church of Reincarnated Holy Goat and start raking in the millions.

Hard to say. Perhaps when the power sector reforms take off properly, the hot cake venture will be making money by 'selling' electricity. A typical electricity 'seller' will have his shop where you go and charge your key with a certain amount of credit, then plug the 'charged' key into your pay-as-you-go meter so that you get so many units of electricity.

Or perhaps the power sector reforms won't take off, and the hot cake venture will be building battery-inverter combos so that people can have get power from batteries that have been charged elsewhere (e.g. at a petrol station) without the fumes and noise that you'd get from a generator.

Or maybe the rising prices of fuel will mean that the hot cake venture will be the manufacture and maintenance of solar ovens.

Or maybe some enterprising soul will set up an electronic fund transfer network (like a local Western Union) so that the hot cake venture will be acting as a retail outlet for the electronic transfer of funds.

Or with high speed wireless internet access on the horizon, perhaps the hot cake venture will be roadside cybercafes (where one man and his laptop offer you internet access for an hour).

Who knows... the possibilities are endless!

I think that Obasanjo's government is introducing some important necessary reforms... unfortunately, his government is terrible at explaining the nature of these reforms to Nigerians.

A case in point: fuel price increases. If the government had any sense, it would hold frequent, regular and well publicised briefings regarding the activities of NNPC (and other government agencies involved in the distribution of refined crude oil). It would state exactly what costs were involved in the distribution of fuel, what were the likely costs in the future, what they are doing to ensure the long term supply of fuel, what else they intend to do, etc. so that everybody can see for themselves how they arrive at any decisions to adjust the price of fuel.

Instead they keep quiet until an increase is inevitable, then all hell breaks loose. And it doesn't help that Obasanjo himself comes across as unfeeling and uncaring when he supports the increase in prices. Talk about a failure of communication!

I am not convinced about the idea of live chatting, but we can organize conferences on Yahoo Messenger for special events like special group meetings or e-parties.

I think there is a demand for this. On some of the threads, you see the kinds of posts that are more like the kinds of brief messages that you would see in chat rooms. If nothing else, it would mean that these kinds of posts ended up in the chat room, leaving the board with a higher percentage of 'meaty' posts.

Contact me if you're interested in serving Nairaland as an ad broker in exchange for a generous commission.

Good idea.

On the issue of general notice board I thought the front page and the administrator PMs already served this purpose?

I'm also not sure about this point of this. The news, jobs, etc. forums do a good enough job of this already.

Award-giving?  This will be resumed when Nairaland has more money.

Awards don't have to be monetary - you can just create any number of titles and promote/demote people as necessary using your own special criteria.

Subgroups?  Sure, I support that 110%, but how exactly do we implement this?

Don't the specialist forums deal with this already?

I don't really have a role model per se... but I do have people I admire.

Typically they're people who do or say things that are the right things to say or do, but which are so unpopular at the time that they have few or no supporters. This is especially if they could easily keep quiet and do nothing, and when speaking or acting puts them at great personal risk.

I'm thinking of people like William Tyndale, the great Bible Translator who did a tremendous amount of work in translating the Bible so that it could be read not just by the high and mighty (in Latin) but by the common man (in English). This work met with fierce opposition from the Catholic Church (which was all powerful at the time), and it cost him his life. But I think that it's worth losing your life to ensure that ideas that you believe in are made available to many.

I also admire people who are polymaths - people who are are talented and take an interest in so many different and disparate areas. Obviously, I would have to mention Leonardo da Vinci (artist, architect, sculptor, engineer) or Isaac Newton (mathematician, physicist), But there are also many modern day polymaths around - people like Ray Kurzweil (who produced music synthesizers and optical character recognition software). It's great to know that there are such people who do not see any limit to how much they can learn and achieve - contrast that to the Naija attitude of 'it's not my line, so I don't care about it'.

Nagging wife?

Not a problem.

Ideally, every human being should respect the freedom that another human being has to make decisions instead of trying to force them by nagging. So I don't really feel guilty about saying that this is how a typical week would go by in the house of Mr. "Naggee" and Mrs. "Naggor" Ka:


Day one

Mrs. Ka: You should do this... you should do that... nag... nag... nag... nag...

Ka: All right darling, you are right and I am wrong. I will do exactly what you want as from tomorrow.

Mrs. Ka: Good.

(end of nagging)


Day two

Mrs. Ka: What steps have you taken to do what I asked you to do?

Ka (smiling sweetly): Absolutely nothing, my dear.

Mrs. Ka (exasperated): What! You said you would do something about this yesterday. Nag... nag... nagnagnagnag...

Ka: My sweet, you are right as ever. I promise that tomorrow, I will start doing what you have asked me to do.

Mrs. Ka: How do I know that you will?

Ka: You just have to trust me.

Mrs. Ka: OK. But I will be very angry if you don't do anything o!

(end of nagging)


Day three

Mrs. Ka: I don't see any sign that you have done anything about what you said you would do yesterday.

Ka: That's because I haven't started.

Mrs. Ka (absolutely furious at this point) WHAT!! You said you would start! You LIED to me! You are a hopeless, useless, nagnag[b]nag[/b]nag[b]nag[/b]nagNAG[b]nag[/b]nagNAGnagnag[b]NAG[/b]NAGnag[b]NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaAAAAAAAAG[/B]....

(next fifteen minutes passes in this fashion)

Mrs. Ka: ...and you had better do it this time or else there will be war in this house!

Ka (smiling serenely): Oh my honey, you are so upset! What can I do to calm you down?

Mrs. Ka: YOU CAN START BY DOING WHAT I HAVE BEEN ASKING YOU TO DO ALL THIS TIME!!!!!

Ka: Sorry, perhaps you can explain it to me again? I try to understand, but it's too much to take in... maybe it's because you're always nagging me when you say it so I can't focus properly.

Mrs. Ka (throwing her hands up in despair) How can you not understand something that I have been talking to you about for so long?I give up.

Ka: That's a shame. You know I would have even been prepared to die for you if that's what you were asking. (silently to himself) Yesss!!! RESULT!

Since when has standing up and pissing been the standard for gender (in)equality?

Which is exactly why I used that example to show you how trivial I think the argument is. There are biological differences between man and woman which mean that they are good at different things. So there's no point in trying to stir things up with trite unfounded statements like "what a man can do, a woman can do better".

In fact, whenever I hear a woman say that, it makes me think that there are serious inferiority complex issues at play here. Why should a woman feel the need to compare herself with a man? How many times do you hear a man saying "What a woman can do, a man can do better?"

Isn't this a solution in search of a problem?

The reason why vending machines are popular in the West is that it is simply too expensive to employ people to do what a vending machine does. This may not be the case in Nigeria where you can pay someone N20,000 per month to do what a vending machine does. So you need to be certain that the cost of running the machine won't exceed that - and with power supply, vandalism and maintenance issues to deal with, that is by no means certain.

"El-Rufai said the Federal Government wanted to empower the middle class by introducing long-term credit financing that would broaden the market base. "

Imnakoya, I think what he is saying is that he would like more and more people to be able to take out longer term loans. I don't see anything bad in this - it would mean that people would not need to save for the cost of a house (for example) but would be able to take a loan and pay it off over the long term.

But I think the idea of an ID card being a credit card is somewhat confused. It's certainly valid to talk about an ID card helping to identify people who apply for a credit card, but I don't really see the reason why they have to be one and the same. Does this mean that the government (who issues the ID cards) will also be an issuer of credit? And what if someone wants to have more than one credit card?

I think is hightime you men started adjusting to the saying which goes "anything a man can do a woman can do better."

Come off it. No matter what women achieve, they will never be able to do better than men at urinating accurately while standing up.

If you really mean it, then we'll probably have to start a thread on 'How to Determine Responsibility'. But by saying that 'women are solely to blame', you are implying that men are robots whose actions are entirely determined by women.

I think the blame lies solely with women - they permit it, they encourage it.

With a comment like that, you're obviously fishing for a reaction here - you can't really mean that.