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Where do rivers go?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns I started writing a chapter about how the pyramid was built? Maybe the Nile river knows. I started writing a chapter about what is the smell of success? Maybe that is at the end of the river of dreams. Then I thought, what if every sentence ended with art? Where do I start? Would it be smart? What message could this writer impart? Maybe destiny is the river of love in our heart. My writing was not flowing and those chapters would not be completed. Lost in the river of defeat. But where do rivers go I must know. I was determined to complete this chapter even if it was one page long. A river may meet with another river. A river may journey to the sky only to fall to ground to start again where it began. A river may end its journey in an ocean, a sea or a lake. Is not life like a river. A river goes where water goes and they say water is life. But does that mean life is like a river, you never know where it goes? I like this

What is a juqebox?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns I decided to take all my chapter titles so far and analyze them and see what I could find interesting. I found that I had used all the letters in the alphabet except j,q and x. I looked to see if there was any word containing those letters so that I would use it in a question and I would have used all letters in my titles. There was no such word. I did find the word quixotic that contains the letter q and x which means impractical, especially when pursuing ideals. I however found a misspelling of jukebox. The intentional misspelling of words or brand names for attention-grabbing purposes is called cacography. I found several instances of juqebox. A record company, a streaming platform and even MRI software. I found a musical artist called juqe and I learnt that juque is Spanish for hand drums. With a jukebox you insert a coin and it automatically plays a selected song. Classic jukeboxes are now rare. When I think of jukebo

What goes up and stays up?

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This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns They say what goes up must come down. This is a saying that if taken literally means gravity. Figuratively, it means that nothing lasts forever, especially periods of good fortune or success. Even the best things. In another saying we are told all good things come to an end. There is no mention of bad things. Does that mean bad things last forever? But we do say, this too shall pass. Even the darkest night will end and the sun will shine. Every cloud has a silver lining. So I am challenging myself to find something that goes up and stays up. I am thinking our age goes up but never comes down? But then we say once a man but twice a child. In a sense as we get older we get younger. Then we say you are as old as you feel. Life is full of ups and downs but I found something that probably answers the question. "The soul that is near to God is ever going upward." The strange thing is that I found this phrase online (At

What if butter was made from flies?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns I was thinking about butterflies. The word butterfly. Why did we decide to combine butter and fly to create the name of an insect? There is probably a normal explanation for that but then my mind decided to be weird. What if butter was made from flies? Then we would really be able to combine the words butter and fly. But then that would be fly butter or flutter. It is a crazy idea but not a novel idea. My friend Gemini tells me that research and experimentation is being done that takes fly larvae and soaking and blending to separate the fat to produce cooking oil. This is not exactly butter but is still called bug butter and can be used as a replacement in some baking and some cooking. The researchers actually made a cake with the bug butter. But what about the word butterfly? How did this originate? Gemini tells me that it remains a mystery but there are a couple of popular theories. Like from the yellowish colour of some

Does time have a speed?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns My basic Physics tells me that the answer is no and I could end there. But my gut feeling is saying that time does have a speed even if it is just from a philosophical point of view. We often hear people say "time dragging today" or "time passing fast these days" or "the days are getting shorter" or "time stopped for a moment". Then what about time dilation? I asked my friend Gemini and he explained: Though not our everyday experience, according to Einstein's theory of relativity, time actually can run slower or faster depending on gravity and velocity. So, in a very literal sense, time has different speeds in different situations! He further states: Our perception of time is heavily influenced by our emotional state and focus. When we're bored, time seems to drag. When we're engaged, it flies. These expressions like "time stopped" capture that feeling of being

Does pineapple belong on pizza?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns A Greek-Canadian by the name of Sotirios "Sam'' Panopoulos is credited as making the first pineapple pizza back in 1962. Panopoulos named the dish Hawaiian pizza after the brand of canned pineapple used on the pie. Ever since then we have debated whether pineapple belongs on pizza. The arguments even descend into jokes like "that is not even a pizza that is a pizza colada". The math geeks will tell you that pineapple belongs on pizza because they both begin with pi. The debate went viral on Twitter in 2017 with many celebrities weighing in. There have been some other food wars on Twitter like "Should butter go in the fridge?" or "Is a hot dog a sandwich?" To me this exemplifies that humans love a good debate and we love to defend our choices. I think this can be studied as the psychology behind arguments. Stuff like gatekeeping, tribalism, confirmation bias, social validation and

What are rats?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns These rodents first got to America by stowing away on ships. That was the first answer on Jeopardy when Alex Trebek started hosting the show back in 1964. The category was "Animals" and the contestant Greg Hopkins correctly responded with "What are rats?" I am not good at Jeopardy. I don't have a bunch of facts loaded in my memory. In jeopardy answers are given and you have to respond with the correct question. Some other interesting answers and questions from that first show are: This fastener gets its name from a brand of galoshes it was used on? What is Zipper; Though its name means "city of peace", it's seen over 30 wars, the last in 1967. What is Jerusalem? Rats have a bad reputation but I observed that rats spelt in reverse is stars so maybe we just need to take a different look at them. Weirdly enough I learnt that Rats & Star was a Japanese male pop group that specialized i