Journey

This is a chapter from my fifth book called Freedom

It is after noon on Sunday and I am bored and decided to write. I wanted to write a chapter called "Journey" but where to? Somehow my mind asked the question, what is a 23 sided shape called? And I thought that would be an interesting place to start. I do not hide the fact that 23 is my favorite number. How did they come up with the name icositrigon? There is a pattern of Greek suffix and prefix used to construct the name of polygons. Icosa means twenty. Tri means three. And the suffix gon usually signifies a polygon. While researching I came across the golygon. This is any polygon with all right angles whose sides are consecutive integer lengths. The name "golygon" was invented by the recreational mathematician Lee Sallows but he did not say why he chose that name (according to my friend Gemini).

I came across these interesting math based anagrams where Lee Sallows is mentioned. I wanted to create one of my own that used twenty three and this is the best I could do. So the letters on the left are rearranged to form the letters on the right and also balance the equation.

TWENTY THREE + ONE + NINE = TEN × YEW + THIRTEEN + NONE

This makes sense if somehow YEW equals TWO and at least they rhyme. And yew does mean two in the Jumjum language. And that is how I came to learn about the Jumjum people of South Sudan. I could not learn why they are called Jumjum (Jum by 2) but I would love to know. I also learnt that the Yew is a tree. Tree and three sounds the same if you speak with a Trinidadian accent. As a side note and as today is Sunday, I noticed that Sudan is contained in the word Sunday. I have seen the news of what is happening in Sudan and I hope the world comes together to help the people of Sudan. They are us and we are them. One humanity. War is a cancer for humankind and we must stop it and we must not repeat it. The world wants to live with freedom and in peace.

I now journey to Nepal. I found out that JumJum is a ride sharing app in Nepal and I learnt about attempts to save the wild Maire yew tree. I read that the trees are key for biomedical uses. The leaves are used in the production of taxol which is a chemical used in cancer treatment. These trees could become extinct in the wild in Nepal due to unsustainable harvesting. That is what I have read. Most of those articles at the top of the Google search are dated to the year 2020. I guess we could say, "free the trees!" And that is a good segue for ending this journey and this chapter. I like this quote from Edward Abbey, "One does not ask permission to walk on the moon or swim in the ocean. One does not bow before the mountains. We belong to this earth. We are intricately woven into the fabric of life on earth. We are nature." My friend Gemini tells me that this quote emphasizes our inherent connection to nature and the freedom that comes from embracing this connection. Freedom comes with responsibility. When we protect nature we protect ourselves.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Belove

I was scrolling through facebook and saw a post by the Martin Luther King Jr page that said be love. "Love is the most durable power in the world." Belove is so close to belief. Like belove could mean to believe in love if we wanted it to (belove = belief + love). I belove. Belove can also be combined from below and above. (belove = below + above). I love equations and how easily they can express something. This led me to researching the phrase "as above, so below" which I have heard before but never fully understood and researched. My friend Gemini tells me that the principle "As above, so below" originates from Hermeticism and suggests a correspondence between the heavens and the earth, the macrocosm and the microcosm, and the divine and the human. It implies that what happens in the heavens is mirrored in the earthly realm, and that the inner world of a person reflects the larger cosmic order, often attributed to the Emerald Tablet, a short Hermetic tex...
Read more

My imagination engine

I have been in the mood to write and be creative in the last few days. If you read all my blog posts and you are keeping up you would appreciate this. Olatunji's Engine Room soca song is playing in my mind now. My imagination engine is driving my creativity. My imagination engine takes some inputs like my thoughts, experiences, and knowledge and produces outputs like new ideas, solutions, and creations. The fuel of my engine is love and moves me to being a force of good in this world. My mind is taken back to a tweet I made the other day, "Long wait outside the atm with hot sun pounding away. I imagine myself by the beach enjoying a coconut water and bake and shark." On another day I tweeted, "Long wait for me today to see the doctor. Been 3 hours so far. I imagine myself on the fast ferry heading Tobago. That takes 2 hours at the port and 3 hours on the boat. God is good." Our imagination can transport us to places that take away our difficulties and create com...
Read more

Who makes the best cheesecake?

This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns It's three in the morning and all through the house is quiet and not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. I bet a mouse's favorite dessert is cheesecake and so is mine. So it's in the wee hours of the morning and I am thinking about cheesecake and specifically who makes the best cheesecake? I suspect it would be some recipe handed down from generation to generation. Probably someone's grandma from the town where cheesecake originated from. I read that even though we may think that cheesecake originated in New York that it actually goes further back to over four thousand years on the Greek island of Samos. The Greeks there created the earliest known cheesecake. No wonder I think that the cafe in my village that sells Samosas makes the best cheesecake. Is there a connection between Samos in Greece and Samosas? There is not much written about this on the internet but I did find one blog post that tried t...
Read more

Trinidad and Tobago Developer Hub Thoughts

I like the direction this is heading. I like the idea of it. I think that it can be innovative. I think once they react positively and actively to the feedback they get, this will be a success. I am cheering for this to be a success. I saw that it was launched today on their social media. They did not say what the url was but I made a guess and it was there - dhub.mdt.gov.tt I had watched Delving Deeper on TTT where they talked about the Developer Hub. One of the questions was about challenges. I think one (a big one) of the challenges would come from the selection of ideas/solutions. Some people might feel cheated that their ideas/solutions are not being selected. The Ministry might be accused of bias and favoritism and cronyism. I think what might help with this is that a component of the choosing of ideas/solutions has to come from public voting and scoring and also from other developers rather than solely from a few persons in the Ministry. The Ministry has to be open with scoring,...
Read more

Focus on solutions and ways we can help

While surfing the internet this morning I started thinking about problem solving and particularly in Trinidad and Tobago. If I wanted to see a list of all the problems affecting persons in this country where do I go? If I wanted to volunteer solutions to these problems where do I go? There are problems that have existed for years. Seems like everyone knows the solutions. Seems like everyone is an expert. Then there is bureaucracy. Then there are competing interests. Then there is finite resources. I find the older generation is often resistant to change and change is often needed as solutions to problems. The older generation thinks about working hard while the younger generation thinks about working smart. We need to develop a good problem solving culture in this country and I think technology can help. We can develop an open forum platform where persons can share problems and then persons can offer solutions. Problems and solutions can be voted on. The platform can be incentivised to...
Read more