PLANTS' INTELLIGENCE: A SKETCH FROM THE TEMPERATE AND TROPICAL REGIONS

PLANTS’ INTELLIGENCE: A SKETCH FROM THE TEMPERATE AND TROPICAL REGIONS

INTRODUCTION

Contributing in some debates on Facebook, Twitter, LinkIns, Google, Wikipedia and Yahoo is conceivably one sure way we could make our scientific contributions for the positive growth of our home on Earth. Apart from that we could inspire others. I was provoked on 07/01/2014 by the comments made in the Science Magazine 'Driving Diversity in the Tropics'. My rendition is wondering aloud why the plants in the temperate lands cannot be preponderant as those in the tropics where you do have literally thousands of different species of plants in a limited locale. We try to conjecture from experiences in both these prominent geographical regions of the world:

How is one hectare of tropical forest able to harbor more tree species than there are in Canada and the continental United States combined? Until now, researchers have struggled to explain why the tropics can achieve such biodiversity while temperate regions generally host far fewer plant species. But, the ongoing evolutionary “arms race” between plants and herbivores may help to explain this phenomenon, according to the authors of a Perspective article. Phyllis Coley and Thomas Kursar highlight recent research that suggests so many plant species are able to cram into small plots of land in the tropics because their defenses are so finely tuned by interactions with pests. Plants in temperate regions, on the other hand, are generally under less pressure from herbivores and disease, they say.

[Image: S. Crespi]

As sequels, the following comments were made extempore after reading the above, deemed fitting to be shared after having been on sabbatical that is apparently interminable:

THEORY

"This hypothesis could be defended by creating a micro-tropical climate in North America. For instance, a glass house that mimics tropical conditions with imported tropical plants, pests and diseases that could enable us to verify if topical plants with living organisms could thrive and replicate the phenomenon described in say Canada by Coley and Kursar. It should be borne in mind that owing to extreme temperatures in temperate milieus and lack of high humidity as in the tropics where soil layers are deeper, we may not have an ideal condition and our test could be awry. There are some creatures that comfortably live two to three meters in the ground and only venture to interact with plants at night. How can we create such a scenario in the Canadian or US wilderness where soil characteristics are different?  Having said this, we have seen some tropical plants flourishing under artificial tropical conditions at Kew Botanical Gardens, London, U.K. and elsewhere in the northern hemisphere. Then, those plants as those cultivated in glass houses in the temperate lands for summer sales are not lumped higgledy-piggledy as the ones that grow naturally in the tropics. This is an interesting topic where the researchers would have to think of evolution and other factors, determinism that may have influences in habitats we are inapt to enumerate here."

PRESENTATION

While pondering upon what I have read, what lingered over me all night long was if there was anything called ‘plants’ intelligence.’ When it is considered that plants have genes and are extant like cold and warm blooded creatures, do things like all living creatures, and exchange information in some sophisticated ways least revealed to most of us, I was harkened to grudgingly accept that they have intelligence. The quandaries were glaring. Then the question was how I was to go about it and report it succinctly. I needed technical facilities, funding and patience that were more than that of anglers. Then there was a glimmer of hope.  Serendipitously I came across the above oration and my thoughts were no longer like some thingamabobs in science fiction.

In it, the authors, Messrs. Coley and Kursar talk of plants evolving the way they are as their way of fighting against pests. I accepted their theory with a pinch of salt. That was a conjecture that may require scientific authentication. The question is how this could be proven. Having been born in the tropics, my observations indicate that the sparsely distribution of plants or fewer species in North America may be more than fighting against pests provided we allow plants to be our ‘professors or teachers.’ We observed that some species of plants taken from the temperate zones and planted in the tropics do not allow other species to grow near them. This is very true of pines. We are inept to state if this condition is due to some viruses or pathogenic or ecological.  Their canopies or roots or chemicals they exude or leaves, needles do not give room for other plants to grow next to them or by them. To me it is one way they guard their territories and ensure that food nutrients underneath them are not shared or that they are not deprived of such vital food supplies. Their needles form such complex mats that give no room for plants to grow beneath them besides helping in mulching under parched conditions in the dry seasons. Where the underneath growths succeed, they are killed for they are deprived of the radiance of the sun, a vital element in the manufacture of plant food by photosynthesis. I will not necessarily conclude that it is their way of fighting other plants to keep away pests or diseases as this condition is replicated in the temperate or torrid zones. Therefore it is not idiosyncratic. The summers of the temperate regions, in a way are tropical conditions being replicated in those geographic zones. The major difference is the extreme of temperatures, climatic conditions.

PROCREATION: The Crucial question is who were the prima occupantis of the Earth, man or plants?

We humans may be jejune when it comes to plants kingdoms in their local environments. If we were to say that plants communicate with animals, birds and insects in the tropics and even in temperate lands some people would like to know how we decipher such language or languages when we have not even mastered ours to communicate effectively with aliens in our midst. Nevertheless, one thing is certain that the beaks of certain birds and insects are fashioned in such a way as to be able to get pollen, nectar, seeds or parts of plants. This begs a question, namely, was it the plants that evolved the way they are to accommodate animals, birds and insects or was it the birds, animals and insects to accommodate plants. If tree A, started, how did it come to know that if it grew the way it was doing, other creatures would help her in the distribution of its seed, cross-pollination and so on?  The crucial question is who were the prima occupantis of the world, man or plants?

My supposition is that some plants were ahead and others evolve or were made concurrently with man/animals if it is borne in mind that man and other living creatures need air purified by plants for their survival. In this case, man could not have preceded plants. We will see below that certain plants can only grow in specific areas  in spite of having the same climatic and edaphic conditions as they know that it is only there that their seeds could be distributed or scattered for their proliferation. Once more this provokes another perplexing question, namely, how the plants got this cognizance or adaptation? Was it the plant that asked the animals how to shape their parts, flowers, or animals asking plants to shape their parts to facilitate the distribution of their seeds? We infer that it was the matter of genes fashioning both creatures to be the way they are else they were doomed. If by our inference, the plant was first to people the world, then other creatures coming after then had to adapt to their needs and not the other way round. However, when they lived together and established the need for one another, they all made evolutionary provision for one another. If evolution is still in progress, will it astonish us that we may have children in the future without legs since jalopies and other transport mechanisms we have invented have come to restrict the full use of our legs for the purposes they were meant?

DISTRIBUTION

Rodents and other living creatures take the seeds to their caverns and they easily germinate without which they could have fallen on parched soils where they would not have germinated or remain in the same ecosystem of the parent plant.  The plants facilitate this by providing ample seeds that are edible by animals, birds, insects, worms and man. We all see squirrels doing this frantically when winter is approaching so that they could go back there when there is nothing to forage in winter. Oftentimes they forget the location of their buried seeds and the outcome are new trees or plants growing in areas quite far from the original habitat of the mother plants. Other plants hike lifts on wind by deliberately making their seeds so light that they are buoyant in the air and water or sticky as to adhere on any moving object. Thus they are able to navigate long distances and their procreation and posterity are ensured. Others self-propelled their seeds as castor oil seeds, assorted beans and various species of tephrosia. Some simply stand on one spot year in year out and send their roots to gather food for themselves. You will see that the roots’ heads as so fragile yet through some not well-studied process they are able to penetrate deeply hard soils and even rocks.  To our untutored eyes this is magic of these geniuses, plants.  To many of us, we would expect the harder roots to penetrate the soils and not the soft parts. This is where we are toddlers and plants had taken giant leaps before us.  Others like bananas and plantain trees bifurcate by producing young ones as suckers.  They produce fruits required by animals and men who have learned to carry suckers for transplanting in other environments. Bananas and many edible or economic plants were not natives of West Africa or other parts of the world but were brought thereby the Portuguese seafarer in the early days of seafaring from the Americas in the 15^th century. Others crossed continents by floating on water. Birds and animals took some to long distances.

SYMBIOSIS AND HOW WE SURVIVE THE ODDS: Who first people the Earth, man or plants?

Besides, plants are able to get what we consider as bad air to make their own foods, photosynthesis and give us back clean air. The clean air keeps us and animals around and the plants make good use of carbon dioxide in propagating their kinds. Now on what podium can we stand on to state that the plants are not kind to us and are perhaps more intelligent than us? We cannot live without plants and plants cannot live without us, biological elements. This is the symbiosis that many politicians tend to forget when tabling some of their environmental policies. Consequently the interaction of animals, birds, insects and plants for their survival is not a mistake in nature but a well-planned stratagem by the Maker, God or what others like to call Mother Nature.

Methinks at the dawn of creation, there was a meeting and plant dominated when it submitted its bill for debate. They took the leading role and planned that interdependence. If we rely upon plants to purify air for us, then it is imponderable that God could have created man without plants and fertile soils first. We shall ever be like that and the day we will want our independence from plants is the day we all will sign our death warrant. Often we question if we have used our heads when annihilating vast reserves of trees in the Amazon, the Ituri forests in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Corrup in West African and many more in Indonesia and Malaysia. The cow eats the grass, passes on the excrement that fertilizes the plant and others and even gives us faggot. We use the plants to prepare our meals and our meals are meat that had fed on the plants. When we die we decompose and the plants use us to keep the cycle going ad infinitum. This cycle is best summarized by this lyric appended by the lyricist Peter Seeger, ‘Where have all the flowers gone’.

HOW PLANTS COUNTERACT THEIR ANNIHILATION BY MAN

Before we kill one tree, it had already bifurcated in places like the tropics. Plants had already foreseen what was to happen when man was not yet there and got prepared for man in a very sophisticated way that it will take us so long to know. The plants have not foreseen our inventions such as the power saws, use of chemicals and many more that destroy their kinds, yet they fight relentlessly to survive.

Figure 1 infra is a picture of wild palm trees in the tropics. Underneath thousands of species of plants and other living creatures that share a single habitat. The sad news is that some mischievous multinational pharmaceutical firms connive with dictatorial regimes in Africa, South America and S.E. Asia to cut unique plants for the manufacture of drugs, logging and are not replanted. This was the case of Kilung- Ngongbaa Forest in the Grassfields of Cameroon, the Former British Cameroons, in the Amazon forest and others in S.E.Asia. We computed from the height and rings of some of these plants that some were 600 years old or older. There are trees that have survived for up to 5000 years and are still alive and kicking. Apparently, the world is their home and we are in transit. Living in symbiosis are numerous living creatures many of which have never been scientifically analyzed and are unique to those habitats. In some ecosystems a good number of them are medicinal and are known by the locals. Nearly all plants have medicinal purposes, although some are lethal where not handled with caution or mixed with other chemicals. It leads us to herbalists in some regions carrying our incantations before plants are harvested for medical preparation. Marijuana that can now be purchased in some parts of US was a guarded secret in some so-called primitive communities. It was never allowed to be divulged to the rank and file so that there was never any substance abuse to the extent we have now in some Western communities. However, there are other serious plants more important than marijuana that is loved by man, insects and animals that could cure most of our diseases than we could envisage. There is urgent need to identify study and document their medicinal properties and other economic values.

Although the present regimes are aware of the predicaments, destruction, more needs to be done to protect these plants and animals. In the past forests were teaming with fauna and the people can only read this now in their fables and natural history books. Perhaps it should be the obligation of FAO, WHO, UNESCO or fervent NGOs to fight for their preservation.

THE PALM TREE

Initially, we thought that the palms were planted by peoples in the armpit of Western Africa in the area of Wedikum and that they belonged to some person or persons. They were wild and belonged to no one. They were planted by birds, running water, animals wind and occasionally by man that had been exploiting them since time immemorial for his assorted foods and other economic values. The palm tree is the king of giant grasses and all parts of it are used by man and other living creatures. Treaties have been written on this king of grass, the palm tree in the tropics and we need not reiterate here.

Wild palm forest in the tropical forest, Widikum, 'Armpit of Africa,' Western Africa

Lush vegetation in the transitional zone of the forest and grass land in the tropic.

An idyllic close up secondary rain forest; the variety of vegetation in this ecosystem is phenomenal

Tropical rain-forest. Note climbers that will remind us of Tarzan films and assorted parasites.

Savannah landscape in the tropics.  Note the rain clouds

World map showing the original home of man  L, in central Africa and his emigration routes

Forested landscape in the Canadian Shield. Note the coloring of trees in preparation for the Fall, and Winter.

A bird eye view of landscape in France. Note patches of forested areas in deep green and well planned and cultivated fields.

Colby Fire in California after NASA Jan., 16, 2014. Note the amount of smoke. This incident is just the tip of the iceberg should fireproofed homes not be built and strong measures taken to cut manageable fire paths each year. 

The nature of  forest in temperate land in the Northern Hemisphere.  The undergrowth is virtually suppressed by snow and life is at a standstill.  Ottawa suburb, Canada Jan. 19, 2014

Note the appearance of this tree on the verge of the fall and  in winter below.

The  very tree above in summer

The same tree in winter. Note that it has shed its leaves, a survival strategy.

The second picture above is that of the Cameroon highlands in the tropics. Although the rainfall here is not as intensive and torrential as in the region some three hundred kilometers to the south-west of the location of the first picture, there is evidence of abundant luxurious verdure. Real tropical conditions prevailing in the valleys and this leads to what we call forest galleries. The higher lands are clad with tall grass and assorted trees and shrubs. The assumption is that this was once clad with forests but were destroyed by man's wanton destruction for fuel, grazing and hunting. Today forests are barely seen except for isolated thickets mentioned above or those due to recent afforestation.  Where there had not been overgrazing you tend to have a rich mixture of primeval plants as on Mount Kilun-Ngongbaa in Oku, Bui region we earlier saw. Owing to the presence of creeks and water sources in the valleys, the growth of plants is luxurious and is often spared from seasonal bush fires that consume plants in the Savannah during the dry season. The dry season looks like summer in the northern hemisphere but it is unlike winter in the temperate lands from the extreme cold temperatures at dawn and dusk.

The third picture above is our panoramic view of landscape in France the author shot from an airplane window. From this oblique view we can discern some patches of untouched forests. On the whole, the highly cultivated terrain is orderly and well kept. This is possible as the plants here do not grow at an amazing rapidity as the case of the tropics where growing conditions are propitious throughout the year. As such, plants do have ample space to grow and you may tend to have patches of original forests. Most of the trees are homogeneous unlike those in the tropics as will be seen below.

The trees or plants in the temperate zones must adapt to the climatic conditions or they die. In what is known as the fall, the plants shed all their leaves to prepare themselves for the harsh winter conditions. It is not only plants that prepare for winter. Most living creatures do if not they could be history and would not live to see the next summer. Some animals as bears and snakes hibernate. Others simply migrate to warmer climes. Where the trees shed their leaves, they reduce the space of their bodies that are exposes to extreme weather conditions as the very cold weather at the time of writing (Friday, January-17-14) in the Northern Hemisphere. If it comes to preservation, plants in their right habitat are better equipped than we human beings who are running helter-skelter today at the sight of the Arctic vortex touching down on us (Jan. 2014).

It does not mean that there are no trees in the tropics that do not shed their leaves. There are some isolated ones that shed their leaves thereby regulating their growth and the loss of moisture, evapotranspiration.

The very tree we saw above in spring is shown in the winter (2014). If this tree were to retain its leaves in winter, the weight of snow would have broken its leaves and branches or pull down the entire tree. Many of us do not know the stress plants have once their roots or branches are severed. The absence of leaves means air can pass through with ease and it would not be pulled down in case of ice storm. 

The tree above covered with ice and snow. It had prepared for eventualities by shading its leaves at the fall and can comfortably pass through winter without dying completely. This is also true of maple standing on its right. A visitor from the tropic on seeing these trees in winter without leaves are assumed then to be faggot for fire. In spring this will produce buds and shoot to life and blossom.

This is a typical example of secondary growth in the tropical or under tropical conditions. This picture was taken in the highlands of the Cameroon, Grassfields where the land that was once cultivated was fallowed. The length is fifty meters and you may try to count the number of plants that are ever green in this picture. There are climbers that buttress themselves on bigger trees with robust buttressed roots. A good number were identified as edible and medicinal. The climbers are wild yams. They are relying on the cola-nut trees (Sterculiaceae) and others to ascend higher in their clamber for the radiance of the sun.  In the fore left you have ferns. The longer leaves to the fore left are sisongos or elephant grass, (Pennisetum purpureum). These are edible as the fern that you have as salad in some Chinese restaurants. Immediately after the ferns on the left you have dracaenas that are commonly used for boundary demarcation throughout West Africa. The trees with long wide leaves are banana trees. On the extreme left, you have Arabica coffee shrubs. There are a mixture of domesticated and wild plants that grow automatically without tendering.

This is a secondary forest in Ontario Province, Canada, North America in autumn. The leaves have started getting red or yellowing. There are some pines to the far left of the picture. These are single-leaf plants that do not shade their leaves as they have special oil in them that make them to withstand harsh winter conditions. Surprisingly, the pines do grow in mountainous regions of the tropics. As aforementioned, they have been made to shed copious leaves to cover their underneath so that no plants or relatively very few grow under them. In that case, they survive in tropical Asia, Africa and Americas as if they were in the temperate lands, their native homes. That is a characteristic that the authors of the above statement needed to have looked into. We have hawthorns, maples and other varieties. You can see that there is abundantly rich variety but is nothing compared to what you will have in the tropics as per fifty or one hundred meter squares of thicket we will see below in the tropics. This is a secondary forest. It means that the primeval forest had been logged and the area cleared and this growth is now replacing the original forest.

In winter, the undergrowth is bare and one can have good visibility under the trees. No doubt it is ideal condition for hunting. This is because the trees have shed their leaves in preparation for winters that are extremely cold. The cold weather makes them to adapt to the conditions and to be readied in case there is snow storm that tend to pull healthy trees down.  As earlier stated if their leaves are left on their branches, it would mean that they would carry excess load. Being conditioned by evolution, they take precaution by shedding all those leaves before the adverse seasonal conditions. These have been going on since time immemorial. With no immediate threats as they would have from climbers in the tropics, they can afford to grow naturally in staggered positions and do not have hard trunks or hard wood as those in the tropics. If they were to carry climbers and their leaves year in year out, and to face tornadoes, they would have developed buttress roots and sturdier trunks as tropical trees. They had adapted to the environment.

It does not mean that there are no sprinklings of hard woods in the temperate zones.  We do have occasional hardwoods as oaks known as the king of the wood in the temperate lands. With this our simple observations we are inclined to conclude that a good number of plants are cleverer than we humans. Does it mean that man has to mimic plants in order to survive? How long did it take man to live in well-built homes, wear better clothes and to be prepared for winters that are ever sure to come each year? How long has it taken man to discover medicines and chemicals that may cure him that is naturally found in plants? We take our modern homes for granted but their edification was not an overnight venture.

REASONS FOR MORE PLANTS PER ONE SQUARE MILE IN THE TROPICS THAN ALL OF NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT

We have identified three cardinal causes of this discrepancy: The climate under which we have copious supply of rainfall or availability of moisture; the average annual temperature and sunshine recorded and last and not the least the type of soils. If we have to consider faunas, we look at them as providers of carbon dioxide, transporters of seed and elements of cross-pollination and as providers of manure needed by plants.

1.     The question then is posed as why the tropical soils are deep and those in the North America as those of the Canadian Shield skeletal? We know that with thin layers of soils we are likely to have a smaller population of plants in one locale particularly where tropical conditions do not prevail.  We learn above that there is copious supply of rainwater in the tropics. This helps in the formation of various types of deep soils. However, before bigger rocks are broken into bits, they are first of all fractured. The outcome of this is what we call residuum. 

2.     Another aspect is that tropical soils easily loss their food nutrients whereas those in the temperate lands retain theirs for long. One may attribute this to fast leaching in the tropics owing to heavy rainfalls. Plants might have conditioned themselves to scramble for less food supply in consequence and that may account for their growth at an amazing rapidity unlike those in the temperate zones. Under this condition more plants may be crammed together to fight for limited nutrients in a limited space.

3.     Besides, the temperatures are constantly high. These are ideal conditions for the fast decomposition of dead vegetative materials, and chemical erosion that are responsible for further breaking down of rocks. The smaller fractures are further broken down and are lighter to be carried down slopes by various natural agents. This will depend on the sort of slope. The slope can be gentle, moderate, steep, and or very steep. The terrain will also help in the gravitational, creature, eolian, water, chemical, and vegetation transfer of those fractures down the slope to lower levels.  When they descend down to the area where the slope meets level land, they are deposited. These lead to the formation of what we call colluvium. Down here, they are easily mixed with moisture and soil fertility is improved, thus luxurious vegetation. 

4.     Also, the warm conditions make it possible for creatures that inhabit the areas to be active all year round. Consequently, they have more than enough time to break rocks or vegetable materials than in say North America. If these creatures were to be in the northern hemisphere, their activities in the course of gathering or foraging for food and digging tunnels are reduced during very cold seasons. Man is similarly restricted from working as hard, particularly outdoors in winters as he would during warmer climatic periods particularly alfresco. If we were to compute the active days of animals in both the north and southern hemispheres, it would be seen that those in the tropic or sub-tropical climates work all year round. If it concerned, soil formation, more would be formed in those warm climatic zones than in the temperate or torrid zones where there are extremes of temperatures. It does not surprise us that Northern Canada, Greenland, Northern Russ and Iceland are often considered by physical geologists as deserts. As seen above, in winter most living creatures hibernate and only emerge from their hibernation in spring. The further one goes to the north the longer one has the hibernation period and the less creatures have in breaking rocks or interacting with meager plants. You can compute the effect of this for thousands of years. This will account too for the sparse distribution of trees or limited number of species.

5.     Having made these observations differences in temperatures do lead to the breaking of pieces of rocks, the contraction and expansion of rock into what we call alluvium. Alluvium could be recent or very old. Pieces of rock pulverization are essentially accelerated when there is moisture and heat combined. Again in the colder zones, this activity is curtailed owing to the short period of hot weathers. It does not mean that breaking of rocks does not take place under cold conditions. When we look at taluses after the withdrawal of glaciers we find fractured rocks. The rate of breaking is minimized vis-à-vis conditions in the evergreen tropical conditions.

6.     The saying that where there is water there is life is true in this our case. You will find more living creatures in the tropics than in the desert regions of the world. The torrid and some temperate zones of the world are deserts. Even when there are living creatures in desert areas they congregate their habitats near watering holes or sources of water. Water is essential for their survival. Does it puzzle us that the first man and woman were created in the riverine areas of the world? When we look at the world we find this to be in Central Africa. God who made man in His image could not have made him and left him in less fertile areas where he would have perished. Even if He had done this, He gave man brains to think that it was not the ideal area to inhabit and he migrated to fertile and hospitable climes. Water and fertility of the soil will tell us that he would have made them in the tropics. Archaeologists and other field scientists have proven this to be true. 

‘L’ on our map stands for the original home of man in the riverine area of central southern Africa.

7.     We may think too of the time it takes for the soil to be formed. We have seen that in terms of activities of living creatures in the tropics and tropical water couple with heat will lead to the formation of more soils in the tropics than in the temperate or torrid zones. Even where we have thick layers of soils in the temperate, it should be borne in mind that the world had not in the past been as it is now. There was a time when the temperate zones were in the tropics and that led to the formation of deep or thick layers of soils. Some of these were re-hardened owing to metamorphism. It is for this reason that we have coal and vast amount of oil in some desert, under seas and temperate zones regions of the world today. Occasionally, we stumble upon fossilized tropical trees in the temperate zones and vice versa. Not only that, we fine oil and coal and some of their parents are tropical vegetative materials. We saw that with time the bigger fractures of rocks are pulverized. They form what we called alluvium. Alluvium got dried with changes in climate and was blown or taken away and deposited miles away by water, and wind as is still the case today. The hazy conditions in the dry season are evidence of Eolian erosion from the Sahara. These formed layers of soils that mark their different periods of formation. With metamorphism the alluvium that were in layers were hardened and are presently being broken down by the eroding factors we adumbrated above. We should then know that nothing is the world can be missing as what goes down will eventually come up. As the mountains are being broken down to form soils, they are being carried away by the factors we saw above to build other mountains. If one were to state that lifeless planets in our solar system will one day hold life some of us will state that it is fiction. There was a time when no living thing roamed our world.

STILL ON SOIL FORMATION

Some dust or particles of rocks were carried away and deposited in their pristine form. We saw that metamorphism occurred they formed massive rocks that eventually are broken down through a combination of eroding processes. This may be the case of separate layers that form the Canadian Shield or marbles and lime stones as we have in Italy, Australia and other parts of the world. The whole process repeats itself as the world is not sedentary. When you destroy here, it is built over there. Nothing is wasted in the world but it may be transformed.  We have got earthquakes, continental movements, landslides, erosion by water, chemical, wind, gravity, man, animals, birds warms and plants that contribute in this process of breaking down and rebuilding of geological or geographical features.

FUTHER CHARACTERISTICS

However, today we are interested in conditions that lead to the differences in the characteristics of plants' growth in the tropic and the temperate zones and if we could learn any lesson from plants. The climates, edaphic factors, humidity, other elements that share spaces with plants are responsible for the peopling of the rain-forest or ecosystem in Canada. Evolution has made it in such a way that plants like we humans and other living creatures have to fight for space. It is a matter of survival of the fittest as underlined by Charles Darwin. You can decide to be on your own and die or cooperate and live. This is the epigram in the plant and some animal kingdoms. In the case of plants where land or space is already occupied, they have to accept to share the limited space. When climate is harsh they have to adapt or die and many have chosen the later and may be studied as fossils or dodoes in the future. Aggressive action may be necessary for survival. How?

PLANTS’ INTELLIGENCE

One of the strategies is to reproduce profusely as conditions are propitious. The plants in the tropic are obliged to produce more seeds for procreation that are sometimes essential. We saw that some of the plant seeds are distributed by air, animals, water, and man and by themselves. Clever plants have evolved such strategies that will ensure that their seeds are widely distributed. I know of beggars' lies that anchor on men, animals and birds and their seeds are taken thousands of miles away before they are dropped. When beggars' lies are growing, they give little room to other plants. Malicious farmers have used this in the past to drive away their neighboring farmers they did not like. The nearest plant we can compare its action with is the dandelion that is dreaded by most farmers and property owners in North America. Coconuts for example have learned to produce porous shells that are buoyant upon being thrown into the rivers. The moment they fall, they are taken by running water to great length before they touch the ground to grow. Some on the coastlines have been known to be transported by currents and waves for thousands of miles. The question we would like to ask is how did the coconut know that by encasing its seeds the way it did in fibrous shells, it was to be buoyant and make it transportable to other territories?

Some plans literally sleep as their way of preserving their energy when darkness envelope them.  They close their leaves as mimosa pudica (bannin) when grass munching animals are in their vicinity. Some close their stomata. Others as the sun flowers follow the sun from dawn to dusk as their way of getting plenty of energy from the sun. Others use sunlight to generate electricity. How long did it take man to discover electricity? This had been with plants since time immemorial. Others have been known to kill bigger animals and this is still being a puzzle to scientists by exuding poisonous gazes when being over eaten by animals. Some plants kill and eat insects and even smaller animals. We call them carnivorous plants. Some have learned to withstand blazing fires and fake death when the heat is unbearable. They spring to life with the first drop of rain. Others move with hubbub or noise, call it music. If they dance, where are their ears? Others plants may use chemicals to repulse others plants or animals from coming nearer them, some do this by having poison in their system. There are some tropical plants’ seed that if pulverized, they could be better repellents and nuzzling substances than the spry guns police use to subdue recalcitrant culprits. Some may produce a sort of bad air that may warn other plants or animals from trespassing. Most of us know the consequences of playing with stinging nettles, and poison ivies. They are defensive mechanism of plants without which some could have been annihilated.  

Don’t you think we have to stoop and learn from plants? As an example, how did the palm tree know that by getting ripe its seeds would be taken away from its immediate vicinity and dropped far away from the mother tree? We have got birds and insects that work in tandem with plants in the transportation of their seeds, pollen and help in cross pollination. When we look at all these unique characteristics we do fine out that those plants are most probably more intelligent than we humans. Are they? We think that we are more sophisticated than plants and contrariwise they think that we are nincompoops. With the Dunning and Guiker effect controlling us like marionettes, we tend not to accept. Plants give us pure air, oxygen without which we are not extant, yet we destroy them at such frightening rate as if we will manufacture enough oxygen to sustain us after plants.

When we consider that since the creation of USA, Canada, Malaysia, the Philippines, Madagascar, and others, there had been tornadoes that come and wipe away homes, take away many lives as we have year in year out, yet we have never found vital solutions are these not proofs that plants are superior to us. In pant kingdoms, they had long adapted to hazardous and  unforeseen contingencies. Some cannot be burnt or destroyed or carried away by wind or water. If those happen they are simply distributed to colonize their new environments. What of fire that devastated one of the wealthiest states in the world, California every year? Reporters trumpet it around the world as if the more we know of it the better it would help the victimized or halt the tragedy. Many homes were torched last year (2013) and many will this year (2014), next year and every year this will be so and at the time of going to the press (see the picture below). There is no end in sight since we have stubbornly become ridiculous or turn to swim in our bigotry.  

CONFORM OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES: FIRE PROOFED HOMES AS PANACEA?

Man often copies what is not inherently of his region and brings to others and it does not conform. Yet he stoically forces square pegs in a round holes. California needs a new fire proofed home, and perhaps water hydrants that will turn themselves automatically on the mere smell of smoke a mile away then that it denizens are lackadaisical to cut fire paths that are even known and done by Africans, Asians and South Americans in springs in anticipation of eventualities. On Thursday, January-16-14 the Los Angeles was crying that homes of their fellow citizens has been set ablaze by three miscreants camping. It is not the last time fire will be burning homes in California. It will happen again in 2015 around this time. Mark our words.  Incendiary in that country is sure as death. It was the same last year with hefty men losing their lives while fighting the flames. The devil of the fires has no sympathy for man as man does not sympathize with him.   Plants could have been evergreen to reduce their being killed by fire caused by man, lightning or volcanic fires or other sources. If we believe that plants are intelligent, they could deliberately have shallow roots so as to catch fire to drive away encroaching men and other creatures from their habitats.

Now the cycle continues as in our song. If one were to suggest today that houses should be built subterranean in dust bowls of America where tornadoes come each year and kill many innocent people, many would complain that it would be so expensive and extraordinary. Animals experimented and found this to be the best and have survived all odds we humans cannot fathom. You can only shoot rock hydras but you cannot run and catch them with our beagles as rabbits. Why? They easily disappear under rocks inaccessible by their chasers. Can it not be mandatory for fireproofed homes to be built in areas constantly visited by fires? In Switzerland, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Italy, Morocco and France where such homes are common, construction must meet certain standards and construction that take weeks to be accomplished in North America take several months before they are inhabitable. It is not the money that constructors want that should count but the safety of the inhabitants must come first.  What is the rush for by the modern property builders? To run away from persecution by barbarous Islamic believers in the past, the Abyssinian Christians (Ethiopians) built or carved out monstrous dwellings and places of worship below ground level or on rocky cliffs and they have stood the test of time. Where there are no earthquakes, cave dwellings are perhaps better than living in the tower of profligate babbles many are fervently building when others are living alfresco for lack of modest homes. Is this not rapacious?

Furthermore, plants manufacture their own foods by simply converting the soils and carbon dioxide. We too can convert soil directly into food without the humdrum of stealing from plants, insects and animals. How long have we been living with plants? They know us more than we know them and we do not know them because we are self-important. Are we?

CONCLUSION

Plants protect themselves when sick and know the enemies that will attack them even before they are attacked. Can we deny it that some of the sicknesses we have compounders have concocted and brought to plants were never known by them or experienced in the past? In the past there were no fungi attacking citrus fruits and panama attacking bananas in the tropics? Where have they suddenly come from in the 1970s? Coffee production that is the lifeline of some tropical countries is being abandoned for the farmers cannot cope with the rate of diseases spread. Where are they from when they were never there? Have tropical crops suddenly lost their vim to fight for survival?

However, plants produce their own cures and we have benefited from some of them without a word of benediction to them. Yet some of us are never sympathetic with plants and the creatures they have learned to live with in harmonium. Is there anything we could learn from the plants and animals? Let us look at inventions; some that we capitalize on came from animals and plants. Often we ignore them at our peril when they have our panacea for most of our needs.  We better run to them and listen to them fast than to be sorry and cry as we do every minute, hour, day, month and year after year. 

Viban Viban Ngo, Ph.D.  vibanngo@yahoo.com

* WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long-time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone?
Long-time passing
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the young girls gone?
Gone to young men, every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young men gone?
Long-time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the young men gone?
They are all in uniform
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long-time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long-time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the graveyards gone?
Cowered with flowers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the flowers gone?
Ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Songwriter
PETER SEEGER

PS: My readers are encouraged to write to me their views concerning this draft without fear or favors. 

MY LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH A COMMUNICATION MEDIUM CALLED FACEBOOK

[Keywords: Facebook, advertisement, alphabets, Arabic, bylaws, Canada, censorship, communication, copyright, English, etiquette, evolution, France, French,  friendship, grammarians, guardians, Hausastan, India,  Language, liability, linguists, media,  moderator, neophytes, Oliverian, parlance, pharming, phishing, press, rebels,  scamming, shorthand, spying, Sri Lanka, telephone, vulgarity/uncivilized language, world, writing,]

Introduction

When darkness envelops the earth, keen eyes see the real colors of true men. If you do not want to see savage justice of men in the 21^st century, do not take delight in having a daily dose of videos and pictures posted on the Facebook. This equally applies to YouTube, Instagam, Wiki, LinkedIn, Twitter and you can fill in the gaps.

Reviews

Apparently there are no rules, bylaws, laws, etiquette or guiding principles to be followed in some of the media enumerated above. You just enter; do your things whether orderly or higgledy-piggledy and get out. When you complain of the vulgarity or selfishness or what you see and hear, you are told to pack your bag and baggage and get out of there.  You may get out or stay at your own risk. I stoically chose to stay after being initiated into it by the mother of my goddaughter in BG. If I were being roasted on spits it was all my level-headed choice. You are asked to post what you have, say what you think and feel no matter how ridiculous, constructive or damaging it is to yourself, other peoples, now or in the future. It is a dungeon of canker warms where you do not care a damn. That is freedom of speech and the sort of journalese that we are to see from now henceforth as today everyone is a reporter, trained or dilettante.  When you turn it on you have emerging from all corners of the world all toms, dicks, and harries wanting to be your friend. Thus it is a good phishing and pharming ground for the CIA, NSA, All the spying and mushrooming marketing agencies in the world. The gallimaufry of overwhelming mega data traffic is a good sign for the founders or owners as they have audiences or clienteles that cost them next to nothing for their adverts and other sinister projects. It is better than the dynamic CNN that throws away seasoned readers every week, the conservative FOX TV, Al Jazeera English where the Arabs want to revamp the grandeur that was Arabism, World Press from the next nuclear super power Iran that specializes in bashing Westerners, BBC that is losing its initial uncensored trajectory and many more that may and do ask for an arm and leg to put your advertisement in the market. The danger of lack of filter is that adults and toddlers do mingle and you cannot differentiate adults from children. The insinuating question is how dare you minors enroll with adult clubs? Nothing is done about it and will not be done until it spirals out of all proportion, until the society has deteriorated beyond Sodom and Gomorrah where men and infants exchange pictures, drawings and videos of private parts, harmful sciences and paragons burnt and basked in public bonfires.

Fishing for Friends and Foes

The moment you are in, you got out to capture many friends as you want to have. As you are looking for friends, others are looking for you. The more friends you have the better for you feel fulfilled and you are happy. Happiness here is contagious.  Nonetheless, for lack of feeding facts, you venture into a no-man’s land where under normal circumstances you would not dare to forage for information whose sources and raison d’être cannot be checked. You will not mind being with glitzes or budding geniuses from India, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and occasionally mute East Europeans. Other forumites are happier when you are joining them with a galaxy of your friends, foes and your booties; call it new avenues or knowledge. They will benefit as they will have a wider fishing arena at no cost to advertise or do whatever they wish. There are others who represent corporations or conglomerate who masquerade as representing themselves yet they are all out to sound the inclinations of the customers so as to know precisely what to put in their itinerary basket of trade. They come to you on the chumming up day as your friends but that will be all you ever hear from them after the day of grace. There is no honeymoon period. They go straight into business. They want to woo you to gamble, and for men, they want to get them to gentlemen’s clubs where they can change ladies. This is not for free. It is business that must be sustainable. So, expect a fee in due course of time. With others, you will be with them for a year and they will never ever send you words of greetings even on your birthday that is glaringly put there for all to see. I have a phrase that best describe them, phishers, pharmers and masquerading enemies of friendship.

When you adamantly accept their friendship proposal, expect to have glaring cultural clashes if you do not want to be uncouth as some of them. I see very lonely people in crowds and very happy people mingling with welcoming crowds and getting into harm’s way.  I see confused people, enlightened ones suppressing their inner selves, I see gods, winged angels, and masquerading devils wearing green cloaks of amity using dynamites to force-enter peaceful homes in our hearts.  Some of their motifs are to destroy what we have built to right our wrongs and give us a modicum of heaven on earth we have been taught by Our Father to pray for since time immemorial. Yet we can only look on as their ways generate for us tons of money to keep some of us up with our kingly and queenly ways of life.   Often, the wages we have for our joining this forum is the fact that there are no principles or guiding rules to be followed.

Darkness of the Daylight

Is that the true manifestation of freedom we talk about in the free world? It is not all that negativity. As you will observe that we are operating in darkness and when it is dark, a keen eye can see the real colors of men. In consequence, the Facebook, YouTube, Instagam, and others space does not allow us to outline here are mirrors of our decadence in our societies. So we have to thank that global classroom media that help us to know who we are. We are by nature weak and evil peoples.

It will not be long before you are discussing houses, cars, motor bicycles you guys call now motorbikes, gorgeous blue lagoons in Greece and other serpentine scenic environs whose names the authors or posters do not even know and do not bother to know and will not know. Do not be over enthusiastic and curious as from the blue lagoons will emerge gorgeous and loving peoples, mermaids and mermen... Their bodies have no blemishes and plastic surgeons will go bankrupt in their field if we keep on producing elements like those.  It is because their pictures are burnished, polished and packaged in golden perfumed bags. Very soon the honeymoon period is over. Gradually it is tense to open the gift embalmed with golden coated papers. The revelations are dazzling or Pandora boxes.  If they do not suffocate you, they blind you. There is no win-win. Your McPhee, or whatever filtering devices you have installed to filter your messages and protect you will be unable to halt the phishing and pharming that is targeting you.  It all turns out to be like the new gadget buglers use now to enter all electronic cars. No car is safe and no member is safe. The replies or comments you send are sometimes wrongly interpreted. You are better off ignoring some comments or just click on the ‘like’ if at all you have time to kill.  Why? It is because you have suddenly become a square peg in a round hole. You may be in the wrong domain or you are a baby boomer hiding in children’s night club. If you still want to continue receiving junks, or tired, simply defriend, edit your list of so-called friends, morn over your spilling milk and stay. I passed through these to glean what I am sharing with you that may annoy or bemused you over my idiocy.

A lady once posted a picture of herself topless to comment. I commented that it had made me kinky and randy. To her, it was an awful reaction.  Remember that Americans have the eponymous “Randy” and in British, Canadian, Australian and Zimbabwean English that I know randy means eager to have sexual gratification, suffering from satyriasis, yearning to lay someone like a frustrated peacock after a peahen.  She was agitated and in wrath replied that such a reply was in bad taste as it was to infuriate members of her family that occasionally read her funny messages. It was a clear example of cultural clash. To me she was sensitive and I knew that it was to take me ages to try to convince her that I did not mean to annoy her. The next best thing that I could do was to defriend her. I did it and regretted it later. There I was missing a friend whose friendship I could only now conjecture where it could have led us to. There I was alienating myself from someone who was calling me a friend. With hindsight, she was not a friend but a pen –pal as baby boomers call such in the good old days. The question that I would ask is what would have happened if I had opened my heart to be allowed to bleed. It might have bled to death. My action was inadvertent or out of naivety. It had annoyed my friend; let us safely call her my pure acquaintance.

When many submit request to you for friendship or acquaintances, they look innocent. It will not be long before they are asking for favours. A lady in the States told me that she had just returned from a business trip in Lagos Nigeria. . When we next chatted she pulled a snake from the palm front. [This is an African expression where something unexpected suddenly sprung up]. It might be a jack in the pot. She told me that she was broke and needed some financial assistance from me. My head rose to Africa where one of the deputy ministers we were supposed to help his country turned round and asked me to lend him some money. I did not need to be told that these persons were telling me to get out of their ways. The lady requested $2000 US and I beamed and asked myself if I were already a banker.  I belayed the talk and did not defriend her but never chatted with her if she were online. Her story was fantastic and even Bill Gate would not have bought it. Gradually, I was learning the action of men when suddenly enveloped by darkness in a rich departmental store. Those of you from New York will recall when there was blackout. Managers turned round to steal. The baker and the baker’s wife stole. All saints with halos over their heads turned to be devils on that day. They stole what they euphemistically call bonanza.

New shorthand worse than Pittman’s

The parlance that is used is not even found in Mars or Pluto. It is extraordinary. It does not reflect the people’s profiles or the level of their erudition.  The English written is worse than what some Naijans, my Oliverians that is Nigerians, Indians and Sri Lankans speak or write in their forums and I often wondered if they were truly British Colonies.  I mean that it is worse than what one reads in the works of Jonathan Swift, Chaucer and William Shakespeare when they were gallanting this dusty earth and written English was not standardized or lacked accepted Grammatik. This was what Chaucer wrote when the Arabs and Turkish Muslims had barred Christians from going on pilgrimages to the Holy Land and the Christians in England had to be going to the Canterbury Cathedral instead:

Thanne longen fok to goon on pilgrimages,

And palmeres for to seeken straunge strondes,

To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;

And specially from every shires ende

Of Engelond to Canterbury they wende

At least we can discern what our good old Chaucer was saying if you articulate the words. Often we have to ask our interlocutors in the forum what the heck they meant. You need patience of an angler to communicate with some of your frinzd [this is how they write it].

At some stage I became like Don Quixote and told myself that I was going to don in battle regalia and have a go at them. Here I was debased to think of the unthinkable. There are no standardized spellings, grammar, quotation marks, and so on. Forumites wrote as they felt and their vernaculars can be clearly seen in their spellings. Jonathan Swift’s way of writing in the Tale of Tub where he lampoons the papists, that is the Catholics who were against their king for luxuriating with his concubines were even better. I comprehended what he was saying than some of the tommy rots that are being spread on the WWW on the assumption of anonymity. Some forumites were philandering masquerades and did not know that anything once put on the WWW remains there forever and is read by at least a million persons.   I understood all but my eyes are not dazzled by the spelling and grammar. I am instead stupefied.  When Swift discussed Socrates, Pythagoras, Aesop and others the messages were clear as this false page. There was no standardization but all attempts were made to imitate the convention of the time.

The parlance of rebels

The Facebook written language, if at all there is something like that, to me is that of rebellious neophytes who do not want to have anything to do with convention. It takes us back to the beginning where I stated that it was all wishy-washy. One is tempted to say that it is a deliberate attempt to flush the Queen’s language into the toilet. I was tempted to ponder that it was a new call for a new way of writing to be found. Do we need to use conjunctions to string our words? Do we need the Roman script to write English? A Saudi Arab classmate copied his English class notes in Arabic scripts. I was simply amazed beyond words when he read it back to me in impeccable English. I beam and said to myself that English could have been using Arabic script. If English speakers were using the Roman scripts and Arabic numerals why could they not use Arabic script provided it portrayed the message succinctly and without falsification we are talking about. See how awful it is when the French force it to their Languedoc. Let me be puerile. Varieties of French written in the Roman alphabet is full of clumsy hats and caps some modern users do not bother to wear or insert them.  Having said this, there should be no room for laziness in language learning and writing if not it could become an archival language only or torpedoed and sunk as other dialects that have died or are fast dying.  With this trend of thought, linguists ought to ascertain that learners do not give back to them ersatz stuff, written or spoken.

Makeup over penmanship

The founders of Facebook have put the value of looks over that of penmanship. In Jonathan Swift I could recognize panicky, prettie, prathee and many more but the penmanship of Facebook forumites is just sloppy and awful. Do not tell me that it is more of Pittman’s Shorthand? Briefly, it is an unfiltered comedy of concoction. The English language that is fast becoming globalized is being butchered and I am afraid that the guardians of that language in Oxford or Cambridge will not want to shake hands with some of the Facebook patrons. My observation is that English is being prostituted by nonchalant speakers and learners. It should not be the case. When you want to learn a language, you have to do so with all your might and master all its knocks and crannies. Sit over it when you graduate and never let it sit on you.  I recall the early days of the Skype that faltered when it was about to blossom when one communicated so well. Some of the users boasted of exhibiting our prowess in typing speed without errors. We bragged of chatting up with a dozen users simultaneously because of our touch-typing skills.  'Facebookers’ owing to their lack of skill invented their spellings; let us call them shorthand that could make lexicographers, phoneticians or specialists in Esperanto run helter-skelter. Others could jump from the River Avon suspension bridge rather than see what is budding. The following are some of what they write and I will leave them to you to decipher their meaning. Cu, u, Ru, Ur, gn9th, b4, ya, kk, ya, h r de girlz, boyz, grts 2 all, fer, der,  ba, gud, and so on and so fifth.

Facebook as a great man’s homestead

Let me be honest with you. The Facebook is a great man’s house. When you play any tone in such a man’s homestead, there is ever someone to dance to it. It is so because is it peopled by many a man with contrasted characteristics, idiosyncrasies. It is for this reason that you do not judge them by their color but by their content. That is why I have CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, National Geographic, and many more striving to have a footing in it. Therefore you have a club where the rustics rub shoulders with the gentry. You will see a gorgeous lady who claims that she is promoting information technology (IT) at some University in America but in fact she is an international slattern. She posts different pictures in which she is semi naked asking men to approve of her beauty. There is never shortage of men who would mark “like” several times over and over. One asked oneself how beneficial such rating exercises were to her pictorial prostitution.  Post an article that some of you may consider as gutter press caliber and no one will make any comment about it.  Is the reason that they are unable to read or they do not want to enter into any confrontation or academic gymnastics? We can insinuate more from their silence.

Burlesques in vogue

Nevertheless, there is something that you cannot seal your month from verbalizing, when you see uncensored macabre pictures or videos. How can you afford to be apathetic when an elderly couple is videoed being set on fire and being whipped by a crowd that looks like East Africans? They are eventually burnt alive by the crowd with leaves of eucalyptus. The pains, the anguish, the hardheartedness of the burners, the fact that there are children in the crowd reveal to us the dark interior world we are living in and where we are heading to if there is no restraint. Today, I am seeing another macabre picture of a lady burnt by her husband at several places by a hut iron. This is downright violent against women that the male dominated world stood and watches each day in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, The Sudan, Russia, Mexico and the rest and nothing is done. Do men really think? Do they all know that they are women’s children?

 If you think that what I have described is frightening, you are mistaken. We have seen fetuses dumped somewhere in India. I could not comprehend and I asked the person who posted the pictures and the author shied to tell me. One person in the audience told me that they were found in the dump yard in India. No name was given. I know that with modern cameras with built-in global positioning system (GPS), and the fact that dates are inscribed digitally in them, we could track down the photographer, the time and date where it was taken. Thanks to this technology. Then we do not have time to go through this exercise. Subscribers will do us a favor of simplifying location and dates for all of us if at all they want to make a contribution in our information broadcast. 
Today, I saw another that made me dumbfounded.  A naked man in some South East Asian country being excoriated stoned with bricks on the highway in what looked like India. From the ferocity of the attackers he was to breathe his last.  I held my head in my hands and asked what wrong that man committed that the police would not come to rescue him from the jaws of hell fire of what looks like school children whose hearts had been poisoned by their instructors and nonchalant adults. What I am painting here is just the tip of the iceberg. You are going to see pogroms with your naked eyes as you see happy weddings. Now I want to ask if Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations Organization (U.N.O.) does his work properly. I also want to add if there are NGOs interested in human rights extant in this world. 
It should be made loud and clear that any member of the U.N.O. whose citizens are being mistreated, be they the Boko Haram  followers arrested or hoodlums in Nigeria they had to be judged and sentenced and not allowed to be sentenced in the public by the mob that take the laws in their hands. If such were to happen as in Cameroon where the men in uniform sometimes stand and watch culprits dishing out jungle judgments  they could be expelled from the U.N.O., club of civilized men. Economic or some sort of sanctions should be imposed on such barbaric countries with appalling human rights records.

Exhume not the ugly past

If you think that was all, you are still mistaken. Women pose in their birth day attire or post picture of men having dalliance with them. Now there is a question for all of us. As believers, unbelievers, law abiding citizens, God fearers, and others of other beliefs, you are not allowed to show explicit documents, forbidden pictures to children. The Facebook, and similar forums are looking for money with blood, sweat, and tears without remorse as they know that the  burlesque the accepted subject matter,  the more patrons they woo and that is “successful” business. As there are no restrictions, what are supposed to be in the matrimonial bedrooms is exposed by exhibitionists in the global arena.  What are we teaching those children? Is that what our elders taught us? Or are you going to tell us that the elders or grandees are of the past world? Whoever told you that our world was different from theirs? We are a continuum and should strive every day to do all we can to be morally better than what we were in the past. I call those exhibitionists international prostitutes. Correct me if my definition is awry. Of what good is a Russian strumpet’s nude picture in the house of an American? Randy men may approve but the chances of such a woman being with a sexually frustrated American are one to a million. Also, once a sex worker, the tendency to revert this previous profession after marriage is high. You do not want to get yourself involved with such if you want to have a peaceful life in the future.  Following up is worthless speculation.

I have earlier stated that if you want to hide anything on earth for some person put it in writing. I tell you that nude pictures and videos of men and animals attract more audiences than treatises. Is this signally the death of writing as known since time immemorial? We are seeing the next generations surrounded by electronic gadgets that solve all their problems. They no longer read now or translate as Bing does it for them. Students cheat now by writing essays in their vernaculars and the computer translate for them and they pass on to their instructors as having done their homework. Let us leave that for another topic.  So the founders of Facebook must pat themselves on the back as having done their psychological homework before launching it and they will go a long way before it is competed away by Linkln and others. I am not saying that everyone should read and write. Reading and writing is not for all and sundry as university education. After all, a good number of geniuses, inventors and others with notoriety as Master Edward Snowdon who is presently hiding in an executive airport lounge at Moscow turn out to be college dropouts. Nevertheless a modicum of seasoned academics could clean the world of some of the misunderstanding and the filthiness that we see on the WWW.

Pictorial versus written media

I was inclined to say that the level of education had something to do. By merely looking at a picture, you cannot decipher the black boxes of what make the engines or computers tick. You got to go inside and see the nitty-gritty of all their composition and their working. That makes the difference between one who wants to advance and one who is careerist. If you want to experiment, post or share my write-up this afternoon and you will have not up to five persons browse it. But post a picture of German shepherds mating as on Youtube and you will have half a million viewer in less than one week. Ask what viewers have benefited from such burlesque? Ask me what you have benefited from reading up to this juncture. Similarly, what do slatterns get from posting their pictures nude or semi-nude and asking men to approve them? The men who comment are generally married and I do not think they would want to open their doors to strumpets. By making this statement, I am not claiming that whores are not normal persons like you my cherished readers but it is their dangerous work that is problematic. We may equate them here to smokers of tobacco who know the danger from cancer yet continue and puff and puff smoke asking us to give them marks for smoking so well. Or gluttons who eat like epicureans yet continue to do so in spite of warning from the surgeon general.  Whatever, God asks us to love them as Mary Magdalene in the scripture but do we do wrong things as our way of soliciting sympathy from onlookers? Then we are simply moronic. We have a choice.

Not all are casual or fair weather friends

Also, do not dismiss all that is there, it is the trend. After a while something is going to come up and many will abandon this euphoria. However be careful as some are really out to get friends for life particularly your East Europeans, Asians and Africans members. Getting a husband after Grade 12 may be difficult for some people where there are no arranged marriages. Some persons are not even comfortable with E.Harmony, Christian Mingle, and Roosk and so on. So do not philander and some outside persons are there with seriousness of purpose and they may hang on your nick even though they are thousands of miles away from Canada or America. Also, it must be borne in mind all the time that there are devils masquerading behind Jesus Christ’s or God’s or whoever their beliefs’ leaders are to phish or pharm you. They are angels with real wings who turn out to be Lucifer, sycophants. There are girls with three thousand friends. These were not twitters but real followers. Send them a message and it will lie in their in pigeonhole for one year without being looked into. When they are overflowing they simply delete them. You are only acknowledged as a friend at the day of inauguration and that is all.  Ironically, the girl or chap who has three thousand friends in real life does not talk to her next-door neighbours even her good old friends in her school days or if I talk to mine. Do not ask me if the writer of Tom Brown’s School Days ever communicated with his school dudes. That is immaterial.

Some Revelations

Now, I am talking of things concerning moral values. The mere fact that this is surfacing is going to offend many a readers, believers or unbelievers. I am glad there are some that will approve of what the pastors or priests or people of God are saying. The naked truth is that the road to hell fire is paved with gold and all goodies imaginable and that to heaven is paved with spikes or pilings. I see a brave new world emerging in the future and ways of communicating not referred to in George Well’s 1984. It will be more than three dimensional pictorial and a metamophosizing of persons you want before you. Distance will be out of the equation. You will touch and feel them as if you were with them but their real bodies will be far away. That will lead me to revelation about myself. My first shocking experience of Skype was when a mademoiselle in Taiwan asked us to make love on Internet. Today, I am still puzzled as when she transmitted the message to me. The conundrum is still spinning my head round after years as when I received the message. Now it is the Facebook, Skype, Instagam, MSM, Youtube, Wiki, Twitter and many more in the pipe line fighting for space as Christian fought for space in the past to get Jerusalem and as Boko Haram and Al-Qaida are fighting to throw Westernism out of the Christians, Middle East, S.E. Asia and Nigeria rightly Oliveria or the Northern Hausastan some of its elements are mourning over the fact that they have to deposit £3000 in Her Majesty’s Treasury when they apply for a visiting visa to enter the UK. The human being imitate as a survival stratagem. A million such things as Facebook will blossom and what will happen is still unimaginable. I will live that for those who are able to conjecture and turn to fruition their dreams.

Scamming

The good thing with Facebook is that you do not have a Mr. Abdoulaye of 419 from Burkina Faso, Nigeria (Oliveria), Mrs. Theresa Smith from Sierra Leone or Ivory Coast telling you that his parents were killed during the civil war and it was discovered that they had $18,000,000 US in a bank account in Geneva and they would appreciate it if you could accept to be the beneficiary of that amount by accepting to bank part of it for them in the North America, Australia, or Europe. They ask for your phone number and then an address to post you a present at you birth day. Those are scamming and never ever divulge such information.  Only morons fall into such traps. Having said this, people do try to pass viruses or bogus business deals on Facebook. Watch out for junks and just or never ever get involved as from the history of inception of Oliverian 419, no persons had ever benefited from it. Then you will point me one person who is happy with the telephone companies’ operating in Canada where a single telephone bill per month equals one month’s salary of a hardworking person in Congo. They all siphon money from clients who do not have ample choices and pamper them with apologias and persuasive arguments call business acumen  You can see the adage that darkness does not come before men clean their anuses with their hands that are clean during the day.

Discussion

The use of uncivilized languages, grotesque pictures, burlesque writings, paintings and videos have made me to ask if there were no moderators or if it was deliberate to allow subjects discussed or posted un-moderated. That also triggered the subject of copyrights.  Patrons who post some pictures are not the owners of them. They are pirated or expurgated. They stumbled upon them, copy and pasted them. They have never heard of intellectual dishonesty and piracy! Or is this sort of piracy overwhelming and it is now ignored since it is now dominated by the Chinese also in the manufacture of all commodities? Do they know the cost of composition or production of some original pictures or drawing or literature? The authors spent sleepless nights, days and even weeks or months to capture those pictures and patrons just copy and paste them and claim credit for them. How did I discover that there was serious copyright infringement? I would ask those who have posted the picture to tell me the story behind them and they just shied away. Other just thought that they were interesting after they have copied and added on some flourishes. They are not the original authors and this is still piracy or intellectual dishonesty. If we allow these to continue, would we not be killing gradually initiatives for invention or creation? Let us ponder upon this point. Have the owners of some of the media or forums ever heard of copyright infringement and that defaulters could pay all they ever earned for it?  We briefly mentioned abusive languages that often come up. Can one sue a patron for the use of offensive or abusive or uncivilized language, pictures or whatever against one? Furthermore, we understand that users are not forced and as I once complained and I was told off that I was not obliged to stay on Facebook if I was not interested in the content of what was posted. What of responsibility and liability in the case where a member is abused by another member? Will the responsibility be shouldered by the owners of Facebook or the member who had used uncouth language? All these could be things of the past if members respect one another and follow led-down regulations. Who will police such rules? The point is that there is no guarantee where strangers with greatly diversified background meet and one does not expect another to step on another’s toes. Additionally, if I were operating it, I would ask for people not to share personal messages. If one wants to chat with person A, the content of their conversation should not be broadcast to all members or associate members. That is irrelevant and waste of time and efforts.  Lastly, it has been observed that some members do not have domiciles and true names and write or sent their flowers and pictures of their dogs, cats, chimpanzees, snakes, stable dishes in members’ geographical regions and others anonymously. My apprehension is that those people may have sinister plans. I defriend them. What of other clients? A rotten borough  would be welcomed as one will be associated with a place be it Antarctica, Berlen, Durban, Hong Kong,  Timbuktu, Ottawa, Okavango, Vibank, Nanfang, Vladivostok, Brazilia, New York, Visale, Victoria,  Kumbo, Ngong or Dar es Salaam.

Finales

The message I am passing is clear like this day light. Whatever you do as your survival strategy, protect the future. Let those who are coming after you cross the very bridge you used to traverse the turbulent river of life. Do not cut the bridge after crossing it.  Remember to always have a place in the government for the sensitive and the insensitive. I learn one rule as a FIFA soccer referee not long ago in Geneva, that the umpire is there to protect the weak from the able-bodied players. Inventors and business persons, remember that after you the world will still go on. You do not even know the date of the big bang. Remember that the dinosaur and the dodo disappeared and many others but the world will still go on with more and better inventions than what you are toying on with now.   At long last I know what you are thinking: You are asking me what on earth took me to the Facebook when it was suggested by my goddaughter’s parents in Bulgaria. If you do not know by now you will never know. However there is one penultimate thing I will tell you. I went there to see faces but I can be candid with you that you sometimes see more buttocks than faces.

Dr. Viban Viban Ngo,

vibanngo@hotmail.com