Plant a cigarette today. Oh wait?

Passing through the urban districts of Europe, you wouldn’t be able to walk three seconds without seeing cigarette butts littering the ground. Of course there are cities that have an overseeing ban of outdoor smoking such as Amsterdam and in the near future London, how should the problem be solved in other cities that are clearly in the majority?

With over 19% of the European population stated as smokers, It would cause a lot of problems making spontaneous prohibitions. Here’s when a brilliant man’s idea comes in.

Ben Forman has come up with a novel solution to this problem. Dubbed Cigg Seeds, Forman’s Idea outfits cigarettes with biodegradable filters that contain wild flower seeds. What’s best is they don’t really require suiting soil for eruption and growth. Simple out-of-the-pack moisture makes up a perfect state for the process.

The big question is however, would people actually buy these rettes? Out of the 19%, how many would actually give a damn about what their cig butts are doing after they are done draining their nicotine does out of it?.

The price would obviously be more than the average, and the taxing… don’t let me get started. The only alternative is if this idea would be spread out to the already standing tobacco giants out of which few would actually want to alter their successful formulae.

Flax, cotton or hemp, wild plants would also be unwanted in most areas such as main roads and by the entrance of your home. But this is surely already better as the norm.

A cigarette filter takes up to 15 years to break apart (and even then, dissipate not degrade as they are a synthetic material)  and stats show that over 30% of overall waste is consisted of them. This means it’s also a huge problem for recycling.

 

Will they make smoking more healthy?

Another firm with this concept who are already somewhat in the low market, Greenbutts, also attempted to make the cigarettes healthier but as a fail attempt their answer was :

The fact is: humans have smoked for millennia. As long as people continue to smoke, we believe that mitigating the environmental hazards associated with cigarette litter is a noble and worthwhile goal.

 

What do you think of the idea?

 

 

>Tigran

Advertisement

Refugees or Tyrants?

With the current terror acts in Europe, from Paris to Brussels, fear and terror flows through the minds of people with no one knowing where the next attack would be and surely not depending on orthodox security anymore as they have seen that even an airport has fallen victim.

The question lacking a clear answer and solution is who are actually behind all these acts? Most shallow minded point their crooked fingers directly to the refugees, who to some criteria are actually potential of such but how ignorant can one be to point to the minority just because their already mechanized and frozen minds tell them so?

There have, are and always would be fascistic remnants for at least a hundred years to come as fanatics tend to roll the dirtball down the stairs of their generations.

These groups, about which the European press speaks little about, always wait for their chance to strike at their enemies [practically everyone] like your dog waiting at the edge of the dining table for that piece of chicken. My thoughts are merely logical assumptions that differ as they have been confirmed by facts others call coincidences. There’s no such thing.

The Nazis. A topic I try to stay away from because of its ability to be so cliche but have you ever thought that it has become such a taboo in Europe to even talk about them simply because the dog needs less people telling it not to steal the chicken and devour it?

The refugees are definitely a sad case and everyone, no matter on what political stand can admit to having at least some sympathy for them. Except them.

When the crisis began in 2015, these swastika followers smelt an enormous chicken moving in. Their tails wiggled just enough for them to have been caught in some minor events here and there dressed as a supposed refugee and performing the highest sorts of vandalism and violence. Trying to give the refugees a bad name and reputation, they sure did [at least for those who simply read a headline and magically appear with a fully eccentric opinion on the situation]

Not serving the purpose on informing readers but both myself and them, This serves as a poll. It would be highly appreciated if you express your opinion in the comments!

Tigran

Unconscious Mind

Do you listen to yourself breathe?  Now not the kind of sound you get when you breathe too fast or too slow, but the more spiritual sound you generate deep within, between the cores of your lungs. I for one enjoy it, could spend hours contemplating on nothing but the energy being built. It doesn’t really give out a physical sound and because of this you have to really generate one. It could be anything suiting your imagination. Something so constant you don’t spend your effort actually working it up. For example, I imagine my breaths to be waves rushing up to the shores and washing away at a steady, peaceful pace. Someone could use something else as we relate to the physical world more easily.

Although it could be called a cliche, and nearly every local yogi would instruct their students with the breathing exercises, this has nothing to do with yoga ( fuck that shit!)

The average man breathes up to 15-18 times per minute, amounting to about 20,000 daily. Of course it depends on a lot of factors such as weight and lung capacity which obviously varies from person to person.  If we were to increase those numbers to just about 5% more, not just our health and wellbeing would be boosted like crazy, but it affects us energetically.  Since we were born, a lot of things we do become controlled by our unconscious mind, which are all meant to be wired such as blinking, breathing and even our gag reflex.

Few know that this very unconscious mind has a natural habit of swallowing things and making us pay near to no attention to these things anymore. It tries to act as a defense mechanism. This is exactly why we get fed up of things, the same house, car, people, taste. They all becomes boring to us forcing us to search for a more, virtually better feeling either from a situation or object. Of course people say that if you are able to train this majority of your mind, you would not only become a better person, but might reveal you to yourself.

How to train it? It’s different for everyone and I’m surely not in the position to instruct as I am still finding my way. The most important is trying to control it. You would immediately notice you becoming completely different. That old car that still runs, you would never have a problem with it until it literally breaks down. That girl that you met at the bar thinking it would go a long way? It actually will without you falling out of interest. It’s the only aspect that could change you entirely. Even if you won’t want change, it would come and this time, be the real you.

Get closer to your sub conscious to be more conscious!

Is your Music Taste Self Born?

It’s one of the few things every culture on this huge planet share. You would probably never meet someone who doesn’t listen to any kind of music at all,  and whoever says it doesn’t preexist without man should open their ears!

Listen to the waves crash on the shores, wind rushing through the leaves on trees and even that static that our earth produces. These can surely never be mistaken for noise as these very sounds, are music.

Taste

Music taste is indeed developed, but not exactly how you thought it is.

Imagine you kept everything from your adolescence including that Salt n Peppa Hairdo, that silly nickname you were called and that sleeved polo you would wear everyday. Fortunately you didn’t. The only thing you did carry along with you is your taste in music!

You are probably already aware that there are things that are much easier to learn as a kid than as an adult (like, say, a foreign language). There is a point when your brain gets a little more set in its ways. But when your brain is new and still developing, it’s constantly creating new and different neural pathways to perform all the mental tasks that will be required of it throughout your life. So your parents’ musical preferences, whatever is on the radio, the rinky-dinky songs your preschool teacher taught you — anything is fair game to form the foundation that will be your musical taste. And your brain pays attention, developing neural pathways to recognize the music of your culture. At age 10, you start to bonk out the music that doesn’t fit in with your recognizable scheme of “good” music. At age 12, you begin to use those newly formed tastes to figure out your place in the world (“You will know us by our SPIN DOCTORS T-shirts!”). By 14, for the most part, your musical preferences are a done deal.

As evidence, one music critic points to the biggest music icons of the past 50 years to bear this fact out. Both Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney were 14 when they were first exposed to Elvis, and both cited that exposure as the fuse that lit their world-changing careers. When the Beatles hit The Ed Sullivan Show, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder and Billy Joel were all age 14, presumably watching it on TV.

Of course, these could be chalked up as fun coincidences used to illustrate a point. But think back on what you were listening to when you were 14 — is it that much different from what you listen to now? Maybe a little more juvenile, maybe a little more Limp Bizkitty, but you probably haven’t done a 180 spin and completely abandoned the genre of music you loved as a teen. If you were a hip-hop fan then, there’s a good chance you still are one now.

Nobody is saying that your taste doesn’t get more diverse though, as you might sit sometimes listening to a particular piece and telling yourself ” I wouldn’t have liked this some years ago, I’m just beginning to understand this kind of music”.  The simple answer is that as our brain never gets tired of this highly addictive drug, it excites itself from new patterns that are although never too far a genre away.

 

Your brain is wired to know “sad” and “happy” notes

You don’t need lyrics to know what “sad” music sounds like — imagine what plays under a funeral scene in a movie. Likewise, you know what triumphant music sounds like, even if the song doesn’t feature Joe Esposito explicitly telling you that you’re the best around

But what if you found some natives in the jungle who’d never heard music before? Would they know the difference between the soundtracks of a happy movie scene and a sad one? Yep.

In the same way that we’re all programmed to know that babies are cute and spiders are terrible, our brains are also programmed to recognize “sad” and “happy” when it comes to music. The two main chord and scale types are referred to as major and minor. Major chords tend to sound positive and upbeat, while minor chords are spooky and sad.

 

Tigran

Research from Cracked

 

Does Terrorism Have One Factory?

Radicalization, a deadly excuse for the weak part of man that decides to settle in his little thorny nest. The thing is that it doesn’t always point to terrorists. In different points of theories, everyone is a potential radical, it just depends on what type you are, and when you wouldn’t be able to place yourself in either, there’s a problem. There are three stated kinds namely the active, passive and violent radicals, sometimes the first and last linking to each other.

The Active Radical

This is when you don’t trust the system anymore, but it does not mean you aren’t feeling patriotic towards your country, in fact, this promotes it as you would always try to do something about what you despise in the government. Once you spot a protest in your favor, you would be the first to march. This can be the breeding ground for the violent radical, but not always unless things never go to your favor.

The Passive Radical

This is when you completely shut yourself down from the system because you find it so twisted, you have no reason to try to do anything about it. In fact, you never vote because to you everyone is the same and if you would be a crime witness, you wouldn’t bother calling the authorities.

The Violent Radical

This is when one takes it upon himself to make physical impacts in order to send clear messages to their oppositions.  Most of the readers minds would skip to Muslims straight ahead, but violent radicals are globally blighted, fighting the police or even the armies head to head. The truth is, that man always waits for a good enough reason to be violent. Take the Maidan protestors in Ukraine or the Soweto uprising in South Africa back in 1976 where the laws forced them to learn the language of their white, Dutch oppressors.

Sadly, this often leads to Terrorism when a group of extremists find themselves empowered to make an even bigger impact, and then again, not just Muslims but we have seen terrorists of South Asian and North as well as East African descent as well as those hailing both from the Middle East and Caribbean. It finds itself everywhere but latterly, the question was why are the ones that have the greatest impact muslim?

 

All terrorists see themselves working up for their truth, and as they know what they do doesn’t make any instant positive impact, they are forced to believe that it all sums up to a wider “victory” whether real or imagined.

Originally, the Quran forbids suicide and infliction of wanted violence, but with so much diversity in the religion, radical Muslim clerks summoned Fatwas ( Islamic religious edicts that act as an exception to the Quran) usually in purpose to defend those who are defenseless and to fight the invasion on Muslim lands. To some extent it would have had a point, but only if these people were in the passive or active radical groups, which one are they in? you guessed it.

Hundreds of thousands of boys and men who have been looking up to these clerks since birth have no choice but to follow the word with promises that what they would do was written in the destiny of their lands and themselves. How could they ever think otherwise when their only faith of life commands them to kill people, that even if innocent, are nuisances and infections in their path to righteousness.

 

Today, the numbers of these kinds are rising as recruitments are happening everywhere, even through the screens on the deeper side of the internet. Howtos on how to build bombs, and hidden training camps. I paid a visit to all these exposures and what I saw was devastating, so much intel anyone with at least a match spark of hate within themselves would be dragged in to cause a wildfire.

 

There were stories of an educated housewife living in the suburbs of Philadelphia, she stumbled upon some information on the Internet and decided her fate, she converted to Islam. Not too long after, she saw a cartoon drawn by a Swedish artist depicting Prophet Muhammed. This blue eyed woman made it her destiny to assassinate that artist, and what’s funny is she barely knew anything about Islam itself, in which if she submerged herself more into, would have seen the beautiful side of it.

Our Societies keep blindly fueling Terrorism in all it’s tanks, it creates problems that weren’t there in the first place. With shallow-minded stereotypes and racists spreading propaganda about people who follow Islam or those who simply have a Middle Eastern background, they create hate in places that were earlier blank. Giving the terrorists original excuses and reasons to execute more attacks. Take the Tsarnaev brothers for example who cited that the US invasions on Afghanistan and Iraq were the reasons behind their attack on the Boston bombing. See the problem? They are Chechens, Who in the time of that war had reported fighting against the Taliban themselves.  What draws them to the other side regardless everything? Those same Clerks waking the radical inside of them. At this point, they would be blind.

 

At the start of the war on terrorism a dozen years ago the enemy was clear and plainly in sight.  It was a large terrorist organization, situated mostly in one geographic location, and it was led by an identifiable leader.  Today, when the borders between domestic and international terrorism have blurred, when our adversaries are not only identifiable organizations but enigmatic individuals, a complete re-thinking of our counterterrorism policies and architecture is needed.  We built an effective defense against the previous threat.  Our challenge today is to develop new defenses against this more amorphous, diffuse and individualized one.

 

“I saw a baby make a boom-boom in his diaper, and I thought, I’d never have suspected him of being a terrorist.”  🙂

 

Tigran

 

 

Research from thedailybeast and Ian Welsh.

 

As long as there is man, there would be war.

 

Why Nigerians Bury Their Relatives Near their homes

Upon all the contrastive traditions in the culture of this land, this is one that I have noticed so often it must have had a meaning. Regardless the tribe and ethnicity, this was so much a popular exploit I just had to dig into.

I was told that there are multiple reasons as to why locals executed burials within their marked/fenced land, sometimes right beside their doorstep.  The first was because some families couldn’t entertain a proper burial and simply built their own coffin, sometimes with the help of the town’s carpenter at sometimes low to no fee at all(There are few who exclude the use of coffins as well). Then they would gather some tiles and build a little slab above the area where they would occasionally portray the catholic cross.

On the other hand, there were more interesting explanations to this act. I was also told that in some villages only men of the family would be buried near the house so their remains would act as some sort of protection to the household and it’s members. Some would also bury members who had little or no religious interests during their life beside their homes as most rural cemeteries are run by the neighboring Church and they felt that the corpse of a non-believer does not belong in those premises causing unrest to it.

 

Crossing the borders of Nigeria or Africa itself, a body comes within the definition of “clinical waste”.As soon as you mention burial outside of a cemetery, a great wave of learned opinion will strike you, coming from Uncle Bob, Government departments and everyone in between. It is opinion that has the majority of people over there earnestly believing that burial outside of consecrated ground is illegal, and opinion that makes one council actively help its residents if they want burial outside of a cemetery whilst another attempts to obstruct it.  Having their reasons of course, such as cases where people buried corpses which polluted underground water tables connecting through the city, this would never be the case in Nigeria, as it barely even has below surface systems and when yes, it would be just a single pipe running across entire urban areas.

 

Some people don’t even garnish their beloved ones graves with decorations and simple use wooden sticks and a stiff rope to demarcate a cross. These people are after looked down by others in the village community, but there are non-materialistic people overall, aren’t they?

Asking further about the depth the villagers dig when they plan to bury, I got a quite precise answer (surprisingly). No coffin shall be buried in any grave without less than 30 inches of soil between the surface of [the ground] and the upper side of the coffin, where the standard cemeteries would dig the old six feet deep ditch, but that’s because they plan to bury a second coffin on top in the distant future.

Discussing about all this burial business with a couple of kind locals by the shores of the lagos beach ( under fifty kilometers from the city ), they laughed and smiled about it thoroughly while I couldn’t help but open my eyes wider in unease and dismay every second. I could tell that they’ve been through a lot. But then again, who in these areas receives the golden spoon growing up?

 

Big thanks to the local guys who answered all my questions as I found no disclosure to this interesting act earlier on.

Tigran.

5.Believers

Religion.

Religion and History, two things that have never been directly thrown at each other and while every conscious human believes or is affected by at least one of them, they have become too superior for the average man to doubt.

People who currently have faith and belief in a myth are a force against the truth and life. They are the deceived, and if they pass it on, are the deceivers.

The people that think they are closest to God and doing God’s work are actually the farthest away, doing the work of the deceiver.

In the past, the truth could not be known by most people, so faith was all they could have. People’s faith in myths was necessary to get us to where we are now, but now that the truth is revealed, faith is just a bridge to knowing.  Personally, I have always thought about religion as a beautiful thing for one reason. People who are weak and have had no moral standing ( alias: majority ) were brought up in religion and used it as a gateway for having the knowledge about the quite narrow borderline between good and the bad, where our conscience draws it’s cards, but then again does one actually own one? sitting deep down inside them might be nothing but flourishing standards and an unconscious mind that needs no time to tell what’s write or wrong. Namely from this “conscience” are people judged and evaluated in society as one with a positive built one could never swirl to another path and vice versa. Who knew it was a neutral energy if I may?. We look at the news channels and our local murder case shows with the occasional thought and natural wonder of how one could easily do such things, and that is the direct proof that there is no conscience without proper upbringing or religion acting as scaffoldings during the stages of one’s moulding.

History on the other hand was written for those who felt themselves ultimately excepted from religion, but on the long run even it goes to roots of religious “facts”. Filling the spots and exceptions that religion is filled with (alias things the bible often cannot explain to the fanatic), it’s like being trapped in a room with two differently shaped doors that actually lead to the same following room.

Of course these days people become more and more ignorant of not just religion but many other diverse aspects of life, with so many distractions and renowned people to look up to, they couldn’t care less. At this point, these kind of people would keep increasing in society till a day when everyone would have the same point of view. To the naive and shallow minded, this is a solution to many world problems such as war, politics and economy, but this is false, as going back to our conscience, the amount of people with one would degrade. Leading to unknown events waiting to happen. Of course no one can predict so far, one can trust something that would actually always aid us. Statistics.

And actually, speaking of statistics, there are none for something like this as the numbers and control of how strong manipulation works are controlled by a single board of men on this planet.  Unless you fancy such a chart below as the predicting statistic of the century! 🙂

 

4. Tides

Feet sinking into the wet soaked sand, plunging yourself against the force of waves and feeling like your backside is getting roasted by the sun, these all point to the West African shores of the Atlantic ocean.

Joining my Family and their friends on their weekly trip to the beach which is about an hour’s drive, we always knew it was worthy of time for this triumph. Bags and chillers packed with aliment and beverages, we just set up base under a huge hut with benches which are just a couple of steps from the ocean.

First thing, we eat, although this time it wasn’t my idea, It was my favorite ( go figure ) then we went to dip ourselves in the ocean rather than swim, as the piercing high waves make it unbearably difficult to swim headward. My thoughts about the waves and what purpose they have in nature ( regardless the theoretical explanations ) is that they are not just a cleaning system for the oceans, but the water repels any foreign object coming it’s way ( energetically, not physically) as it was meant to be untouched through the nature of the earth. Galloping next to me, taking me out of my relaxing trance, were horses mounted by locals who offer rides to visitors with kids.  Ignored abuse of animals right there as most horses were just stomped upon and slightly trained with brutal methods,  it made no difference to the public as there were so many of them, people stopped noticing and thinking.

 

Spending a great time with my family and playing by the shore with my youngest sister, the nature really charged our cores with mutual happiness and warmth, something that these days is rarely acquirable in our times.

 

Not having to write in a cafe on this day was pardoned as connection to nature is far more important. Only the eccentric would check this out of their lives, and I always thought to myself, that I would remember and miss this moment when I’ll be back to the rainy, freezing Franconia.

Transit

After a splendid breakfast at the hotel that hosted me, I had enough time to go back to my room and lay around for more than an hour as I was to wait for the shuttle that would take me to the airport. On the way to the airport in a shuttle driven by a really friendly elder Turk, I was the only one in the bus. Taking the opportunity to sit beside the driver, I had the chance to take some random photos of the suburbs surrounding Istanbul as the hotel was a bit far from city centre, and each time he saw me bring my camera up to my face, he stopped making sure I got a good shot, great!:

 

 

Now sitting in the café beside my gate, and finally getting wifi connection, I just remembered that I forgot my belt when I had to strip it off at the security check ( really sad). I sit here beside two Indian guys murmuring in Hindi and the occasional English quotes such as “ Confidence is the key “. I always found Indian men to be really close to their souls and full of energy, I’ve never met one that doesn’t seem interesting, of course there are downsides but individually of course!

 

 

Getting ready for my six hour flight to Nigeria, Africa, I eat and drink as much as I can, as my guts aren’t really friendly with airplane food.

 

Sitting at this point by the gate with locals, I ponder upon the fact that everyone leaves their hometown in search for something new where as people from other lands go to theirs, everyone always looks for something new, which is good but not always, personally this same fact separated my family both extended and primary all over the world. I always wonder why people don’t just stay and build up what they already have, I mean people do this but because they probably don’t have the opportunity of travelling and so on. Once there is a chance majority of people take that further step. But is it always good?

2 Spontaneous

Sometimes you just have to do things the other way round ie without thinking, as naturally if you are as lazy as me, you would always give yourself excuses that make you believe your own lies. I decided to grab a ticket to Africa where my mother and sister currently reside. Spending a full day in Turkey on the way, I’m looking forward to eating/writing at a lot of doner cafes ( Turkish sandwiches ).

With a full month to spend in Africa, I would want to use this opportunity to continue finding myself ( as this is an endless path for everyone ). I believe it would be a great opportunity as the weather is more friendly than Europe’s at the time. No other reason others would say like ” It’s Africa, Im surrounded by nature and untouched areas of the world “. That’s clearly bullcrap. I’ve lived in Africa for ticking up to 9 years and I can say that one gets easily integrated into it, just as into any other environment, looking at the fact that Lagos, where I would be, is a huge metropolis.

I always thought that when I leave Africa i would never miss it, but I was wrong. I did, every other day i begin in Europe drives me into thoughts about the friendly faces, the uncomplicated people and cooperative environment. It clearly shows you that when people have more similarities and little or no gaps in classes or opportunities, there is happiness. No competition, nobody looking down unto another. Now don’t mistaken this for the city life in Lagos, just as in any other, it’s a place full of corruption, foreign embezzlers and so on, but let’s not get to that part as it’s not worth spending thought on!

As I leave this German Cafe, leaving a generous tip to my attendant as he provided extra care ( and oh well, gave me the wifi password without me asking ), I would go home, pack my bags and sleep the last evening off in this freezing city!