Fallacies

If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. – Misattributed to Joseph Goebbels (See what I did there?)

And that is the truth of the matter. People will believe anything as long as you keep on repeating it to them. Maybe I am tired of that and so I want to say it here. Before my kids get to learn of the lie(s) and spread it around the world.

• Month X has 5 Sundays. This happens once in every 823 years.

Yes, the first time you heard of it, you were wowed. Your eyes popped out. You believed you were part of history. You were the type that were stupid enough to forward the message that if it won’t get around to 5 people you will get good bad luck in the next twenty minutes. You knew that this was an impossibility but you still did it.

But the one for months with 5 Sundays in 823 years is true. It has been tested and it is actually known to be true.

Well, son. Grab a pencil, some A4 paper and a calculator and I take you to class for a minute. We say that an year has 52 weeks, 12 months and a month has 4 weeks. Right or wrong?

Right. Good, simple mathematics will tell you that 12 months multiplied by 4 weeks per month will give you 48 weeks. Those are then the number of weeks that we will have in an year if we were to partially take the above definition. That then leaves us with 4 weeks that are unaccounted for. Let us leave that pending and we go to the next thing; days in a month.

The number of days in a month vary from a minimum of 28 to a maximum of 31. But a week has 7 days. And if a month has 4 weeks, there will be at least 11 months in an year that have days that are unaccounted for. Do they fall in an imaginary week or what? That is where the 5th week comes in. If I have lost you so far, go back up and then leave a comment if you still don’t understand.

That then means that at least 4 months in any calendar year will have ’5 weeks’. And if a week starts on Sunday and ends on Monday, how many Sundays will we then have? 5 Sundays in any month.

By the same workings although with careful substitutions for days with weeks and all those other things, a leap year has 5 months that have 5 Sundays each.

And for any month to have the 5 Sundays, that means that month has to come around once in every 823 years (if we take that the months happen just once). If we take it that they require after every other 11 months, then we have an even smaller probability of about once in every 69 years. That is two and a half generations.

Next time you write that nonsense on Facebook, Twitter or G+, get your head checked. And as you move from the left to the right of the social networks list, get more psychiatrists.

8 Out Of 10

I promised I won’t take long before I update this dusty piece of the Internet. But it hasn’t been long seeing that I have done it before the 2nd birthday of this here baby. We are now going through the teething phase of the baby’s phase and I hope it won’t bite too hand on the nipple that feeds it.

Now that we are here doing this, I would like to start with some questions. Answer them as truthfully as you can.

1. I am currently (and confidently) employed.
2. I am currently employed in a position with a pay scale that fairly reflects
   my education, experience and talent.
3. I have a minimum of six months’ cost-of-living expenses in the bank
   and/or cookie jar.
4. I come from a wealthy family (not “rich,” wealthy).
5. I am confident that my* investments, pensions, 401k’s and even Social
   Security/Medicaid NHIF healthcare insurance will be there when I need them.
6. I don’t feel like I’ve dropped the soap in a prison shower every time I use
   an ATM.
7. I have adequate, reasonably affordable healthcare insurance.
8. I believe my best interests are being represented in Washington on Parliament Road.
9. I believe my best interests in the financial sense are considered at the
   Stock Exchange, by my broker, by my bank and employers.
10. I am living a better life than my parents, and my children will do better
    than me.

*My refers to anything that you pay out of your own pocket. Not what your parents, benefactors or employer pays for you.

** Taken from The Bosha’s Tumblr.

If you got anything above 8 (80% easy, peasy maths), you are among the lucky 1% that roams this earth. What does 1% mean?

It just means that they are able to do all that (and much more). They are not even classified as the upper-rich class. They are the wealthy. They reek of money. The reason I asked that is because people distrust the financial sector. Even in Nairobi they do. Stock-brokers, insurers and other financial companies will go under, with your money. Then you will have to keep on following up in the courts so that you can get it.

We live in a ruthless world and the financial sector is eating away at it (while the shilling goes down against the dollar). It is high time that we did something like what I joke about. I am not saying that we camp outside some office but there must be more that can be done.

Bad thing is that my conscience has been battling with me especially since I was trained in the ways of The Financial Deceiver and I am itching to one day go back there. Side note: The numbers are too good to work with plus The Wall Street movies (this and this) make me believe I can still do some good.

This marks an almost two month blogging hiatus following a promise that I would update it more frequently. I won’t make no such promises and I will see what goes this time round. Maybe it is high time I tried to spatter my creative juices upon this canvas that I have with me. A few changes will be made up here and I will try go back to the period of confusion.

My parting comment: When you cross over to the dark side, just accept it as it is with all the murk.

#NowPlaying Obie Trice – Cry Now

WORTHY READS

1. Longreads

2. Guernica

3. Nymou’s Tumblr

4. Threadless (because I want one of you to get me a couple of t-shirts. Leave me a comment to get my skinny details).

Nairobi’s Streets

I feel safe when I walk through Nairobi. I feel very, very unsafe when humanity walks in Nairobi. I feel threatened when those meant to protect us walk through Nairobi with guns.

I guess it started one evening as I was heading home from my university classes. The matatu driver decided to start overlapping. Then came the cash-carriers of Kenya Nairobi alias the Administration Police. They were in the mis-understooduch hated Probox and the matatu driver decided to come in between them and the bundles of a dead president and a former president. Please note that I was sitted on the left-hand side so I saw everything in HD (Heightened Disinterest) vision. At this point one of the AP’s (Alert Proboscite) decides to show the matatu driver who lays the law down on this side of town. He just took out his weapon (not of choice, I am sure) and proceeded to gently nudge the matatu on the rib. By gently I mean prodding like he was checking for signs of life from the ex-Japan people-carrier.

At this point I lowered my glasses and in the best voice I could, asked myself what Horatio Caine would have said if the AP’s weapon had received a sugar-high of it’s own. TGImF (Thank God It mis-Fired) would have been what the police commissioner might have said. Or not. The matatu driver got to learn something or the other and decided to keep on overlapping.

The next time I had this kind of an encounter was courtesy of the same men who ferry cash. I had just alighted from a bus and was waiting for a colleague to alight then we decide what direction to take. It is best to say here that I have something against bankers but I will refrain from doing so. It was at 7pm and we were at the point where there are so many people around that hour that it seems stupid to try and ferry cash at that hour hand of the City Clock. The Alert Proboscites immenjiateri alighted from there container on wheels and while pointing the (ever-present) weapon at us, shouted at us (I was with a friend, not colleague. A friend) to move. In that one tick before the tock, I saw my life flashing before me. It was not the best thing to see a metal-discharging metal pointed at me.

Lastly, are the guards at the closest embassy to where I work. Unfortunately that same route also functions as the Route-11 choice of getting into the CBD. They always freak me out somehow. Not because they have weapons, but they always look eager to hand over a few bullets to God using you as the courier. Last time I checked when that happens, they place something on you (not a wreath).

By the way, ili watu wakae wakijua I would have titled this post “Of Men & Guns” but then some of you would have thought I had joined a gym.