₦airaland Forum

Why does negative press work in driving attention and interest?

Anger, as you've said in books, is an emotion stronger suited for garnering comments and sharing….but other than media amplification, how can negative press drive online behavior of the same type? (The Donald Trump-like influencers and BuzzFeed/Gawker news outlets come to mind)

Negative press works in driving attention and interest because it cuts through the noise. Almost everyone else is trying to get along, to blend in, to find common ground. If you’re looking simply to acquire attention or take yourself from obscurity to notoriety, negativity is one way to do it.

I asked Mike Cernovich, the political agitator and online personality, a version of your question recently. His answer is worth looking at:

Allow Dana White to explain: “If you take four street corners, and on one they are playing baseball, on another they are playing basketball and on the other, street hockey. On the fourth corner, a fight breaks out. Where does the crowd go? They all go to the fight.”

We all love drama. It’s human nature. Sport, politics, reality TV. Those all meet the same human need. You helped write a book with laws about dramas and spectacles.

I create compelling spectacles using conflict.

We live in an attention economy. That means that attention is one of the most precious resources there is—we have more money, more resources, more technology than ever before, but we have the same amount of limited time. There are more people competing for that time than ever before as well.

So when someone decided to buck the norm and risk backlash or when someone does something crazy or strange, it cuts through. I’ve said before that brands/businesses that are boring have to pay a premium. They have to spend more to reach the same amount of people that an exciting or interesting or fearless brand/business might be able to reach for less (or for free). The reason most avoid this strategy is that they are not fearless. They have a lot to lose. They’d rather pay the premium then run an ad that gets them in trouble (with the media, with their boss, with their fancy friends).

When I was running ads for American Apparel, we didn’t care whether the fashion press liked our ads, we cared whether they were talking about them. Because talking meant free impressions and free attention. With my first book, I didn’t care about critics or whether the attention I was getting was positive or negative because my only priority was breaking out of obscurity and getting my work in front of people.

Now that I have built an audience and a brand (and have something to lose), I have the luxury and the obligation of thinking about things a little differently. Someone like Mike, at this point in his career, has little to lose and a lot to gain by courting negative press. If he were suddenly given a show on Fox News, that would quickly change.

There is a similar study on this about book reviews in the New York Times. For a first time author, both negative and positive reviews had a positive impact on sales. For established authors, a negative review had a negative impact on sales. It’s the same equation. For a first time author, the review is building their profile. For the established author, it’s diminishing it.

Jonah Berger has found that negativity and anger are the most viral and provocative emotions. That’s at the root of why the strategy works. Whether it’s effective or cost-efficient for the practitioner depends on who they are and what they are trying to accomplish.

Source: https://www.quora.com/Why-does-negative-press-work-in-driving-attention-and-interest

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One of the most persistent fallacies is the reflexive association of wealth with wisdom,” investor Ed Borgato tweeted this week.

Another is the association between intelligence and good decisions.

Not only are they two separate things, but there are instances where high intelligence prevents people from making better decisions.

Here are two I’ve seen.

1. Intelligence increases the ability to fool yourself with elaborate stories about why something happened.

Average people can often learn faster than the superintelligent, because the superintelligent try to cram the real world into the theories they’ve been taught, while average folks are better at accepting the real world at face value.

Here’s the thing: We judge others based solely on their actions, but when judging ourselves we have an internal dialogue that justifies our mistakes and bad decisions.

If you’re a fund manager who earned terrible returns, I may be able to instantly point out what went wrong: Buying during a bubble, selling during a panic, not enough diversification, whatever.

But if I’m a fund manager who earns terrible returns, I can tell myself a story justifying my decisions and explaining the outcome. “The Fed distorted the economy” I might say, or “Look at my model. It’s the market that’s wrong!”

Two things come from this.

One, we think of ourselves as less flawed than other people, because we rarely hear the internal justifications other people have for their mistakes, but we’re keenly aware of our own.

Two, the smarter and more creative we are, the more elaborate stories we can tell ourselves to justify our poor decisions.

A normal person could never predict 19 of the last two bear markets and still consider themselves a market oracle. You need an advanced degree and an Excel model with 100 tabs to justify that kind of mental gymnastics. A normal person isn’t capable of leveraging their portfolio 100-to-1, losing everything when the market sneezes, and blaming it on a 25-sigma event. You need a PhD in physics to convince yourself of that.

When you’re blessed with intelligence you’re also cursed with the ability to use it to concoct intricate – and often false – stories about why things happened. Especially stories justifying why you, Mr. Smartypants, made a mistake.

2. Intelligence pushes you toward the idea that complex problems require complex solutions.

Try spending a quarter million dollars on a PhD program and then devoting your career to telling people that you can’t predict the economy, or that they should just buy index funds. It must be hard. You worked hard and spent a fortune learning something complex, and you want to use what you were taught.

But some of the most complex problems require the simplest solutions, since simple solutions are the ones that navigate around – rather than trying to steer through – parts of a problem that are fundamentally unknowable. The brilliance of a dollar cost averaging strategy is not that it knows what the market will do next. It’s that it doesn’t need to know for it to work.

Robert Weinberg, a brilliant MIT cancer researcher, once explained why people like himself aren’t interested in simple solutions, even when they’re effective:

Persuading somebody to quit smoking is a psychological exercise. It has nothing to do with molecules and genes and cells, and so people like me are essentially uninterested in it – in spite of the fact that stopping people from smoking will have vastly more effect on cancer mortality than anything I could hope to do in my own lifetime.

The irony of some of our biggest problems is that they have solutions too simple for the people working on them to find intellectually stimulating. The same is true for companies that can innovate like geniuses but consider brand, UX, and marketing too simpleminded to care about.

Even when a problem requires a complex solution, the ability to communicate it in simple terms is indispensable to getting people to take you seriously. Albert Einstein, Warren Buffett, and Steve Jobs are all brilliant, but a lot of people are brilliant. What made them famous is their ability to distill complexity into something elegant and simple enough for average people to understand, or even use.

Sometimes I wonder: How many academics have discovered something amazing, but written it in a paper that’s so dense and complex that no one else can understand it?

A lot, I imagine.

Source: http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/why-smart-people-make-bad-decisions/

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The Oil Market is Bigger Than All Metal Markets Combined

Big Oil

Ever since the invention of the internal combustion engine, oil has been one of the most crucial commodities on Earth. Without it, modern transportation as we know it would not be possible. Industries such as aviation, aerospace, automobiles, shipping, and the military would look nothing like they do today.

Of course, as we now know, this has all come with some extreme drawbacks from an environmental perspective. And while new green technology and the lithium revolution will aid in eventually reducing the role of oil in transportation, the fact is we still use 94 million barrels per day of crude worldwide.

As a result, the energy industry continues to have huge amounts of influence on our lives. Special interest groups with a focus on energy have influence on a domestic level. Meanwhile, from a foreign policy angle, countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia wield additional geopolitical and economic power because of their natural resources. It’s even arguable that everything from the Gulf War to the more recent Middle East interventions in Libya, Syria, and Iraq have been at least partially to do with oil.

This week’s chart of the week aims to help explain the influence that oil has on countries and markets by using a very simple perspective: the size of the oil market vs. all metal markets combined.

THE TRUE SIZE OF THE OIL MARKET

While the amount of uses in one barrel of oil is quite incredible, we still need a mind-boggling amount of the natural resource each year to sustain consumption.

Oil production per year: 34 billion barrels (incl. other liquids)
Oil market size at current prices: $1.7 trillion per year

To consider how big this actually is, we compare the annual market sizes of all major metals and minerals that are mined throughout the world:

Gold: $170 billion
Iron: $115 billion
Copper: $91 billion
Aluminum: $90 billion
Zinc: $34 billion
Manganese: $30 billion
Nickel: $21 billion
Silver: $20 billion
Other metals: $67 billion (Including platinum, palladium, titanium, tin, moly, uranium, and more)
The total amount works out to $660 billion – just a tiny fraction of the size of the oil market.

Note: we focus on raw, physical materials in this analysis. We leave out things like gold futures, or alloy markets such as steel in this analysis. To get market size numbers, we used the latest price multiplied by 2015 demand in most cases. We left out the smaller markets for many other metals like bismuth, antimony, or rhodium. Exact sources can be seen in the chart itself. Oil market size includes other liquids such as lease condensate.


Source: http://tradinggame.com.au/the-biggest-game-in-town/?utm_source=Blog+Subscribers&utm_campaign=e7fd02242c-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_eb90516269-e7fd02242c-43344013

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PORTRAITS FROM THE PAST

Aristotle
OVER 2,300 years ago, Aristotle made major contributions to science and philosophy. His works have commanded sustained interest and have been widely translated and studied. History Professor James MacLachlan wrote that “Aristotle’s views of nature dominated European thought for almost 2,000 years.” Some of Aristotle’s views even influenced Catholic and Protestant teachings, as well as Islam.
His Range of Interests Was Vast

Aristotle wrote about art, astronomy, biology, ethics, language, law, logic, magnetism, metaphysics, motion, pleasure, poetry, politics, psychology, and rhetoric, as well as the soul, which he viewed as mortal. His fame, however, rests foremost on his work in biology and logic.

Ancient Greek scholars relied on their powers of observation, deduction, and logic to explain the natural world. Starting with what they considered to be obvious truths, they believed that if they reasoned carefully on such truths, they would be able to come to correct conclusions.

Guided by that philosophy, they did draw a number of sound conclusions—one being that there was an underlying order in the universe. A major problem, however, was that their powers of observation were limited to their unaided senses—a limitation that led many brilliant men, including Aristotle, astray. For instance, they believed that the planets and stars moved around the earth. At that time, this was considered to be a self-evident truth. “Both reason and experience seemed to confirm the Greek view of an earth-centred universe,” states the book The Closing of the Western Mind.

That mistaken view would have been of little consequence had it remained purely in the realm of science. But it did not.

Catholicism Embraces Aristotle

In medieval “Christian” Europe, some of Aristotle’s teachings attained the status of received truth—that is, they were generally accepted as being correct. Roman Catholic theologians—most notably Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224-1274)—incorporated Aristotle’s writings into their theology. Thus, Aristotle’s notion that a stationary earth lies at the center of the universe became Catholic dogma. The teaching was also adopted by Protestant leaders, such as Calvin and Luther, who said it was Biblical.—See the box “They Read Too Much Into the Bible.”

Some of Aristotle’s teachings attained the status of received truth
“In some areas of thought [Aristotle’s teachings] and Catholicism became virtually indistinguishable,” said writer Charles Freeman. Thus, it has been said that Aquinas “baptized” Aristotle into the Catholic faith. In reality, however, “Aquinas was converted to Aristotelianism,” wrote Freeman. And to some extent, we might add, so was the church. As a result, Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo, who dared to present observational proof that the earth orbited the sun, was required to appear before the Inquisition and was forced to recant.* Ironically, Aristotle recognized that scientific knowledge is progressive, subject to revision. If only churches had adopted the same view!

For more on “Galileo’s Clash With the Church,” see the April 22, 2003, issue of Awake!

QUICK FACTS
Aristotle had a passion for knowledge and “a deep reverence for the value and excellence of the universe about him.”—Aristotle—A Very Short Introduction.
Nature, he believed, has an eternal “Prime Mover” that causes eternal movement and that is good and exists outside the universe.
Aristotle is credited with founding two sciences—biology and logic.
Aristotle tutored a Macedonian boy who later became the empire builder Alexander the Great.

Many ancients believed in an earth-centered universe.

They Read Too Much Into the Bible
Some early theologians clung to Aristotle’s geocentric view of the universe because they read too much into certain Bible passages, such as Psalm 104:5. It states: “[God] established the earth on its foundations; it will not be moved from its place forever.” The Bible writer was not describing earth’s place in the cosmos. Rather, using poetic language, he was pointing to the planet’s permanence according to God’s purpose. —Ecclesiastes 1:4.

That said, when the Bible touches on scientific matters, its statements are accurate. For example, Job 26:7, recorded about 3,500 years ago, says that God “[suspended] the earth upon nothing.” Job 38:33 states that celestial bodies are governed by physical laws.

Source: http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102016169

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Government considering printing larger bank notes for holidays

Triple-digit inflation means largest bill isn’t worth 10 cents

At a delicatessen counter in eastern Caracas, Humberto Gonzalez removes slices of salty white cheese from his scale and replaces them with a stack of bolivar notes handed over by his customer. The currency is so devalued and each purchase requires so many bills that instead of counting, he weighs them.

“It’s sad," Gonzalez says. "At this point, I think the cheese is worth more.”
A bakery manager weighs banknotes in Caracas.

It’s also one of the clearest signs yet that hyperinflation could be taking hold in a country that refuses to publish consumer-price data on a regular basis. Cash-weighing isn’t seen everywhere but is increasing, echoing scenes from some of the past century’s most-chaotic hyperinflation episodes: Post-World War I Germany, Yugoslavia in the 1990s and Zimbabwe a decade ago.

“When they start weighing cash, it’s a sign of runaway inflation,” said Jesus Casique, financial director of Capital Market Finance, a consulting firm. “But Venezuelans don’t know just how bad it is because the government refuses to publish figures.”
Piles in Gym Bags
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Once one of the world’s strongest currencies, the bolivar has been reduced to a nuisance. Basic purchases require hundreds of bills. Shoppers shove piles of them into gym bags before venturing into crime-plagued streets and shopkeepers stash thousands in boxes and overflowing drawers. In the absence of official data, economists are left to guess what the inflation rate is. Estimates for this year range from 200 percent to 1,500 percent.

For a QuickTake explainer on Venezuela’s economy, click here
Until now, as the bolivar sank, the government declined to print bigger-denomination bills. The 100-bolivar note -- the nation’s largest -- is worth less than a dime.

A few weeks ago, however, the government quietly asked five currency companies to submit bids for bigger bills -- 500, 1000, 5000, 10,000 , and perhaps a 20,000-bolivar note, according to someone with direct knowledge of the order.

The request is for the bills to be ready in time for Christmas bonuses. Normally such an order takes four to six months and so far no tender has been awarded. To minimize time and cost, the government is considering swapping only the color, not the design, of existing bills, and adding zeros, the person said. The Central Bank said it had no comment.

‘Raising the White Flag’
Steve Hanke, an economist at Johns Hopkins University, said re-denominating banknotes is “raising the white flag. No one wants to do it, but eventually their hand gets forced.”
For now, many Venezuelans live a kind of paradox: they are awash in cash but can rarely afford to buy anything.

In truth, even getting hold of enough legal tender has become an ordeal. Before embarking on their shopping odysseys, weary consumers face long waits at the bank where dwindling numbers of cash machines have strict limits.

Data from the Central Bank show that despite the increased need for bank machines, their numbers have been declining. And whereas only two years ago a typical ATM was restocked every few days, now it occurs every few hours. In addition, many small towns have no machines at all and some 40 percent of the population have no bank accounts, according to Casique.

Permanent Bottleneck
Many, like Jose Marcano, a 26-year-old office messenger, find themselves caught in a permanent bottleneck. Marcano spends hours each week depositing his employer’s cash which he carries in black plastic bags on his motorbike. When he can’t make it to an ATM, he flies through stop signs and traffic lights, afraid of getting robbed.
A bucket of 1 Bolivar coins sits inside an office at a market in Caracas.

“Carrying this amount of cash is incredibly dangerous,” he said while feeding stacks of bolivars into an ATM. “You put your life at risk.”

While there are credit and debit cards in Venezuela, government data show that more than a third of the labor force is informal, meaning they mostly work for cash. That includes taxi drivers, street hawkers and a slew of service jobs. In addition, state pensions to the elderly are generally paid in cash.

Authorities have recently taken a small step to ease the cash crunch, allowing consumers to use bank cards to withdraw legal tender from convenience stores and pharmacies.


Feeling Like Pablo Escobar
Many say that will only saddle Venezuelans with even more bills until authorities print higher denominations.

Meanwhile, people like Bremmer Rodrigues, 25, who runs a bakery on Caracas’ outskirts, are at a loss over what to do with their bags of bills. Every day his business takes in hundreds of thousands of bolivars, which he hides around his office until packing them up in boxes to deposit at the bank. He says if someone looked in on him, he might be mistaken for a drug dealer.

“I feel like Pablo Escobar,” he said. “It’s a mountain of cash, every day more and more.”


Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-31/tired-of-counting-piles-of-cash-venezuelans-start-weighing-them?curator=thereformedbroker&utm_source=thereformedbroker


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Can someone one explain to me why the Clinton family they can do whatever they want but the media still cover everything for them?

Because there simply aren’t that many of them, especially by the standards of Donald Trump. People normally go back to 2008 to find her comments about sniper fire (one person replying to this question in an effort to find lies from her went back to the 90s). Meanwhile her opponent is producing a massive stream of lies. Politico clocked trump at one lie every three and a quarter minutespolitico.com.

Donald Trump lies. All the time. And fact checkers find no comparison between the two. Politifact’s comparison is instructive - and of course in favour of Clinton. The Washington Post, likewise. Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star has been fact checking Donald Trump and producing lists of his lies and false statements on given days - here are two of them. And the following graph was taken in the primaries.

Anyone who actually cares about whether the candidates lie know that of the two Hillary Clinton is overwhelmingly the more truthful. And as the race is basically Clinton vs Trump anyone who cares about the honesty of the candidates is supporting Clinton. Her lies don’t get ignored - they are all picked over because only by doing so can the race appear to not be between an honest woman and someone who lies continually.


Source: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-not-seem-to-mind-Hillary-Clinton%E2%80%99s-lies

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The so-called "men of God" praying for scoundrels.




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In Israel, every soldier is given, in addition to their soldier's ID (known as a 'teudat choger' תעודת חוגר in Hebrew) a small piece of paper with an excerpt of the Geneva convention. This piece of paper details what an Israeli soldier should say when he or she is taken captive, and what the captors are not allowed to do in accordance with the Geneva convention.

I can't tell you how many times my friends and I have laughed at the notion that any captor from a neighboring Arab country and/or terrorist organization will actually abide by those rules. Perhaps if they have something to gain, such as the release of prisoners, they may treat us relatively fairly, but otherwise...

Yeah, otherwise. If Israel does indeed lose an all-out war, do you honestly believe that all Arab military forces will be civil about the whole process, that they'll simply say: "Yeah, OK, some of this land is now ours, and now we'll just let you go ahead and live normal, peaceful lives"? I don't. Nor did the residents of Israel back in the time of the War of Independence, the days before the Six Day War, and during the first days of the Yom Kippur war. No, I wasn't there, but I haven't read or heard a single recollection which didn't describe in great detail the tangible fear of utter destruction that was felt during those times.

No, Israel cannot afford to lose a war in which it is attacked by its neighbors.

A clarification, though: not all of Israel's wars are wars of survival. The most recent wars were wars in which Israel goes on the offensive against terrorists who regularly attack Israeli civilians. In wars like these, if Israel 'loses' it simply means that it hasn't met its own goals of successfully neutralizing terrorism.

Source: https://www.quora.com/Does-Israels-survival-depend-upon-the-fact-they-have-to-win-every-war

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You want to be needed so badly that they keep giving you money.

Here's what the experts suggest:

Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.

I want you to want me.

I need you to need me.

So I spend my days scouring the earth to find things that I know will be helpful to you, so that you don't think you're being offered a cheap trick.

Today's topic is how to make your bosses believe that you are the one person they can't live without.

Or, at least, work without.

I've fallen upon advice from recruiters as printed by the Daily Mail.

I'm sure you will be find these suggestions invaluable. Otherwise, the people who made the suggestions aren't valuable at all.

Which could, of course, be the case.

Still, these are their suggestions with, as usual, the occasional comment from me as I sit in the balcony and watch the show.

1. Be The Expert On Something.

This seems fairly obvious, doesn't it? If you can do what no one else can -- or if, at least, you know more about something than anyone else -- you will be turned to as a so-called guru. The slight problem with this is that experts can sometimes end up like soap-opera actors. You can get easily typecast as the wealthy drunk at the bar who's wife has left him for a thrice-married girlfriend. Suddenly, that's all you ever are.

2. Make Yourself Known Throughout The Company.

This expert suggest networking till you can do it no more. Oh, you've seen these people. They're the ones who methodically wander about the place making friends with everyone and trying to become unforgettable. Sometimes, though, people see through this act and get bored of it. If you're going to do this, be genuine. Hard to manage, I know. Probably impossible.

3. Make The Company (More) Money.

Suggest a new initiative that will increase the bottom line. Yes, it might get several of your co-workers fired. But you don't really care about them. You're about you, your personal habits and the bank account that's supposed to finance them. Sadly, I've seen this not work as well as might be expected. I've seen people create wonderful initiatives, make the company money and still get fired themselves because, well, they just weren't one of the in-people.

4. Be Enthusiastic.

Oh, no. This one again. This expert explains that enthusiasm for your job allows you to be more courageous. Is that necessarily true? Sometimes, enthusiastic people so love their jobs that they don't see the reorganization coming. They don't see that others have manipulated themselves into indispensable positions while they, the enthusiastic ones, are regarded as expendable.

5. Be Constantly Vigilant.

Now this makes more sense. "Continually develop your skills, stay on top of your role and stay connected to those around you," suggests one fine expert who talked to the Mail. Well, yes. But it's surely less important to stay connected to those around you and more important to stay connected to those who wield decisions. They can be quite brutal, self-serving types. Fickle, too.

6. Hold Your Head Up.

This apparently means that physically, mentally and emotionally you must never let your head drop. Which might be awkward if you're ducking under a barrier on a construction site. This fine expert, though, insists that: "When you enter your managers' office, keep your head up, when you walk in at the beginning of the day and leave at the end of a day, head up." This might, indeed, make a good impression. It might also make some people think you're a little stiff.

Source: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2rzff8/:1wKGP579B:d4hyNujL/www.inc.com/chris-matyszczyk/6-tricks-to-make-yourself-utterly-completely-indispensable.html


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I was surprised when I saw that such a body exists in Ogun State: The Ogun State Independent Electoral Commission, (OGSIEC).

I thought INEC was the only legal electoral body allowed throughout Nigeria, I didn’t know they got rivals at State levels?

What does a body like OGSIEC do? If they conduct elections, then what’s the functions of INEC then?

Or it is Local Governments and/or Local Council Development Areas elections that they conducts? Does that mean INEC doesn’t conduct such elections?

If they and INEC work hand in hand at local or State levels, how? Don’t you think States can manipulate bodies like OGSIEC in elections, since they’re under the States?

Isn’t this another way of creating useless bodies that waste States’ monies?

Do all other States or most other States have something like this?

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The first video posted to the site, "Me at the Zoo," was only 19 seconds long

On April 23, 2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim posted the very first video to YouTube, entitled "Me at the Zoo." The video is exactly how it sounds: Karim at the San Diego zoo standing in front of the elephants and talking about their trunks.

Please watch the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw


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Some people wonder if the account about David and Goliath is true history or just myth. Did such a doubt cross your mind as you read the preceding article? If so, please consider the following three questions.

1 | Could a man really be some nine and a half feet (2.9 m) tall?

A scale model of the giant Goliath compared to an average soldier
The Bible says that Goliath’s “height was six cubits and a span.” (1 Samuel 17:4) The cubit in question was 17.5 inches (44.5 cm) long; the span, 8.75 inches (22.2 cm). That adds up to about nine feet six inches (2.9 m). Some insist that Goliath could not have been that tall, but consider: In modern times, the tallest man documented was over 8 feet 11 inches (2.7 m) tall. Is it really impossible that Goliath was six inches (15 cm) or so taller? He was of the tribe of the Rephaim, men who were known for their unusual size. An Egyptian document from the 13th century B.C.E. mentions that some fearsome warriors in the region of Canaan were over eight feet (2.4 m) in height. So Goliath’s height, while unusual, is hardly impossible.

2 | Was David a real person?

There was a time when scholars tried to relegate King David to the realm of myth, but that has become harder to do. Archaeologists have found an ancient inscription that mentions “the house of David.” Furthermore, Jesus Christ spoke of David as a real person. (Matthew 12:3; 22:43-45) Jesus’ identity as the Messiah is supported by two detailed genealogies showing that he descended from King David. (Matthew 1:6-16; Luke 3:23-31) Clearly, David was a real man.

3 | Did the events described in the account unfold in a real place?

The Bible says that the battle occurred in the Valley of Elah. But it gets still more specific, noting that the Philistines camped on a hillside somewhere between two towns, Socoh and Azekah. The Israelites were stationed across the valley on the opposite hillside. Were these real places?

Note what a recent visitor to the area says: “Our guide—who was not a religious man—took us to the Valley of Elah. We ascended a path that took us to the brow of a hill. As we looked over the valley, he had us read 1 Samuel 17:1-3. Then he pointed across the valley, saying: ‘There, to your left, lie the ruins of Socoh.’ Turning, he said, ‘Over there, to your right, are the ruins of Azekah. The Philistines camped between those towns, somewhere on the hillsides facing you. So we may be standing where the Israelites camped.’ I thought of Saul and David standing right where I was. Then we descended, and on the valley floor, we crossed a streambed, mostly dry, that was full of stones. I could not help but picture David stooping here to pick up five smooth stones, one of which killed Goliath.” That visitor, like many others, was deeply impressed with the authentic details in the Bible record.

There is no real basis for doubting the truthfulness of this historical account. It involves real people and real places. More important, it is part of God’s inspired Word, so it comes from the God of truth, the One who “cannot lie.”—Titus 1:2; 2 Timothy 3:16.

Source: https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/watchtower-no5-2016-september/david-versus-goliath-real/

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Perhaps the most memorable scene in the movie Goodfellas (1990) was not originally in the script but came out of actor Joe Pesci’s own experience as a young waiter who made the mistake of calling a mobster he served a wiseguy. “Funny how?” asks Pesci, as the mobster Tommy DeVito in the film, when Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) makes the same mistake of calling him “funny.” In the tense exchange that follows, which director Martin Scorsese allowed Pesci and Liotta to improvise before their genuinely surprised fellow mobsters, the result is not only one of Hollywood’s finest mob moments but a lesson in the role of laughter within social hierarchies.

In fact, according to a new study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, which confirms the deep human intuition of Pesci’s scene,

LAUGHTER SIGNALS SOCIAL STATUS.
Human laughter is omnipresent — occurring in 95 percent of conversations by one estimate — and, as demonstrated in Goodfellas, we laugh for a number of reasons: because we are amused, to signal agreement or defuse tension, or just because others are laughing. Believed to have evolved from the “play face,” a relaxed, open-mouth display visible in chimpanzees, laughter signals that a behavior is safe, even playful. “By using laughter alongside aggressive statements,” says the study’s lead author, Christopher Oveis, a professor of economics and strategic management at the University of California, San Diego, “laughter can render an aggressive behavior less serious and more socially appropriate.”

Several studies have suggested that laughter plays a key role in social bonding and getting others to like us, and when you are lower in the status hierarchy, you are especially likely to laugh, often unconsciously, at just about anything remotely funny your boss, professor or higher-ranking mobster has to say. But it’s not just low-status individuals using “submissive” laughter to ingratiate themselves to their superiors. More dominant individuals like Tommy DeVito also use laughter as a means of expressing that dominance and negotiating rank in a way that, according to the new findings, can signal status to your peers sitting around at the bar.

Laughter plays a key role in social bonding …
As their test subjects, Oveis and his colleagues chose not a group of mobsters but 48 fraternity brothers at a public American university, whom they divided into low-status “pledges” and high-status members, and then recorded them doing what fraternity brothers do best (besides drinking) — exchanging jokes and teasing each other. They found that high-status brothers were more likely to engage in “dominant” laughter that was louder, less inhibited and — somewhat surprisingly (unless you’re Joe Pesci) — higher in pitch than the shorter, more inhibited and lower-pitched laughter exhibited by the low-status pledges.

Even more interestingly, when the researchers played audio clips of the frat-boy laughter to other undergraduate students, the participants were able to distinguish dominant and submissive laughter, not to mention accurately identify the higher- and lower-status brothers by their laughter.

But do such dynamics hold true outside the frat house? It’s a defensible sample, says Tyler Stillman, a management professor at Southern Utah University who has studied laughter extensively, but one that still differs from the general population, among other things, because “fraternities can have clearly defined hierarchies — something one might find at work but not among friends.” The study also looked exclusively at men, something Oveis tells OZY they are in the process of remedying with ongoing research into women’s laughter. They also plan to investigate how laughter works in other types of relationships, including between co-workers or romantic partners.

Perhaps someday self-help books will teach us how to “laugh our way to the top,” but until then, you can still learn from heeding how your laughter plays into the first impressions you make on dates or in job interviews, says Oveis, including “how others might interpret the signals you are sending through your laughter.” After all, in navigating social-dominance hierarchies with humor, as Goodfellas teaches us, you don’t want to send a mixed signal about what — or whom — you find funny.

Source: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1XJyGA/:1Hx-4M2fW:c.DVeNxz/www.ozy.com/acumen/does-your-laugh-reveal-your-social-status/71963


Neteller here: www..com.ng

It's October, and there's a good chance you're looking for a new job.

According to LinkedIn data, this is the month job applications spike on the social networking site.

To find out what exactly employers are looking for, and what it takes to successfully land a job, LinkedIn looked at billions of data points and analyzed all of the hiring and recruiting activity that occurred on its site so far in 2016 to identify the most sought-after skills.

Ultimately they uncovered the top 10 skills that can get you hired in 2017 in 14 different countries.

"While we see job applications spike on LinkedIn in October, we know companies aren't actually hiring at the same rate until January," says LinkedIn career expert Catherine Fisher in a press release. "While some skills expire every couple of years, our data strongly suggests that tech skills will still be needed for years to come, in every industry. Now is a great time for professionals to acquire the skills they need to be more marketable."

Here are the hottest, most in-demand skills around the globe:

1. Cloud and Distributed Computing

2. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining

3. Web Architecture and Development Framework

4. Middleware and Integration Software

5. User Interface Design

6. Network and Information Security

7. Mobile Development

8. Data Presentation

9. SEO/SEM Marketing

10. Storage Systems and Management

In a post on LinkedIn, Fisher explains that the "top skills" list reveals several trends about the global job market, including:

1. Demand for marketers is getting lighter
While marketing skills were in high demand in 2015, "things have changed," she writes.

"This year, SEO/SEM dropped five spots from No. 4 to No. 9 and marketing campaign management dropped completely off the list. Demand for marketing skills is slowing because the supply of people with marketing skills has caught up with employers' demand for people with marketing skills."

2. Data and cloud reign supreme
"I smell a dynasty in the making!" Fisher writes. "Cloud and distributed computing has remained in the No. 1 spot for the past two years ... . Following closely on its heels is statistical analysis and data mining, which came in No. 2 last year, and No. 1 in 2014. These skills are in such high demand because they're at the cutting edge of technology. Employers need employees with cloud and distributed computing, statistical analysis and data mining skills to stay competitive."

3. User interface design is what's hot right now
"User interface design (No. 5), which is designing the part of products that people interact with, is increasingly in-demand among employers," Fisher writes. "Data has become central to many products, which has created a need for people with user interface design skills who can make those products easy for customers to use."


Please finish reading the article here: http://www.businessinsider.com/skills-that-can-get-you-hired-2016-10


Neteller here: www..com.ng

That's further education. There's no age limit for education. Commitment and money are the issues.



Neteller here: .com.ng

British Culture: What things can you do in the UK that you cannot in the USA?

Eat real haggis. The stuff they sell in the USA isn't real.

Drive on the left.

Hop on an open platform of a bus.

Buy and set off your own fireworks including skyrockets, pretty much any time or place.

Drink at 18. If the British tried to raise the drinking age to 21 the streets would be awash in the blood of dead politicians.

Get health care free at the source without ever worrying about whether you can pay the bill.

Watch TV without commercials.

Be graceful and courteous without someone assuming that means you're a wimp.

Listen to incredibly erudite and detailed discussions about gardening on the radio.

Find a builder who knows how to install and repair lath and plaster walls.

Live in a house that was there before Columbus reached the New World.

Marry someone of a different race without anybody finding it odd.

Be black without fearing that the police will shoot you.

Use rhyming slang.

Use the word wee non-ironically.

Get whammed at the company Christmas party without your colleagues thinking any the less of you.

Visit buildings constructed by the Romans.

Sleep in a real castle.

Source: https://www.quora.com/British-Culture-What-things-can-you-do-in-the-UK-that-you-cannot-in-the-USA

Neteller here: www..com.ng

Abcruz:
can one fund neteller with payoneer master card?

Hello:

The only available means of Neteller funding are listed here: https://www.neteller.com/en/fees

Regards...

I’ve seen a driver using a microphone and speakers attached to his vehicle, to yell at the driver in front of his own vehicle. He wanted his own voice to dominate others’.

It happened that they were waiting for traffic lights to show a green light. Once the green light showed, the drive took his microphone and shouted at the driver in front of him:

“Go, go, go! Common go!”

This reminds me how impatient drivers can be.

When a driver makes a mistake and you correct them, they curse and abuse you. Whether a driver is right or wrong, they don’t want to be corrected.

Even if a traffic offence is really committed, they don’t want to be penalized.

The economy is bad. Other drivers are factual assholes, driving selfishly, impatiently and offensively on roads. Money is hard to make. The roads are bad. People are selfish. The driver has many enemies, like Lastma, FRSC, VIO, police, Union and so on. Then why would it be easy to control one’s temper?

Most drivers don’t have placatory and conciliatory words – save curses and put-downs. It’s an environmental factor.

Why else is it difficult for drivers to control their tempers/emotions on busy roads?

Neteller here: www..com.ng

kentochi:
will need your help till i make first 1 dollar profit here thanks alot
i just open neteller account few minutes ago will fund it on monday can i fund it using the link you share with us here?

.

Yes, the link shows various means of funding Neteller. Just choose the one that suits your purposes. Here's the link again: https://www.neteller.com/en/fees

Neteller prices in Nigeria are also determined by forces of demand and supply.

kentochi:
like how much can i start with?

The minimum you can sell to us per transaction is 20 USD Neteller. Apart from that, you can sell to us as much as you want. Then you need to ask your bank to know the limits they allow for uploading funds from your bank accounts.

Thanks for your question.

The meaning I found on a Facebook page looks bogus and superficial to me, knowing full well that Baa Wasi doesn’t operate a Facebook account.

I’ve long wondered what the meaning of PASUMA is. 13 years ago, one professional womanizer told me it could also mean one kind of aphrodisiac. He said I should go to a chemist and asked. I never did.

In most interviews granted by Wasiu Alabi Pasuma, I’ve not seen any interviewer asking the meaning of the PASUMA, since that’s not part of his real official name. If I’d heard him being asked such a question, I’m sure he would have answered.

I got no access to him, and I know he’s millions of fans all over the world (I’m one of them). I think some of his fans here would know the meaning.

Continue making great progress, Orobokibo creator. Meanwhile….

What’s the meaning of PASUMA?

Neteller here: www..com.ng

kentochi:
tell me word

Hello Kentochi:

This is real, and it's possible. Especially if you're a supplier of large quantities of Neteller to us.

Steven Segal did an interesting thing years ago, to illustrate how movie fights are different from real fights. He staged the same fight, with the same guy, first as it would actually happen, then as it was done in the movie, and then moving very slowly and talking through it.

The first scene, as it would actually happen, you couldn’t see anything. Literally. There was a lot of blurred motion and then the other guy fell down. Everything was so compact and went so fast that it wasn’t discernible.

The next one looked just like a movie. You could see what both guys did. It was still fast, but not too fast to follow.

So no, secret agents don’t fight like they do in the movies. If they did they’d get their asses kicked before they threw the first punch.

Source: https://www.quora.com/Do-secret-agents-fight-like-they-do-in-movies

Neteller here: www..com.ng

Saveasoul:
Am intrested bro send me your whatsapp contact on icezychris1@gmail.com lets do biz thanks

Thanks for your question:

Please you can contact us by using any means here: http://www..com.ng/contact


Our WhatsApp number is: 07018086790

With humble regards...

MAKE AN ADDITIONAL INCOME

You can make extra income by becoming a Neteller supplier.

Even if you’ve a job or a source of income right now. It pays to look for ways to make additional income, no matter how small. That would augment your overall net worth.

The reality is that, those who don’t get broke don’t rely one source of income.

How can you make extra income from supplying Neteller?

There are 5 steps you would need to take:

You need to understand what is Neteller and how it works. Please visit this link:
https://www.neteller.com/en/about

1. Open a Neteller account at: https://member.neteller.com/signUp/?lang=en

2. The send about 20 to 50 USD, GBP, or EUR to the account.

3. Then, upload your documents to get verified.

4. Then use any of these options to fund your account: https://www.neteller.com/en/fees

5. Then you can sell the e-currency to an exchanger who will buy it from you at a high price. One exchanger that buys at a high price is: www..com.ng

For example, if you fund you Neteller account at N400/$, you can sell it at N430/$. If you sell $1000 to an exchanger, you can make a profit of N30,000. If you sell $3000 per month to an exchanger, you can then make N90,000 per month from that.

You can sell far more or less than the examples mentioned above.

In reality, your profits can be bigger or smaller than this, based on the methods you use to fund your Neteller account, and the rate at which you do that. But one thing is sure, you’ll always make some money from an exchanger who buys from you at a high price.

For more information about this wonderful offer, you can contact us here: http://www..com.ng/contact

Neteller here: www..com.ng/

7 Things You Need to Give Up to Be Happy

1. Your limited beliefs

2. Your need to be right

3. Your unreasonable expectations

4. Your need to play the blame game

5. Your unhealthy food habits

6. Your excuses

7. Your past

Please read the full article here, to gain more insight: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1FzdOE/:6Axb4Rwc:Y_Ly3Zxy/www.mydomaine.com/how-to-be-happy-in-life

Neteller here: www..com.ng

Not everybody is a people person.

If this sounds like you, your best approach for finding a job could be searching for work where people skills aren't all that necessary.

To find these jobs, we averaged data from the Occupational Information Network, or O*NET, a US Department of Labor database full of detailed information on 974 occupations.

O*NET rates each occupation on a scale from zero to 100 on how much a job requires workers to be in contact with others and how much a job requires workers to be pleasant with others. We averaged these ratings to find which jobs had the highest overall score.

While people who hold these positions aren't necessarily standoffish, the following jobs got the lowest average scores and therefore require minimal good-natured interaction with others:


Foundry mold and coremakers
They make or form wax or sand cores or molds used in the production of metal castings in foundries.

Required sociability score: 58

Watch repairers
They repair, clean, and adjust mechanisms of timing instruments, such as watches and clocks.

Required sociability score: 58

Quarry rock splitters
They separate blocks of rough dimension stone from quarry mass using jackhammer and wedges.

Required sociability score: 58


Agricultural equipment operators
They drive and control farm equipment to till soil and to plant, cultivate, and harvest crops and may perform tasks like as crop baling or hay bucking.

Required sociability score: 58

Mathematicians
They conduct research to develop and understand mathematical principles. They also analyze data and apply mathematical techniques to help solve real-world problems.

Required sociability score: 58

Economists
They conduct research, prepare reports, or formulate plans to address economic problems related to the production and distribution of goods and services or monetary and fiscal policy.

Required sociability score: 57.5


Potters
They operate production machines such as pug mill, jigger machine, or potter's wheel to process clay in the manufacture of ceramic, pottery, and stoneware products.

Required sociability score: 57

Transportation-equipment painters
They operate or tend painting machines to paint surfaces of transportation equipment like automobiles, buses, trucks, trains, boats, and airplanes.

Required sociability score: 56.5

Forging-machine setters, operators, and tenders
They set up, operate, or tend forging machines to taper, shape, or form metal or plastic parts.

Required sociability score: 56.5


Fallers
They ue axes or chainsaws to fell trees using knowledge of tree characteristics and cutting techniques to control direction of fall and minimize tree damage.

Required sociability score: 56.5

Hand-grinding and polishing workers
They grind, sand, or polish — using hand tools or hand-held power tools — a variety of metal, wood, stone, clay, plastic, or glass objects.

Required sociability score: 56

Geological sample-test technicians
They test or analyze geological samples, crude oil, or minerals to the detect presence of petroleum, gas, or mineral deposits.

Required sociability score: 56


Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/best-jobs-for-antisocial-people-2016-10/#foundry-mold-and-coremakers-1

Neteller here: www..com.ng

If the AK-47 is supposedly the best firearm, why doesn't the US military use it?

The AK-47 is cheap, very reliable, and simple to train and maintain. It has been said the first child's weapon should be a AK-47, because almost impossible make it not work.

It is very effective in combat, but not the best in every way. Most weapons from the M-16 forward are lighter that. The AK-47 is good at short range, but not longer ranges, as it is not accurate at longer ranges compared to other weapons.

With a M-16, with the same weight, a soldier could carry about twice as many rounds as a soldier with a AK.

One big problem with the entire AK series is it is impossible to make a internal silenced version of them. This is how you do it.

Add a foot or more to the end of it.

Silencers are useful in mainly twice situations, long ranges, or urban close combat, like inside a building. The AK is already bad at long range, and a extra foot isn't what you want on your weapon inside a building during combat.


Source: https://www.quora.com/If-the-AK-47-is-supposedly-the-best-firearm-why-doesnt-the-US-military-use-it

Neteller here: www..com.ng

At least, let us read his reasons before we start judging....

Neteller here: Neteller here: .com.ng

If you use our Web statistics system to track visitors to your site, you'll see references to "hits", "pages viewed", "unique visitors", "authenticated visitors", "entry pages", "exit pages", "spiders" and "robots".

A hit is counted each time someone views a file on your Web site. A single Web page can be made up of many files. For example, if your main Web page is one HTML file, ten image files, a JavaScript file and a CSS stylesheet file, that would show as 13 hits when people view that page. If you're just interested in how many people are looking at your site, you probably don't care about hits. Each request counts as a "hit" regardless of whether it came from a person, a search engine, an RSS reader, or any other source.

Pages viewed is the number of HTML pages or scripts that your visitors have looked at. A "page" is a hit that isn't an image, JavaScript or CSS file and which wasn't loaded by a search engine robot.

A visit is one or more pages viewed by one person. If someone goes to your site and looks at five different pages, for example, that counts as a single visit. If they return the next day and view more pages, that’s a second visit.

Unique visitors is the approximate number of different people who visited your site. It includes human visitors, but usually excludes search engine robots and other automated systems. Visitors are tracked by the IP address of the computer the person is using. If the same IP address returns to view your site within the month, that will add to hits and pages, but won't increase the number of unique visitors. Note that the number of unique visitors is only a rough estimate: the IP address of some visitors could change between visits (depending on their type of network connection), and different visitors can sometimes appear to share the same IP address if they're behind a "proxy server" at a large company or ISP.

Authenticated visitors are people who visited a password protected directory on your Web site. If you don't have any password protected directories, you will have zero authenticated visitors.

A page is counted as an entry page if it's the first page viewed by a visitor. Similarly, an exit page is the last page viewed by that visitor. You can use this information to tell which pages people use to enter and leave your site.

Robots and Spiders are computers that examine the content of your Web site, rather than human viewers. For example, when Google examines your Web site to index the content, that will be shown as a robot or spider.

The countries shown by the statistics program are calculated by determining which ISP a visitor is using, then checking the country of that ISP.

The bandwidth listed is the amount of data transferred when visitors look at your site. Our page about bandwidth explains more.

The number of pages and hits in the Connect to site from section count links from other sites and exclude clicks on links within your own site. So if someone reaches your site as a result of a link on another site, then views two more pages on your site, that will show as one page in this section, not three.

How accurate are the statistics?
They're pretty good, but not perfect.

A visitor's IP address may change between visits, and some visitors go through "proxy servers" — computers at large ISPs such as AOL that can "cache" their own copy of your Web site files. For example, it's possible for two AOL users to view your Web site, but for AOL to show the second person a "cached" copy of what the first person saw without connecting to your site again. That would show as a single visit in the statistics.

In addition, the listings of what IP addresses belong to which ISP, and which country that ISP is in, can sometimes be inaccurate.

Because of potential problems like this, your Web site statistics (like all statistics) should be considered useful information that might not be accurate down to the last detail.


Source: https://support.tigertech.net/stats-hits

Neteller here: www..com.ng

Diamond Bank SUSPENDS INTERNATIONAL CARD USAGE FROM 13/10/2016

UBN SUSPENDS INTERNATIONAL CARD USAGE FROM 13/10/2016

GTB SUSPENDS INTERNATIONAL ATM CARD USAGE FROM 14/10/2016

Access Bank SUSPENDS INTERNATIONAL CARD USAGE FROM 14/10/2016

Ecobank SUSPENDS INTERNATIONAL CARD USAGE FROM 14/10/2016

UBA SUSPENDS INTERNATIONAL CARD USAGE FROM 15/10/2016

Stanbic SUSPENDS INTERNATIONAL CARD USAGE FROM 18/10/2016

I saw this disturbing news on: Abokifx.com.

NB: When I chatted with my bank (name withheld), they said the decision wasn’t from CBN, but it was necessitated by economic realities. Cards can still be used for online purchases and funding, but the limits are severe and ridiculous. Please check with your bank.

Gone are the days when you could spend up to 50,000 USD per annum online. Things might improve in future and limits could be raised.

They’re fighting corruption, but they’re also ruining legitimate businesses. This is one of the major reasons why private companies are collapsing.

This is a time of change indeed!

Neteller here: www..com.ng

Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway is deteriorating everyday. Things are getting worse and worse and worse, especially starting from Toll Gate to the way to Ifo.

Toll Gate, Sango, Joju, Connoils/Singer, Owode, Ilogbo, and other areas have become motorists’ nightmares.

The part of the expressway from Toll Gate, going into Lagos, are still a kinda better when compared to the part going into Ogun State. The part in Lagos still get some patches in a few cases, and that improves some statistics.

What do you want Ogun State to do? The government is heavily in debt, and most of the road projects they started are still uncompleted. The State is paying salaries through her nose.

Some politicians and sycophant media may deny this, but that’s the realities. So they can’t patch or repair Federal government roads in their State. I’m sick of hearing politicians saying all is well when we know that’s a lie

The major cause of traffic deadlocks on the roads are ever widening and ever increasing potholes that also gather pools of water during rainfalls. I don’t think a car should take more than 30 minutes to get to Ifo from Toll Gate, if the road is good. But it can take a car more than 4 hours now.

This problem has been going for many years and nothing is being done. They can steal public funds to build many useless houses they don’t really need and acquire vast property that others would eventually snatch after their deaths, but they can’t use public funds to repair public roads.

Is FERMA (Federal Road Maintenance Agency) still existing? The last time I saw them on the roads constantly was during the era of Obasanjo. When the president, ministers and other political dignitaries visit Abeokuta, they go with helicopters, and so, they don’t experience what we experience.

On October 9, the condition was so worse that, Sango Bridge was still being overloaded with vehicles in deadlocks when I was going in the afternoon and when I was coming back 7 hours later, late in the night. As usual, I had to escape on a bike. Those who go out with their cars are in trouble.

To go to Ifo and its environs… Even Abeokuta, motorists got no choice, except to face that deadly road. Owode area is one of the worst, followed by Joju area.

Accidents here and there, owing to bad roads, plus lives lost (at least, lives are now very cheap in Nigeria). The ordeal continues.


Nothing is done. I don’t think nothing will be done sooner. The Minister of Works won’t be able to do anything beyond monies allocated to his ministries. The Disappointer-In-Chief at Abuja doesn’t bloody care. That’s not his States or roads.

The government doesn’t recognize the fact that those areas are heavily populated. They’re neglected. After all, people opened up new sites and built their houses without the government.

I don’t beg the government to do the road. I hate those who do their normal duty and still publicize it as if doing people a favor. What’s their job in the first place?

If you go over those bad roads, prepare for aches all over your body and take some balm or painkillers when you get home.

The Federal Government has neglected Lagos-Abeokuta Express Road. May thanks to them for their neglect while commuters continue to suffer.

Neteller here: www..com.ng