The Zizaplex, 3333 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA (2025)

11/02/2025

A lot has been said about Trump’s “Why are you killing Christians?” question to Nigeria, and his threat last week to send U.S. troops to Nigeria — and, as usual, people are split into extremes. I wrote this piece to slow things down a bit, look at the facts, and listen to every side of this painful, complicated issue, and hopefully find solutions. Here is the link https://zizaplex.quora.com/Why-are-you-killing-Christians-Understanding-Trump-s-Nigeria-declaration-and-the-debate-over-the-targeting-of-Christ

11/02/2025

President Donald Trump says Nigeria must end the slaughter of Christians or face some very tough consequences.

10/17/2025

What a miracle!

09/28/2025

Separation Without Suppression: Why Both Religious and Secular Powers Must Fear Merging with the State.

I recently engaged with participants in a fiercely anti-religion thread where people, mainly atheists, argued that so-called Christian powers in the past tortured and murdered many in the name of their religion. They shared several memes (three of which I have shared here, and this would not be the first time most of us are seeing these gory images) with which they mocked Christians.

Their argument centered on the need for the separation of Church and State.

It often sounds as if only those against religion are the ones advocating for this separation. Yet, I’ve often noted that some of their arguments rest on logical fallacies or philosophically loaded assumptions.

For example, some in this camp conflate separation (of Church and State) with suppression (of the Church) as though keeping religion out of government requires silencing religion altogether.

Some will quickly object: “No atheist wants to silence religion altogether.” Yet in practice, many betray that very intent. They argue, for example, that churches should be directly taxed by the government, which not only undermines the principle of separation, but also hands the State undue leverage over religion. Others insist it is society’s responsibility, in reality, through government agencies to “put religion in check.”

This position is riddled with contradictions. On one hand, they claim to want freedom from religious interference in government; on the other, they invite government to police religious life. Ironically, when taken to that extreme, such thinking mirrors the very error they condemn in religious powers of the past: using ideology as a weapon to suppress others.

Who Really Wants the Separation More?

In reality, it has often been Christians themselves, and indeed the majority of us, who most strongly fear the merging of Church and State. History taught us why: whenever faith and political power fused, the result was typically corruption, coercion, and violence.

But, I'll show just a glimpse of history here: While religious tyranny has scarred history, atheist regimes have also produced enormous suffering when they bound absolute state power to ideology:

Stalin (Soviet Union): Enforced state atheism, persecuted clergy, and starved millions through collectivization and gulags. Death toll: 20–30 million.

Mao Zedong (China): Declared religion “poison,” destroyed temples, and unleashed policies that killed 40–70 million.

Pol Pot (Cambodia): Brutally suppressed all faiths, executing monks, priests, and ordinary believers. Around 1.7–2 million died.

Enver Hoxha (Albania): Made Albania the first officially atheist state, outlawing religion entirely. Thousands executed or tortured.

The real danger, then, is not religion itself, nor atheism itself, but any ideology— religious or secular—when it merges with unchecked political power and demands absolute conformity. This is precisely why the separation of Church and State matters, and why people of faith, especially Christians who remember history, have so often insisted on it.

Cheers and God's blessings and protection to all: It was a very blessed Sabbath experience today.

09/24/2025

Pascal’s Triangle: Better if European than Chinese or Muslim?

While debating with some physics and math enthusiasts in a forum yesterday, I raised an old irritation that has haunted me since my student days.

Please bear with me, even if you are not a maths person. I will not bore you with numbers; you’ll get the whole gist, I promise.

Our discussion was about Pascal’s Triangle—a subject my professor once brushed aside in a History of Science & Technology class—an elective I took during a master’s degree program. He dismissed it without a thought, as if the question of its origin were discourteous. I swallowed my doubts then, not because I was convinced, but because I didn’t want to risk failing the course. As the only black in the class, I already stood out, and I already had some issues with the teacher.

Well, most of us remember Pascal’s Triangle from high school (add maths) or university: that tidy pyramid of numbers shaping probability, combinations, and patterns. But I have been asking: why Pascal? Why not Yang Hui’s Triangle or Omar Khayyam’s Triangle? After all, Chinese and Persian scholars studied this arrangement 400 years before Blaise Pascal was even born in France. As China has become a more powerful and assertive nation today, they are insisting on the Yang Hui’s name. Yet, outside China, it’s Pascal.

And this is no accident. It is a pattern.

Take Pythagoras’ theorem — the famous geometric rule that helps us resolve so many triangle problems. We all grew up thinking Pythagoras of Greece discovered it. Yet Babylonian tablets and Indian sutras recorded the formula centuries earlier.

Or consider Newton’s laws. We exalt Sir Isaac Newton of England as the genius who explained inertia and motion. However, long before him, Islamic scholars such as Ibn al-Haytham and Indian thinkers had already described many of these principles.

Or the word algorithm. Today, this mathematical principle is a sterile term in maths and computer science. But it has been stripped of its history. Yes, it comes directly from Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, the brilliant Persian mathematician whose name was turned into a word but whose story was erased.

Even zero — a number so basic we forget it had to be invented. Zero, as a number, was crafted by Indian mathematician and astronomer Brahmagupta, refined by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, and only later carried to Europe. It was after the problem of zero was resolved that higher levels of maths and physics could progress. Yet Europe wears the crown for the “birth of modern mathematics.”

There are countless more examples. But the point is the same.

Let me mention just one more thing.

Do you know that prefabrication of building components (“prefab”) is not entirely a Western engineering concept? I once worked on a structural engineering project that demonstrated that the way our forefathers built their houses in Igboland was essentially what we would call prefab today (I’m not saying that our forefathers invented prefabrication; it’s a construction method that evolved everywhere).

Now, here is the question I seriously want to ask: why do ideas only seem to become “universal” or “standard” once Europeans name them? And equally important: why did Asia, the Islamic world, and Africa allow their own intellectual treasures to be renamed, repackaged, and now remembered as someone else’s?

When you have time to kill, think about who built the pyramids of Egypt, but read on; that’s a topic for another day.

Yes, colonialism, translation, and Eurocentric education systems play their part. But let’s be blunt: if you do not control the story of your knowledge, someone else will. Europe didn’t just borrow ideas — it branded them, taught them, and institutionalized them. Meanwhile, the civilizations that first birthed these insights often failed to guard, promote, or globalize their legacy.

The challenge today is clear. Will Asian, Muslim, and African scholars continue to let their ancestors’ brilliance wear European labels? Or will they reclaim the narrative — by teaching, publishing, and insisting the world remember the Yang Hui Triangle, the Khayyam Triangle, the Shulba Theorem, the Indian sequence of prosody, the al-Khwarizmi algorithms?

History is not only about who discovers first. It is about who makes the world remember.

09/23/2025

The State of Biafra!

As the Nigeria–Biafra hostilities raged, the question of recognition hovered like a shadow over the fledgling state. A handful of nations (Tanzania, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Zambia, and Haiti) extended full recognition. Others, such as France, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Rhodesia, South Africa, and Israel, stopped short of doing so before the war’s end. The United States, restrained by the United Kingdom’s strategic interests, chose ambiguity. Many argue that Washington, troubled by the human toll of the war and pressing its concerns to London, might eventually have granted recognition had the conflict dragged on.

For Biafra, recognition was real, yet incomplete.

Today, the challenge would be even steeper. Admission as a full member of the United Nations requires the approval of the Security Council. Of its 15 members, at least nine must vote in favor. Yet the decisive hurdle lies with the five permanent powers—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A single "No" vote is enough to collapse the entire pursuit of nationhood.

The current Security Council underscores this imbalance. Alongside the permanent five sit Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, the Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and Somalia. Some might extend sympathy, others caution—but ultimately, the gatekeepers remain the same five powers—China, France, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S.

The path to nationhood is a long and challenging one.

First, a territory must declare independence.
Second, it must secure recognition from a critical mass of states.
Third, it must win a Security Council recommendation.
Fourth, the UN General Assembly will then cast its largely ceremonial vote of approval.

In truth, the decisive trial always lies before the Security Council, where unanimity among the permanent members—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—is non-negotiable.

The last nation to navigate this labyrinth was South Sudan. On July 9, 2011, it declared independence after decades of struggle. Within five days, it was admitted as the UN’s 193rd member state. Sadly, South Sudan has not known peace even after that. That precedent offers both inspiration and caution: the machinery of nationhood is neither swift nor impartial.

For Biafra of the 1960s, the struggle was not simply one of arms but of recognition—of convincing the world that a people’s declaration of selfhood merited equal standing in the community of nations. That struggle, though unfinished in its own time, mirrors dilemmas that persist today: recognition without unanimous consensus (of the five superpowers—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), statehood without statehood, sovereignty perpetually deferred.
“The struggle for recognition didn’t end with Biafra. It echoes in today’s world.

09/12/2025

List of Political Assassinations in the USA: from Charlie Kirk to Abraham Lincoln
https://qr.ae/pCI4dA

09/05/2025

Was Trump’s Name Removed from the Nobel Peace Prize Nominees?

I saw this information about Trump's name being secretly withdrawn from the list of Nobel Peace Prize nominees.

It made me wonder quite a bit how this could be.

This is because the Nobel Committee does not publish nominee lists, so there’s possibly nothing to “remove.” What I remember really happened was that one Ukrainian lawmaker withdrew his own nomination of Trump in June 2025 — but others, such as Pakistan and Israel’s Netanyahu, still nominated him and have not withdrawn their nominations.

Image source: "The Only Truth About Russia"

08/29/2025

The Lie Behind Africa’s Low IQ Ranking
(Posted elsewhere, copied here)

Over 20 years ago, I took a required IQ test for an opportunity I desperately wanted in Washington, D.C. My score report said it was “in the top 2% worldwide.” I also excelled in every other measure. I should have been excited. Instead, I left humiliated.

An official glanced at my results, smiled, and told his colleague: “See? You can’t judge by the shell—you have to look at what’s inside.”

He meant it as praise. But the message was clear: my achievement was a surprise, maybe because of my skin colour, maybe because of where I came from—Africa. And despite my scores, I didn’t get the opportunity.

That memory resurfaced when I read CEOWorld’s ranking, which claimed Africa’s average IQ is just 60.16—the lowest in the world. Numbers like that don’t sit quietly on a spreadsheet. They shape how others see us, and worse, how we see ourselves.

The Numbers Don’t Add Up

On paper, Africa—with an IQ of 60.16—is a global outlier—trailing the West (around 100) and East Asia (above 105) by a staggering margin. But these figures aren’t just improbable. They are wrong!

IQ tests, such as the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet, were developed in Western classrooms. They reward abstract reasoning, maths logic, and vocabulary rooted in formal schooling. They don’t capture the knowledge valued in African contexts—such as ecological expertise, oral memory, and practical problem-solving.

As cognitive scientist Robert Sternberg has argued, what counts as “smart” in New York City may not be the same as what counts in rural Uganda. Measuring Africa with Western IQ tests is like using a Swiss snow thermometer to gauge the Sahara Desert’s heat.

The Data Problem

Worse than the tools is the data itself. CEOWorld’s numbers rely heavily on Richard Lynn, a psychologist notorious for small, unrepresentative samples and dubious extrapolations. His work has been widely condemned as “biased” and “scientifically unsound.” Yet, these numbers are being used to insult Africans.

Serious research tells a different story. A 2010 review by Jelte Wicherts and colleagues found Africa’s average IQ closer to 82—not 60. And they were clear: differences were explained by malnutrition, disease burden, and unequal access to schooling, not genetics. When health and education improve, so do scores.

Intelligence Beyond IQ

Here’s the bigger problem: IQ itself is narrow.

Imagine a child who can identify dozens of plants by scent, track cattle at night, and perform hours-long oral storytelling with perfect recall. That’s intelligence too—just not the kind Western tests measure.

IQ captures one slice of human ability. It says little about resilience, social wisdom, ecological knowledge, or cultural fluency. Treating it as the sole definition of intelligence erases other forms of brilliance.

Why It Matters

Labeling the African continent “less intelligent” is not just misleading. It fuels stereotypes and shifts blame away from structural barriers—poor nutrition, underfunded schools, inadequate healthcare—that depress test results in some regions.

A fairer estimate of Africa’s IQ would be around 80–85, still below the global mean of 90–100, but more heavily influenced by environmental factors than by biology. And even then, the question remains: why are we so obsessed with ranking intelligence in the first place?

The Bottom Line

CEOWorld’s report doesn’t reveal Africa’s intelligence. It reveals how flawed—and Eurocentric—our metrics still are.

Until we design assessments that respect cultural context and human diversity, global IQ rankings will continue to mislead. They won’t measure intelligence. They’ll measure bias.

08/17/2025

Which Countries Regard HAMAS as a Terrorist Organization?

Here are major countries and international entities that officially designate Hamas as a terrorist organization, based on current, reliable sources:

Major Countries & Entities That Designate Hamas as Terrorist:

United States
European Union
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
Japan
New Zealand
Argentina
Organization of American States (OAS)
Paraguay

Major Countries Considering Designating Hamas as Terrorist:

Switzerland
Norway
India
Philippines
Qatar

Major Countries That Do Not Designate Hamas as Terrorist:

China
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Brazil
Syria

https://qr.ae/pC7rAl.

The Zizaplex

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