The name 'gentleshaid' consists of two parts - the first part has to do with my gentle nature as a general consensus by those that surround me while the second part is my first name. I am a person of few words but several actions and my taciturn nature is largely responsible for my nomenclature as being 'gentle'.
I was given birth to and grew up in Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria. I got introduced to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology in November 2017, although I have heard about cryptocurrency before then. You all can guess how I got introduced? Yea, right - through the steem blockchain.
I jokingly love to refer to myself as an accidental Botanist. I opted to study medicine and surgery when I sought admission into the university but the huge competition for space in medicine and surgery displaced me to Botany. Since then, I have not really looked back. After obtaining my first degree in the field, I have gone ahead to get a master's degree and currently in the process of getting a doctoral degree in the same field.
Most people do not see Botany beyond 'just' the study of plants. While the definition is not incorrect, it makes most people to see us Botanists as mere herbalists or horticulturists. Interestingly, both herbalism and horticulture are fields that exist on their own and do not represent a sub-field of Botany. Taxonomy, genetics, ecology, lower plants, tissue culture, and biotechnology, etc. are some of the sub-fields of Botany.
My own area of specialization is ecology which has to do with the study of plants in relation to both the biotic and abiotic components of the environment. Hence, it should not come as a surprise that a large percentage of the contents I have created on my blog (on steem) are related to plants and the environment. The regular readers of my posts on steem can testify to this.
I've got a young family of 3 - myself, my wife and my 1 yr+ kid. My family represents the reason for my existence, after God. I have had instances to end it all in this life but the thought of my family and how miserable they would be without me has kept me going.
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People often wonder how I reach a compromise with being a religious person and a scientist. I usually let them know that both situations are not mutually exclusive, except you deliberately want to make them. My belief is a blend of creationism and evolution. While God did not create everything at a go, He put all the mechanisms in place for every other thing to come into existence. Sometimes, these mechanisms can be tweaked by man to arrive at specific results.
While I work full-time as a research assistant/junior lecturer in one of the private universities in Nigeria, I love surfing the internet/social media for information during my free periods in addition to blogging. My interests also include playing scrabble and chess whenever I get worthy opponents (those that can challenge me).
On the hive blockchain, I hope to continue working with @lemouth and @mobbs to bring stem related content to the door of the masses, just like I have been doing working as a nationality curator while on the steem blockchain as steemstem.
Thank you all for reading.
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Your baby is beautiful. I see your face there.
Nice to know you :)
Thank you... :)
Don't worry, we will keep you on board :)
:)
I had no idea you had a kid! (Though you could have told me 7 times, my memory blows).
Interesting stance on religion vs science. Though I'm a staunch atheist, I'm not the 'activist' type and can see the value religion brings to countless folk. At the same time, this can also bring resentment, but that's a story for another day.
Also, though I can play chess, I prefer Go. If you ever want to learn and battle me there, hit me up!
Always more than glad to see you continue this journey on Hive with us!
Not sure I directly mentioned it to you. He's a year 4 months now. Not sure there exist many atheist in Africa. I think poverty and religion are positively correlated. I also believe that religion remains one of the reasons African countries will remain underdeveloped. I'm a religious person but quite Liberal with it.
I don't know much about go but I'm going to do a bit of research on it right away and if my interest got piqued, I might hit you up.
Well, the US is extremely religious - about 82%. If there was a strong correlation, this would be more like 10%.
There is an argument that the US is an anomaly among the developed countries, but I suspect there's more to Africa's development than only religion. There's a complex history of dominance there from outside of Africa which continues to this day with China, in particular, getting a taste for it. I'd say this plays a larger role (but I'm not there so I can only surmise)
That's quite a revealing statistics about the US. I know a couple of religious US citizens and I know they are kinda Liberal with their religiousness unlike those we have around here. When it comes to Christianity especially, I found that the western countries are far more Liberal than Africans. Funny enough, this religious was imported from western countries.
A politician will embezzle a huge sum of money and then go to church to go and do thanksgiving and the pastor and the entire congregation will welcome him knowing quite well how corrupt he is. A public servant will drop an offering that exceeds his annual salary and the religious leaders will not ask him any question. I don't think this can happen in western countries. We hold religion to be sacrosanct down here.
Baba oooo.
See how cool the writer and curator himself look.