Homo Sapien vs Arachnid

I do have an important blog planned to write. It just needs to be edited and I haven't gotten around to it. In the meantime, I feel the need to record a few events of the day.

I started my job at MBS yesterday and have since been eating too much junk food, sweets and drinking too much coffee. I also have gotten the hang of answering calls for dumb people, computer illiterate people, confused people, and the occasional person who actually has a technical problem. Its somewhat entertaining during calls, if not stressful, and sometimes I have time to read or fold paper animals so it isn't bad. Today after I got home from work I bummed around a bit and skipped kickboxing because I was feeling kind of ill. I'm not sick, it was just the typical grumbles that make kicking and such unpleasant. Because yesterday was my bestie's birthday I decided I would just bum around until she wanted to hang out so at about seven or eight I gathered up my stuff and brought her birthday present - it was a pink and white golf umbrella with a span of 62". We decided it could fit up to six people underneath, and it was very well built. She appreciated it because her last umbrella was stolen a while ago, and I know she really likes umbrellas so when one goes missing, it is extremely upsetting.

Anyway, we played ping-pong for a while, and I discovered that I had magically improved somehow (I never play ping-pong). When I came back, I returned to my lair in the Donelson family's basement only to discover that it was the perfect model for my future dream cabin. With a few slight modifications, it is a wonderful layout. The kitchen, dining room and living room are all basically one conjoined gathering place with no separating walls at all. This leaves it feeling rather open and inviting. It is also simple to navigate. The rest of the house consists of a small garage, two bathrooms and two or three bedrooms. One of them is larger than the other two as the master, and it would be connected to one of the restrooms.

(SKIP TO HERE FOR SPIDER STORY ONLY)

I was guestimating the lengths of the walls in the main room, when I spotted a large spider - about three or four centimeters in diameter if its legs were sprawled out. It was hiding behind a blockish beige piece of electronic equipment, which usually beeps quickly at a high frequency so as to be annoying only when the room is completely silent. Using my stealth ninja abilities, which I had practiced earlier at Ashley's with ping-pong, I used the remote control to joust the equimpent. My goal was to smash the spider behind it, but instead only the box stopped beeping as enthusiastically (which I didn't mind, and the blinking red light on the front continued, so I was not worried). Seeing as this had done nothing, I jabbed it several more times at different angles. Unfortunately, the spider was clearly at a tactical advantage due to its small stature and superior speed. It therefore dodged each of my attacks by either cramming itself in the corner between the fluffy carpet and the baseboard, or dashing out at the last moment.

Eventually I realized my wrath was futile, and I gave up the crusade. I turned off the lights and returned to my room, no longer enticed to create further drafts of my dream cabin. Still, a small fear is left inside me that it will enter my bedroom at night and it will be creeping in the corners, prepared to strike vengeance. As it had been hiding along the opposite side of my bedroom, it may be a possibility, but I am hoping that it will catch the scent of my presence and associate it with fear because of said near-death experience. After all, fear is everywhere... but so are spiders... -_-

Creationism vs. Science

I apologize for not making my last anime blog yet, but I'll get to it when I get to it. But for now, I feel prompting on the topic of Genesis and a few passages near the very, very beginning that used to worry me.

I had been reading Genesis chapter one, and although I had read it before, I noticed something that irritated me. In verse three God creates light and separates it from the dark. At first, you're assuming the stars and the sun and all that, because it says he called the light "day" and the dark "night". Then, in verse fourteen you are suddenly left shocked and confused because it says that God divided the day and night - implying that they weren't before - and says that he created the sun and the moon (of which they correctly accredited the science of the four seasons to by the way). You're left in the dark, right? He created all these things like the planet and its shape and the water and all that, but apparently the sun wasn't there yet.

Before I go about answering this question, there is the matter of time which trips people up quite a bit. It does indicate in the Bible many times that God doesn't care about time. Humans who claim that God actually created the universe in six days don't really seem to get that God doesn't care about our days. Sure, six days I suppose, but they're six days in God's time, and according to 2 Peter 3:8 "With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." That's God's time for you. When he says "soon", it might mean next year. In thirty years, you might agree with him, but at the time it seems quite lengthy and that is because he lives in the past, present and future all at once. This minute isn't even this minute for him. Kind of mind blowing, right? Anyway, I just wanted to point that out because I think science could have taken as long as God wanted it to take for things to happen.

Back to the original question, the difference between the creation of light and dark versus the sun and the night must be made clear. Oddly enough, I was watching an episode of charlieissocoollike, a popular youtuber who I enjoy from time to time. Charlie is actually an atheist (and for those of you who judge, he's a normal and wholesome individual, for lack of a better term). However, he likes doing these short little vlogs about science, where he briefly and simply explains some smaller scientific concepts so they are fun and easy to understand. Perhaps it is childish that I watch them, but I think they're fun and interesting, even though I generally already know the information. This last one was about stars and he mentioned something I hadn't really thought much about, even though I had heard of it. He dipped into the surface of the fact that we are technically made out of stars, just like everything else on the planet.

If God made the light, and we are made from stars, who is to say God did not create the stars first or something like them, and then when they "died", they became the planet, which is where we could have been truly made from the dust? No human in the days of Moses would understand that we were particles from a ball of gas like the sun, but now we do know that information, and we should also be intelligent enough to interpret the words send in the times. It says he made the light, so perhaps he made the stars. After that, he formed the earth and the waters - everything but the living creatures. So after the light is spread out among other stars and celestial things, we have the dust, and rocks of the earth. This is when we joined our solar system as a planet rotating around the sun, creating our four seasons etc. So now we are a blank planet made from a star, rotating around a star, and with a moon.

Wonderfully enough, there is no woeful tale in Genesis about how creation had to survive in the darkness or anything stupid. Instead, a very scientific and straightforward approach is taken, and it says that next came all of the plants, and then all of the animals. If God created man from the dust of the earth, then we are still made of the same star material which we had before. He may have then just created all life from the dust. We were just made special, and after all of the other animals. Because we were some of the latest creatures to have "evolved" into actual homo-sapiens as opposed to older humanoids, I think its quite possible that Adam and Eve were just the first of our real race, or of one of the much closer races. It is possible that older humans were just not capable of possessing a human soul, or the Holy Spirit and so they could not comprehend enough of God to be considered in his image. We do know that Adam and Eve were not the only people on the planet after all, so what exactly made them so special? The only thing I can think of is that although they may have been the first homo-sapiens or something of the like, they were not the only human-type creatures around.

Of course, this entire blog is speculation, but hopefully it brought you some interesting thoughts and answered a few questions. That's my analysis of Genesis versus Science because I usually find that God and Science fit together nicely. He did create it after all. We just have to figure it out.

Here is the link to Charlie's vlog if you would like to see it. Its about five minutes long, and quite enjoyable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pag1NdPKcYM

Narwhals 2: The Super Tooth

Today or yesterday my mom sent me a link in my email with an article about narwhals, so of course I had to click on it.

In my recent blog, simply titled "Narwhals" I mentioned that science has so far not found any use for the narwhal tusk, and no one could figure out why its there. Well, this article from 2005 actually explains that we have actually found a possible purpose. I'm going to sum up the article, and leave a link at the bottom.

I hope that everyone here knows that a tusk is a tooth, but the narwhals have slightly odd ones. While elephants and warthogs have curved tusks, the narwhal is the only animal known to have a straight one, and their tusk actually spirals around, if you noticed in the pictures. The spiral could serve to provide more rigidity so it will not break, or to help it grow straight. It isn't certain. Anyway, while the tooth is straight, it can actually bend in any direction! Furthermore, it is actually very strong and is hard to break.

That is only one discovery, however. I read about a few more. One that I'm going to cover really quick is that the narwhal tusk is a tooth, but a tooth that is inside out. You know how your teeth are very sensitive to especially cold foods? Narwhal teeth sense this even more strongly, but probably for the purpose of sensing environmental changes around them. I would assume it doesn't actually hurt them, seeing as they are constantly exposed to it. They might be able to sense ice forming miles away. They have also been known to dive as deep as 3000 feet when avoiding danger or hunting for food. There is also another theory that narwhals might use their tusks to communicate with each other, generally with tapping. Obviously, it isn't their only form of communication, but it is possible to be a way. As far as the inside-out stuff goes, there aren't any other teeth in the world like it. That is super awesome.

Another thing I don't know if I mentioned, but I had the impression of was that only male narwhals had tusks. Actually, this is not true. Apparently, most males have one tusk, some have two, a few don't have any, and oddly enough there are females who do have one. So it sounds like it is all very awkward and who knows how that works. If I were a narwhal, I would feel gypped if I didn't get a tusk and some other guy got two, but oh well. All I can do is stand by and feel sorry for them. Then again, they have an excuse to tell the ones who do have tusks what to do and cling to them so they can be lazy.

So the link is right HERE, and I feel like some of you might be sad if I don't include the narwhal video that I didn't include the first time, so I'll add that HERE.

Narwhals

Earlier I was passively watching as my wallpapers faded in and out for my screen saver, and an image of a narwhal jumping over a cloud appeared. I stared at it for some time before noticing the tusk. I didn't realize that it is more in a nose-like position, rather than on the forehead. This discovery led me to google search images of narwhals to find out the truth, and I found far more discoveries than I had intended.

Before I go any further with this informative blog, if you don't know what a narwhal is, then you have lived a sad life. These are narwhals:

And this is the wikipedia article explaining that it is a whale with a horn that lives in the arctic.

For a bit of history, apparently in the Dark Ages of Europe the tusks of narwhals were thought to be horns from the mythical Unicorn. Probably due to this legend, they were thought to cure ailments with their magic. In the 1600s, someone discovered that the narwhal was the true source of the strange spiral tooth, and that rather than being as short and weathered as they would find them there, they were actually around nine or ten feet long - two-thirds the length of the actual whale. Some narwhals even have two tusks, so as soon as they were discovered, they became something prized and worth hunting, though currently I believe the inuits make up most of the hunters involved and they already knew about it.

Although the population is small, it is stable. It only has three predators: men, orcas and polar bears. The greatest thing for our unicorns of the sea, is that they can dive deeper than any other marine mammal, which is probably a fantastic way to escape from all three of its predators. Also, if you think about it, how many people live as far north as the Inuits? Other than the Inuits themselves, not many. Of course, when they were considered a magical beast, Vikings would hunt them, because the horn supposedly had magical powers that could heal melancholia and help with poisoning. I have no idea if there is any scientific evidence that narwhal tusks are good for any such thing, but I do think it would be cool to have a tusk-cup nonetheless. These were used for upper class people who thought that the horn of a unicorn would keep them from being poisoned.

Currently, I am really jealous of Queen Elizabeth. She had her own narwhal tusk set with jewels and all. Someday, I would like a tusk. Or better yet, an oceanfront home and a narwhal friend that would let me ride upon its back. Then we could rule the seven seas together! The problem with that is that either the water would be too warm for my special friend, or I would die of hypothermia.

In the mean time, while I await my dream-come-true (in heaven), you and I can dwell upon the following amusing links that I uncovered in my google searches.

Can You Speak Narwhal?

The sound of hunting narwhals

Plush Narwhals

(Why yes, I would love to own a plush narwhal)

Avenging Narwhal Play Set

Spear your own koala

Inuit Tusk Legend with Epic Unicorn/Narwhal artwork - Narwhal Legend

The amazing story of how the narwhal got its tusk

Narwhal As a Weapon

The ferocious beast of the sea has the ultimate Zombie Defense

Narwhal Xing T-Shirt

Link is self-explanatory

This Picture Was Too Big to Put at the End

Misconception: Young People

I was just admiring myself in the new dress I bought today (original price: $70. Price I bought it at: $11. Never buy things at full price) and I started paying attention to the fun layers. It has a solid white underneath with a transparent pattern on top of it. This seems to be a pretty popular fashion sometimes, when someone is looking for a more flowy or spring-like dress. Somehow, it has more dimension and makes the article of clothing appear more flowing.

Unfortunately, this reminded me of an irritating incident I had with a skirt in the past. I had received this skirt from a family friend who had taken a mission trip to Thailand, and she brought it back for me. The transparent layer on top shined a bright pink with small silver ribbons woven into the pattern, and it reached down to around my knees. Underneath the solid fabric abided by the school rules, coming down to around my fingertips. I had no fears of bending over, because it was just a good skirt. Pink wasn't my favorite color, but I had come to terms with the fact that I looked good in it. Anyway, I received many compliments, and I had deemed it a really fun skirt that showed that I was a responsible young cutesy girl with a sense of culture (even though the people who know me best understand that I'm a bit lazy, and too sarcastic to be considered cutesy).

Well, I had happened to wear this fantastic skirt to school one day in Junior High School. Although our bus had to stop off at the Middle School because the tornado sirens were sounding and we needed to take shelter, I felt confident. I was a gorgeous fifteen-year-old in a culturally diverse skirt that made me feel like I was a fairy princess or something. Sadly my confidence did not last long. Some old lady inspected my skirt as I was walking in and she said "How inappropriate!" as if my underwear were visible or something so scandalous.

I just walked past like nothing had happened, but my pride steamed with frustration. To this day, I do not know if she simply didn't see the solid part underneath the skirt, or if she was just an old fart and thought that anything with transparent fabric made you a [insert offensive term beginning with "W"]. Either way, I felt offended. She had made an assumption based off of my age, most likely.

People make stereotypes all the time. Old people about young people and the other way around; races; genders... its okay to some extent - after all, how would you categorize your thoughts without them? But at the same time, you can't assume that each one you meet is going to be that way and you can't say "Kids these days" and you can't say "Old people always do this" because they don't necessarily. I especially dislike "Kids these days". Its people who think like that who create "Kids these days" because the kids want to be as different as they possibly can from the old people who say it.

So anyway, I know that seemed a little bit random. But I suppose the point is: don't judge anything without all of the facts. The likelihood is anyway, that you will never have all of the facts, so any judgements you make are better left open for change.

Unfortunately, the following image best describes the layering on the skirt. The transparent part came down only to my knees, as I originally described, and it was pink. Not black. Every picture I could find was black -_- maybe someday I'll find a picture of me in the skirt if I have one. I have nothing against black - I mean, ninjas wear black... how could you go wrong? - but this just looks... frumpy somehow? But you get the idea.

The World When Everyone Magically Gets Along

My personal belief is that the world will never be perfect. Not unless God intervenes, anyway, and he will have a lot of intervening to do when that time comes. But lets just say all of the sudden, that everyone got along. What would happen in the world? What would happen if we all loved each other? Totally unrealistic, but its an interesting thing to think about.

Would we solve poverty? If everyone got along, there really wouldn't be a need for money. Just stuff that we currently spend our money on. We would just each put in our due effort, like communism, and we would get back everything we needed and everything we wanted because people would just give stuff away. No one would worry about what they needed because they know that the people around them will provide for them. This also means we'd probably go about revamping undeveloped countries to the best of our abilities. Everyone would learn of their talents and use them to the best of their abilities and their parents would stop worrying about if their dreams will make them enough money to survive and be "happy".

So yes, I think we would solve poverty. But what would the previous criminals do? Well we all get along now, including good people with criminals and criminals with good people, making them good people now too. So we would probably just forgive them and they would go find a decent trade that was actually good for them and for other people.

What would bankers do? Well you'd probably be in charge of keeping track of things or something. Who knows. I don't know any bankers personally, but I'm sure each one is different enough to where they'd find another good trade. There would still be things needing care for other than money that might still be good things for them to do. Its kind of nice how everyone has more than one talent.

What about strippers and people like that? I don't really know.

What would we do throughout the day? Well kids would enjoy going to hang out with their adult friends and learning about all sorts of new and exciting things and adults would enjoy teaching them. Kids would find their interests and be able to focus whole-heartedly on them, and not stress about the things they aren't meant for, while at the same time, probably learning the basics from their friends. They would get as much energy out as they needed and their parents would spend enough time with them. Everyone would go to sleep without insomnia because there is no longer anything to worry about.

Adults would wake up in the morning and chat with their families around breakfast, get out of the door because there's nothing to sleep through now. They would have their kids off to go do whatever their kids needed to do, with adult supervision and their friends. The adults would go off to enjoy whatever it is they love to do. If they're really bad about it, they'll find out because no one will want their gifts and some good friend will probably tell them. Then they will find what they were truly meant for and they'll go for it. They could even go to school with the kids. And then they'll go out and do that, trade and give and receive. At night it would always be a party because there would always be something to celebrate I'd think. And we'd gladly give our services to those who need them. Then the people receiving the services would be appreciative and return the favor once they're on their feet. No one would starve, no one would take advantage of other people, no one would hate, no one would fight, and everyone would love....

Hmmm... I think I just described what Heaven is supposed to be like. The best part is, everyone would understand everything that happened in the past, so they wouldn't be robots and they would know what it meant. I'm just saying... if everyone made the decision to love, there would be a big change in the world. And I don't see why if a large group of people even, made an effort to love, there wouldn't be a big change. Not this big (I think thats possible without God), but big enough to make it grow. I hope people get together somewhere to start this for real, and I hope they're crazy enough to promote it, because if I had more of a voice in the world, I'd go all out with this thought. Media is my enemy. My word would be diluted among all the other noise.

The Wise, the Knowledgeable, and the Intelligent

I just was thinking about the differences between intelligence, knowledge and wisdom. People confuse the three frequently (though less often than joy and happiness, which are also completely different).

Two main points I wanted to say:

1) Intelligence is the tool to soak up knowledge, and wisdom is the ability to use it well. *Knowledge is like the image a painter is trying to paint. You can see it there, but that is all. Knowledgeable people have all of the facts. Whether it was difficult for them to gain them is beside the point. They simply know things that they gathered from elsewhere. A person without knowledge is naive.

*Intelligence is the ability to process, put together and interpret the information. Everyone has some degree of intelligence that allows them to process most kinds of knowledge, and people who may be considered less intelligent just don't always get things. Personally, I believe you can be intelligent in one way, like in art or in science, while being incompetent in another. The more things a person is intelligent in increases his overall intelligence more, but if you think of autism, for instance, they may be intelligent in one specific aspect, and not understand other things very well. But that doesn't make them unintelligent, it just means their poker chips are stacked more in one place. Back to the painter analogy, here the painter can conceptualize their painting, and understand what they are doing, though they haven't begun to put their brush to the canvas just yet. Intelligent people may or may not know much. This is the more biological portion. An intelligent person has the ability to gather knowledge more quickly than someone who is less so. A person without intelligence is stupid.

*Wisdom is the action of using intelligence or knowledge. On the painter analogy, this is the ability to use the tools you have to actually put the picture you want on the canvas. With a lot of knowledge and intelligence and very little wisdom, the painter will end up with a product that resembles a five-year-old's watercolor project. You can gather all of the information you would like, but wisdom is needed to execute anything actually needed to be done with it. A person without wisdom is idiotic.

Of course, without knowledge, a wise person would have trouble executing anything, because they do not have enough information to know what they should convey. On that same note, wisdom without intelligence is difficult for similar reasons. It is hard to gain the knowledge needed without the intelligence. With all of that together... you can't blame a wise person for anything. If they were wise enough to research, and simply couldn't find information then they deserve forgiveness because they did the best they could.

2) Sometimes the intelligent have to be wise enough to set aside skepticism if they are to gain more knowledge.

A lot of smart people I see going the route of the skeptic in order to be either safe or lazy. This is a lack of wisdom on their part. There are times when it is good to hold back, but sometimes you just have to risk things to learn anything. If say, you are told to eat a new certain type of food. You know that you like one type of food far more, but you are told you would probably like this one. I would assume you probably wouldn't try the new food because you are wise enough to know you like the older one. On the flip side of that, if you are skeptical of the new food, and you are told you would like it more than what you have, and what you have is good but isn't really all that special, you would be more inclined to try the new food. But it is a risk to try new foods. you might not like it, or you might get sick. However, you will learn of a new food you like or of a new food you do not like in the taste test. Sometimes it is good to set aside your previous beliefs and attempt something new, or something you have not done in a long time.

Another way to think about it is with your beliefs. You have to really experience a community before you can make any judgements on their behavior, but a person who has gained knowledge from others and who has not risked it for themselves has little room to speak compared to the community itself. You have to take risks to learn sometimes.

My main point with all of this is just to say, don't confuse the three, and don't forget that while they all compliment each other well, wisdom is the only way you can really get what you want! Even with less of the other two, you make the decision to be wise and it is the only thing that can assist you to do your best.