Why have I become Yukigami?
Well, it is my best and newest transformation! It is also my final one.
Ohohoho ~ ~ I am in my final form
Well, for a short time before, I tried going with "Yukio" as my online alias, a name I'd first heard from the Beck anime. I had also assigned the name to a protagonist in one of my planned stories, so apparently I thought it was a pretty cool name. Considering this, it is as though the "yuki" from my new name was derived from that. The "gami", which is in this case "kami" but pronounced "gami" when conjoined with a prefix such as "yuki", means "god" - and joined together as "Yukigami", the name means "Snow God." Although the first thing most people with any familiarity with Japanese would think when they hear the name or see it romanized is "snow god", or in other words "god of snow", there are other possible interpretations, which lead to other ways of writing it if using kanji rather than kana. For example, "kami" could come from the Japanese verb for "bite", like how the "amagami" in Amagami SS (a popular slice-of-life school romance anime) means something along the lines of "gentle bite", which I assume to have playful, mildly sexual connotations.
However, "snow bite" doesn't make too much sense, does it? Unless maybe we connect its meaning with wolves - like a lone wolf, an animal in the snow, or a symbol of the Canadian tundra. It could also relate to ice-blue eyes, or one who is good with animals (a slight stretch unless grouped with the other meanings). In my case, all of these interpretations are relevant in at least a slight, but somewhat ambiguous way. One more way of interpreting "snow bite" could be a double-meaning play on "gami" using the meanings of "god" and "bite" at the same time, although I am a wolf god of the tundra, or regardless a representation of Canada - the God of Canada! I am a lone wolf of the snow that acts as the god representative of Canada in a worldly conference of national deities. If interpreted as "snow" and "hair", it could imply that my hair, relative to the Japanese whose anime culture has had extremely heavy influences on my writing or to the East Asian people with whom I tend to typically associate, is much ligher - like snow in comparison. "Gaijin from the land of snow with his light, snowy hair." The "snow" aspect of "Yukigami" emphasizes my love of what's blue, what's cold, wet,
beautiful, or calm, but can also symbolically represent stoicism in that snow
represents calm and even the death or containment of life; snow represents
coldness - like cold rationality - and "god" in the Japanese sense of "a
god", that is, one of many existing deities, represents an existence high enough to be snow's origin, but also
something inhuman, which adds additional emphasis too on the elements of calmness,
rationality, stoicism, and the like. From that line of thought, we can then also relate these things to magic, special power,
wisdom, deep insight, and so on and so forth.
As one more way of stretching our scope of interpretations, maybe we could say that paper (also "kami") is already white, and if it is made beautiful by having beautiful things written onto it, its white aspect could be glorified to "snow". This may be going too far, but hey, it's fun! "kami" can also mean "nose" ... So that's four different readings of "kami" we've covered!
All in all, "Snow God" seems
the best interpretation, but I would like to suggest that perhaps ALL of the interpretations could apply at once. After all, a snow god could be a wolf, could be Canadian, could harbour all of those aforementioned person qualities, and could have white, snow-coloured fur (hence "Yukigami").
"Yukigami" sounds like a real Japanese last name, and doesn't it have a certain elegance to it? :)
To elaborate on my previous post regarding my summer preoccupations - I plan to also refine my skills of technical writing.
Because this summer really needs to be productive for me not only in terms of creative writing and taking a real step into the world of novelists and creative writers, but also in terms of developing the skills of mine most relevant to and useful for realistic overall employability, I plan to learn and refine my skills of technical writing rather than focus only on my creative writing projects. My Go tutorials and articles may contribute to this type of skill development, but it is definitely not enough - not even close!
Furthermore, in addition to taking one half-credit course this summer, I'll be training myself in Python. I may or may not have said it before that I'm including 20 minutes per day as a minimum requirement of daily programming, but I'm increasing that.
Yeah, I'm definitely feeling the pressure from thoughts of the future and career pursuits. I actually think about these things every single day.
Like, a lot...
While we might classify Go tutorials and typical discussions referring to Go diagrams as "technical writing", I am definitely going to continue doing it with some level of creatively, if not with increasing levels.
Talk is cheap, I'll show it with my next Go tutorials!
I really can't wait to be free from this school term so that I can postlikemad!!
This is just a clear statement and reminder to anyone following my blog (or taking a look) that I've been making posts decently often so far, but once April hits and I'm done with classes, I'll be doing an insane amount of blogging! You can expect at least 2+ posts per day and fully operational blog sections.
In addition, you'll see a lot more Go tutorials, some chapters of Love Lilycove at last, some role-play stuff, some MTG, the beginning of my Youtube channel and first ever Go teaching video (series!), and a whole lot more!!
So please, get excited!
Let me know what you would like me to talk about! I really appreciate your comments!! Criticism is also greatly appreciated. Be it about my blog, my posts, my teaching, my topics, your own thoughts or opinions, your requests - please tell me what you think!!
Here's another reason, a thought, as to why "popular poetry" can, and perhaps should, seem more appealing than the scholarly "higher" variants.
It makes sense that metre, rhythm, phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, general symbolism and many other literary ploys should infest the every syllable of the "poetry" that we conceive, melodify, and scribbleonto our medium before cutting, refining and rearranging until its audiovisual powers of intellectual invocation meet or transcend our original inspiration.
On that note, I should also add that true beautiful poetry as I see it is like a painting; it is up to the artist and the beholder whether or not to hold any bias or preference for subjective beauty as presented either overtly, covertly, or some blend of the two. True masterful poetry pays no homage to complexity, and most assuredly not to specificity. Those two elements do not generally complement, amplify, or enrich poetry in any general sense beyond the niche. True inspirational, evocative poetry is influential and timeless.
Whether yet budding small and meek as I, or bloomed, every writer springs forth in sudden bursts. So too should poetry rush out from its master's keep, from shimmering sunlight beaming down mosaics through the leaves and onto the restful face, the fleeting, sandy waves of opalescent blue on a blinding summer day, the unlikely marriage of street lamps and fall leaves under the bewitching beams of the twilight moon, or the romantic freezing of time as a violet night gently ices the world a cold alabaster.
There's one more thing I feel like posting today: A teaser for my blog-related summer productivity!
The following more or less sums up my blog-related productivity aims for this much-anticipated summer of 2014:
Write a whole bunch of chapters of Love Lilycove, and possibly also chapters of another one of my stories (not a fanfic) called Jackie!(the exclamation mark is a part of the title!). The total combined chapters will probably, and hopefully, range from 10-25. I'm sure I can manage a lot more than ten, but no promises!
Write a vast variety of character biographies, info sheets, and so on. First of all, all of the characters from the stories I'm currently writing (i.e. particularly Love Lilycove's characters, but also a bunch from my many other yet-to-be-written stories) will have all kinds of the aforementioned documents written up for them and posted!
Exceed 100 poems! This should be an easy summer feat, as I already have around 70 poems completed and stored in my Evernote~ I believe I have only posted 2 poems to Nevermeltice so far. It's because I'm not clear on what the scoop is for literary/conceptual theft, as well as how internet publishing affects future career-related usage. That is, if I post poems and story chapters and things here, does that limit or hinder my ability to get my works published in the future? This is an issue about which I must further inquire...
Write a bunch of each of the following:
Story synopses
Story one-shots
(Possibly) manga chapters by me with poor drawings for the sake of visual story-boarding
Some morequotes, at least bringing my total to 10-15
Several big articles/essays on certain topics I'm enthusiastic enough about to the point that I'd go as far as to work hard on such things outside of school. For example, in addition to a big essay on Fate (Fate Zero especially, but also the Fate universe), I plan to write upsomething big I brainstormed that takes on some big real-world philosophical matters and life problems, particularly pertaining to school, parenting, careers, career counseling, advice and opinions, philosophy, the education system, grades, social judgement, and additional relevant matters.You'll see!
Go stories and articles/tutorials, one of many examples being my new Joseki Explained series (or more broadly, my "Go Explained" series). I'll be writing at least triple what's needed for theCGA newsletter schedule as far as Go articles/tutorials go. I'll also be posting some other content that should prove helpful for Go players, specifically for students of the game but also for teachers.
Role-play sessions for Pathfinder, D&D and whatever else will be written up as many stories and posted! Furthermore, my characters and everything about them will be posted. Other information, such as my imagined worlds, races (etc.) will also be posted.
I'll be posting a lot into the Magic/card game section too, starting with my current decks, my deck plans, my personal taste, and some of my MTG aphorisms.
In addition to everything else, there will of course be a lot of more random posts, or random tangents. Plus, I'll be sharing all kinds of interesting content from other blogs, especially those of my close friends - and that means even more stories, characters, magic, role-play and more!
Anime reviews and related will of course also be featured. I will do some writing about Fate, Gundam SEED, Hataraku Maou-sama, and many more.
And let's not get ahead of ourselves! I still need to write up some autobiographical posts. As all of my passions and a lot of my many personal ideas are being exhaustively poured into the many sections of Nevermeltice, I figure I might as well allow you the chance to get to know me through more than just topical posts in which I rant about, share, or guru things.
All of the sections of this blog will be activated and fully operational pretty much as soon as the summer begins; as I'm not planning on taking any courses this summer, I'll have a lot of time to write, blog, and Youtube - or should I say, YukiTube - which brings me to my next points;
My friends Johnny and Allen and I will be having weekly (or maybe even more frequently) short story contests. We''l choose either anime or other stories, scenes, or themes to write about and each be given like 1-3 hours (we haven't decided yet) to speed-write it all in separate writing environments and then return with our stories at a certain time. We'll then rate several aspects of each story and discuss them. I think this will be a lot of fun, and it was Johnny's idea.
My Youtube Channel, probably to be named "YukiTube", will be fully active as soon as the summer begins! First, I'll finish adding all the music and other videos I've been meaning to fill it up with. I have various playlists with which all my videos will be organized, such as: Go, Fate, Pokemon, Interesting, Education, and so on and so forth. I plan to immediately make at least one Go video - the first video ever of my new and up-and-coming channel - before I get to other tasks.
I will be practicing not only with Photoshop and Illustrator (I am currently Level 0 in Illustrator and Level 1 in Photoshop), but also with Visual Novel-making software such as Novelty and whatever else I can find that might be better. I have strong intentions to advance myself in terms of VN-making as well as (or especially) programming. Due to some unease about my future, I'll be doing a little more programming than I had originally planned.
Also, as far as games are concerned, I also plan to download some other game design software and tools and see what else I can do. I'm very interested in the game-design industry. I might even read up on that specifically, as I'd really rather not procrastinate or half-ass an interest of mine that's both potentially career-relevant and about which I have plenty of enthusiasm.
I have lots of other tasks to do that don't necessarily relate to my blog as well, such as:
-Using Athletic Centre and improving my fitness with a light daily exercise regiment and a certain number of days a week of "intense workouts" (but also exercising near/in home).
-Learning Python (I'm not taking it in school, I can only teach myself, learn from others, and study up on it online. But I really want to develop my skills seriously and turn myself into a prospective computer science professional. I think the more I learn, the more I'll like it and be able to fool around with programming stuff. When that happens, It will be easier for me to devote more and more time to developing those skills. I am, however, planning to take CSC108 next Fall.
-I have some other more specific goals and "to do" tasks, and well, I guess even these things (above) will find their way into the blog :)
So stay tuned!!
Once Summer comes around I'll be pumping out an average of two or more posts per day - and staying true to the original-but-seemingly-forgotten purpose of the blog, I'll be pumping out chapters of Love Lilycove for you to read, critique/comment on, and share! ;)
I've had a lot of blogs in the past. You'll be able to find those blogs and things easily on this one once I find the time to get it all organized (Summer is coming!).
I've had at least 2-3 other blogs plus a live journal, not to mention MySpace, a website through Tripod, and more... But this one is here to stay. I may have made this same claim about other blogs in the past, but this one will not share the same Fate.
Right now I'm studying for a difficult and heavily-weighted (final exam-like) stats test I have tomorrow. After that test, I need to write an essay on fantasy due the next day, and then write another essay due 6 days after that's a great deal more of a pain in the ass - an increased-difficulty variant of a Shakespeare essay. I'm planning to write on the topic relating to "airs and spirits."
Right now I just have absolutely no time to be blogging, but I plan to blog after I submit my Shakespeare essay due on the 19th, after which I should finally, after all this stress, despair, and chaos, have at least a day or two somewhat off from hardcore writing/studying. I may make a quick blog post before the 19th, but that's it.
The next thing I plan to blog about is the fact that I've joined the Canadian Go Association (CGA) newsletter team as an editor and writer. I have submitted this Joseki tutorial - the first of many to come - to the newsletter, and the newsletter containing it has been published and sent out to the CGA. You can view the newsletter here (March newsletter). Note: this link does not (yet) direct you precisely to said newsletter. In fact, the url is misleading as it seems to bring us to the home page with a different url. But just scroll down the newsletter tab :)
Oh, and I will be editing my "Subway Joseki" tutorial, since it was edited a little both by myself and by the other CGA newsletter editor before being published. Those changes will be made to the blog version within two weeks :)
Au revoir!
Awesome Cha La Head metal cover! Oh the nostalgia~ ~ !
I haven't been able to post much of anything lately because of school ><
Right now I'm at a very busy spot, with two essays and two tests all jam packed into a short time period. I'm losing sleep!
For now I'll just post a little Go update.
Recently my Tygem suffered a lot. I was already not performing as well as usual for a bunch of games, but I lost some over and over due to disconnection, poor sportsmanship (forcing me to lose via spamming counting and draw requests in my face), and otherwise time out. There were a lot of legitimate losses, but the illegitimate ones were extremely frustrating!
Anyway, when April swings around I'll have to play some games and get it back to 7d :)
I started playing on WBaduk(formerly OroBaduk) again for the first time in years! My name there is Yukigami. The ratings there seem slightly softer even then Tygem ranks, or otherwise about the same. It was very easy for me to get to 7d there and I think 8d could be possible! I'm glad that it doesn't take quite as long to rank up there as it does on Tygem. The relative downside however is that when you rank up, you remain just at the threshold and a loss can put you back down to the previous point of almost being at that level. I got to 7d so far but I've only played against one 7d so far. He was pretty decent I guess, I made some silly strategic mistakes probably due to lingering complacence caused by the 4d-6d opponents leading up to that game.
KGS is more or less the usual, floating between upper 4d and lower 5d, though I haven't been playing much there lately. Compared to on Tygem or WBaduk, it's difficult to find an opponent on KGS sometimes.
Okay, adios!!
Good luck with essays/exams/important deadlines, presentations and pursuits!
You will see once Summer comes around just how much I love to write, and blog, and play, teach, and talk about Go. You will see!
More Go lessons and Love Lilycove stuff and all kinds of awesome stuff coming soon, just you wait! Not to mention, the blog will be made fully operational come late April!
Although I have a lot of work to do - particularly two essays to start on (one of which is going to be a great big hassle) and a lot of stats pages to read and study, sigh - I'll be posting several entries today to cover some recent thoughts and events. And so, I'll start with my workout from three-and-a-half hours ago!
Today's workout session was only my second or third time ever using my U of T student's access to the AC, and the second time this year. The other occasion earlier in the term was with three others, but this time I went alone. I started with half an hour on a cross-training machine, burning off 300 calories in total.
After that, I went back to the locker room to drink the rest of the opened Arizona I'd stored in a locker. Re-hydrated and sugar-boosted, I returned to the upper workout area (where the track is). I did four sets of 11-15 reps on a two-armed pull-down machine that focuses on the latissimus dorsi (upper back, "wings") and also works the biceps, set at 110lbs. It would seem that in my current state, 110 or more likely 130lbs is probably the ideal for building up my back. I didn't do any other machines or even target anywhere else on my back, I just returned to the cross-trainer, increased the resistance setting, and did 20 minutes more on it before returning to the locker room.
Getting to shower afterwards (for as long as I want, I might add!) was so nice - I had forgotten the feeling of that. For some reason I enjoy showing there more than at home, and the same goes for working out. I knew the feeling well, back in the day - when I was around 14-15, I had a gym membership on the Danforth at Oxygen fitness, which is now known as Xtreme Fitness. I was quite a beast back then (especially if you consider me as one now to any degree), and my body fat percentage was especially low (7-8%). Back then I was addicted to exercise (I would get bored and exercise second and third times in a day, and I wouldn't stay still), and actually my many workout sessions at Oxygen Fitness didn't even account for half of my bulk. It's a bit of an insider story known mainly by a just a few people close to me, but basically in the summer before I started high school (9th grade), I isolated myself in my upstairs room from that time and trained to whatever maximum that "hardcore" can reach. I remember even blacking out a bit sometimes when I'd pushed myself past the limits and then made too great of a contrast for my body by sitting down and relaxing right away, or laying down on my bed for a moment if holding up my body had become too labourous.
I would do a lot of weight-lifting, pushups, situps, and shadow-boxing.
Here are some examples of what I would listen to back then during my intense self-training.
Oh and on to finish this off:
Starbucks iced coffee is SO much better than that of McDonald's or Tim Hortons.
So here is the first Pathfinder post on Nevermeltice of many to come!
I am actually still fairly new to Pathfinder, but as an occasional side-hobby it is a perfect fit for me, since I love to create stories and characters, play games, and go on virtual adventures. Apparently, I also really like to role play.
I will post sometime in the very near future more not only about this character, Xino ("shee-noh"), but about the original form and backstory for him I came up with during a past compaign by my friend that was, at least for now, discontinued. That is, although the Xino you will see outlined below is a very Good character, the form I originally came up with was darker and even multi-classed.
For the upcoming adventure, I'll be using this Xino, a young teenage Xino - perhaps during his magic academy days of wizard training - and leave the darker, more mysterious, mischevious and jaded Xino for a later compaign. For convenience, I will call the second older one by a different surname, like just Xino with no last name, or Xino Alter or some sort of surname that conceptually indicates the distinction, or perhaps some sort of achievement or infamy.
Without further ado, Xino! I will be taking the details posted by Johnny on his implausibly cute blog for his own character for the campaign while he acts as the DM.
*****
Name: Given = Akiharu Surname = Shino
Race: Human
Size: M
Age: 14
Gender: Male
Height: 5'3"
Weight: 125lbs
Alignment: LG
Deity:
Ability Scores:
STR: 8
CON: 10
DEX: 11
INT: 18
WIS: 10
CHA: 14
Skills:
Feats:
Powers:
*****
Story:
*****
As you can see, I haven't finished a lot of the details yet, but I'll get to this tomorrow!
Lang-8 is an amazing site, an effective give-and-take learning community for the study of languages!
My name there is Saber0.
Basically, everyone has 'L points', which determine your L point ranking. The ranking determines how many people will see the posts you make that you wish to have assessed and corrected when people click 'correct' and view posts awaiting correction. The higher your L points, the higher on the list your posts will go and the more people's corrections you'll be likely to receive.
L-points go way up quite easily, all you have to do is make a few corrections on posts in your native language. Another determining factor for L points is the 'quality' assessment of your corrections by others. That is, whenever you make corrections for someone, others can vouch for those corrections. Everything can be commented on, and there are buttons for thanking and 'liking' corrections or comments.
Furthermore, in addition to being able to access your past posts and received corrections easily, you have a 'notebook' wherein you can store select corrections that you've chosen to store there. A post written in your language of study is corrected by others line by line, and comments can thereby also be line-by-line. Each correction set on each single line of your post can be individually stored into the notebook - that's how it works! It's great!
You don't even have to correct every line of someone else's post, you just correct and/or comment on whatever you like. Commenting is not just for each line, there's also a larger message entry box at the bottom of the post for commenting on the post/corrections as a whole.
My first time using Lang08 and posting in Japanese, I received full corrections from 6-8 people (I don't remember exactly how many) within the first 15 minutes!
It's crazy!:)
So basically...
I really recommend Lang-8 if you wish to improve in a language!
So it's Reading Week now, and that means that I have this coming week off from school. Of course, I have multiple essays to work on and a lot of studying to do, especially for stats...
The days leading up to Reading Week were terribly busy and full of tests and things, and as soon those days ended, it was Valentines day. After Valentines day, it was party time in Oshawott - oops sorry, I mean Oshawa kekeke - and basically there's been no real chance to do any blogging.
But fear not!
Valentines day was really nice for me!
Ohohoho~~!
Let's just say I have bestowed upon my loved one, the Zora's Sapphire!
Zere shall be much of ze blogging once April comes around! I'll continue to post a few times a week regardless, at least most of the time.
I suppose the kind of poetry I like is what we refer to as "popular poetry."
But this form of the art should not be taken as something lacking in intellectual depth. In fact, A lot of the poetry studied in university is too vague-for-the-sake-of-vague. My prof even admitted to this. It is good to make the reader think, but it can be frustrating. Furthermore, or more importantly, I don't like it when all kinds of references to very specific places in the world or other very niche bits of knowledge become necessary requirements for the understanding of a poem, If vagueness is focused on at all in the making of a poem, the writer may lose sight of its original intentions and inner story, if even to a small degree. Beautiful-but-simple words and descriptors can be missed out on, and what's more, it may become all too obvious that the writer has written the poem for the purpose of its academic style and acceptance. Give me a break - just write what flows in through your heart and our of your pen!
Popular poetry can easily paint a vibrant and quickly-fabricated image with simple language simply saturated with symbolism, abstraction, analogy and metaphor, word play, and inclusive references. In this form, there is still plenty of depth and covertness with which to challenge the reader's raw imaginative ability and literary eye.
This is random, since I haven't posted in four days, but...
How do you get lots of page views?
I understand that creating traffic by having lots of other social media accounts such as Facebook, Youtube, Tumblr and others helps. Spreading your link around everywhere, spreading to all of your (hundreds of) Googl+ contacts...
But what else? I've added tags (labels) to my posts, too. But I am surprised to see something like "page views today: 1".
I mean, it's usually a lot more than that, but still.
I came to a pretty obvious conclusion just now while studying for my 6pm Fantasy and Horror midterm.
I should read the Rosario and Vampire manga! Even though I had the conclusions spoiled for me, they sound like what I'd wished for for the story as a continuation of the dissatisfyingly inconclusive anime ending.
Bill Nye debates with Ken Ham over the question,
"is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern, scientific era?"
My thoughts:
For those of you who would take the Ken Ham (pro-Creationism) side of the debate,
please forgive me.
Here is what I think after watching the first 60-70% of the debate (I will finish the video and edit this post sometime soon, maybe when I get home from classes).
Mr. Ham spends a great portion of his time showing some examples of Creationists who happen to be great scientists, that Creationism doesn't stop some people from being great scientists. The debate, however, was not about whether or not Creationists can function as scientists! The debate is about the validity/viability of the Creation model. Denying this model is not equivalent to denying the ability of Creationists to function as scientists. In fact, just as Ham says, aside from when it comes to finding the age of living things, objects, and materials we find on the planet, it's probably true that Creationism won't really get in the way of successful scientific thinking.
He does, however, point out (admit) that although we may use the same evidence in our studies, we will come to different conclusions. Mr. Ham believes in the story of Noah's Arc - that two of each animal were all collected and boarded onto a huge, enormous wooden boat created by eight normal people that out-sizes any boat we've ever been able to build up to now, even with a great number more people with a great deal more expertise. Somehow, two of every animal (Bill Nye states that Ham is claiming 14,000 animals in total here) were boarded on an unrealistically huge wooden boat in order to survive a huge, huge flood...for a year! Nye cleverly remarks later, using Kangaroos as an example (Ham is Australian), about the location of all the animals after the biblical flood, and how there is absolutely no physical evidence at all of Kangaroos having traveled from that location to Australia, nor a bridge of land across which to travel to it.
Let me add this - does that mean that before then, there were only exactly two of every animal, and they had never reproduced, died, or anything? But I don't know much about the bible, so I'll just continue on with the nutshell summary.
Nye adds a bunch of examples of things we find lying all over the place there are definitely older than Ham's bible claims the Earth to be; Mr. Ham believes the Earth itself is a mere 6,000 years old. I'm sorry, but that is just funny. Nye explains using ice and rock layers and natural wonders such as The Grand Canyon as examples with which to refute the arguments of Ham. He also explains by mentioning the huge number of different species that exist. This point is effective because Ham denies evolution. Nye shows through basic math that, in Ham's model that alots humans a mere ~4,000 years of history, there would have to be 11 new species every single day on average in order to meet today's vast plethora of world species.
Ham uses a lot of points against Nye's case that in all truth could be easily reciprocated by Nye at will; Ham fervently argues that our terminology, particularly the words "science" and "evolution" have been "hijacked", and continues also that when referring to our scientific statements about the past, our scientific "observation" is not so because some things were not directly "observed", and thus redefines it as "historical observation". Or something...
He complements this by stating that Creationists like him are more than willing to admit to their belief as, well, "belief"; Ham also refers to Creationism - "God's Word" - as "historical observation". He concedes that.
Well of course you concede that. The system is based on a book...
Mr. Ham in the video can't help but laugh when displaying in his presentation how Creationism and science are constantly termed as separate (or even opposite) things. But well, Creationism is based on a book.
A book.
Creationism is based on The Bible, a book full of supernatural events, supernatural power, hard-to-believe tales, and, well, let's not forget that it leaves no room for other religions or things like homosexuality. Ham himself implies/brings up to the supernatural-ness of Creationism.
Secular science is all based on direct physical observations, and everything based on more "indirect" observations are based on strong physical evidence and sound logic. Additionally, Because the fields of study under the name of (secular) science are all unified and synergistic, every major advancement in one field tends to expand and increase confidence for every other field. Natural science has the advantage of that kind of synergistic solidarity.
Ham very passionately wishes for the secularists to admit that some of their "observations" can be considered "belief", as some of it is not directly observable. But I think a lot of us can argue with fair power that a lot of our "indirect observations", such as the age of a given fossil, transcend the status of mere "belief" in that there is strong enough physical and logical evidence to call them "facts" with a large confidence margin. In fact, science is interesting and believable because facts and concepts from most or all of the secular scientific fields of study tend to interconnect like giant spider webs.
It seems like Ham has come not to debate about the viability of the Creation model, but to plea for the legitimacy of scientific work by creationists, a second look at our terminology, increased scrutiny and suspicion toward the education system, and for us to admit that there is sometimes a certain degree of "belief" attached to our scientific claims.
Sure, maybe some of our scientific facts or ideas that are not-quite-100.0%-proven can thusly be reduced to the status of "belief", they're still made pretty believable and logical using vast and concrete evidence and logic, are not supernatural, and furthermore are more than mere passages from a single glorified bundle of human-written pages (that's right, I didn't say man-written, so take that, too!). If we are to reduce our science to belief - that is, reduce it down to the same level at which Ham himself concedes that Creationism stands - what would stop us then from considering the prospect of our own nonexistence, of our own consciousness or... What is there to prove to us that we're not all inside of a videogame? Maybe it's God's videogame? I'm sure it's not PG-13.
Ham also directly stated that he wishes for us to believe in the supernatural as much as the natural. He has also thereby implied that our scientific methodology is "natural", then, and that Creationism is not. He implies this even despite his adamance in having us question the very "natural" quality of our "science."
Even if God exists or existed, I doubt he'd be as righteous as the Bible and its advocates make him (or her!) out to be. With all the horrors, tragedies, and misfortune in the world, wouldn't it be more logical and rational to assume that this "God" is a more neutral being? If he created everything and not just humans, I hardly think he/she should be so well-conformed to our most "good" virtues and ideals. This is a whole other debate I guess, but let me just put it out there that perhaps "good" and "bad" as absolute virtues are exclusively human thoughts - or if not, exclusive to a small percentage of the total number of species on the planet, even excluding micro-organisms. If Creationism wants to be a science too, well then, for starters it should probably take a more neutral stance when it comes to these virtues and how they pertain to God him/her self. But I guess to them, even that notion is rubbish since I used the word "her."
One more thing, something I have to bring up because so many Creationism advocates so illogically do so:
"If the universe originated from a single cell (or atom, or however their wish to quote us Big Bang-believing seculars), where did that cell come from?"
They may use this same example in arguing the origin of humanity.
Well, this may happen to some people in debates when their emotions and/or sheer blindness and refusal to admit even a hint of the possibility of their beliefs being proven false, but...
Can't...we...say the same thing back to you? Where did God come from, who or what was it that created him?? He can't just go "poof!" and suddenly appear in the middle of, what for the sake of his own awesome poof!-ness, must be the center of all nothingness. If Creationists even think of making that silly claim, then they should not dare to call this religion a "science", and nor can science be infused with it. This is what I mean when I mentioned how Ham doesn't get into any concrete explanatory details about this Creation he so adamantly advocates. It's not as though the silly, easily-countered question about the single cell is something necessarily representative of Mr. Ken Ham and his claims, but it is a very common (but very illogical and pointless) attempt by many casuals to defend the Creationist paradigm.
I have nothing personally against Creationism, but despite being the over-imaginative writer and dreamer that I am, I in this case tend to be more inclined to believe what I see. I find Ham's arguments lacking in concreteness - and they are. So far, Ham has done nothing to concretely explain the logistics of the bible's, well...
Outrageous tales.
Please don't hate me.
I look forward to watching the rest of this video!
If you find anything I've said harsh, please take note that everything I've said is based on a rational approach to this debate - and debates, by their rational and hopefully unemotional virtue, are a fun thing for me in either watching or partaking in.
So what I mean is... If you want to prove things, if you want to deny things, if you want to argue things... If you wish to engage in and properly carry out an intellectually oppositional discussion - i.e. a debate - you need to temporarily become as emotionally removed as possible. There is little room for emotion in an intellectual debate - nevermind a scientific one.
Thanks!
~Yukigami
P.S. BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL-Bill Nye the Science Guy~~
