So I’ve mentioned that I’m doing a lot of writing at work and that maybe I should use that writing to, like, do something with my own personal blog. I also have a couple of for-realsies blog posts simmering, so, hey, building momentum.

One of the coolest things about where I work is the mission. We’re talking truly life-transforming and belief-shaping. Pornography is the easiest example. Before I started at my job, I found it morally objectionable but was personally ambivalent for non-Christians. (This is my default stance on many issues: I may find a behavior objectionable, but I’m not going to force someone who doesn’t share the basic tenants of my faith to live under my moral code.) Now, almost two years later, my opinions on porn are much more closely aligned with my opinions on drugs. In short: “NOOO DON’T DO IT YOU’RE RUINING YOUR BRAIN YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP STOP WATCHING IT NAOW!” Seriously. There’s a ton of science behind why it’s just about one of the worst things you can do to yourself sexually. Read more…

personal, religion, society editing, linkedin, personal stories, rhetoric, social commentary, work, writing

Dear Churches of America,

Dear Body of the Living Christ,

My brothers and sisters,

Change has come to America, and we the church had very little to do with it.

Read more…

politics, rhetoric, society christianity, politics, religion, rhetoric

A friend of mine from grad school works at a company that promotes magazines.  Apparently the P.R. director got approached by the editor of this magazine:

It’s called Cats in Space, and I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.  It even beats out SparkleWorld. Seriously. I hope it’s real.

Actually, one of the even better things about CiS is its parent site. This high-quality publication is hosted by the similarly high-quality awesomecats.com. Content-wise, awesomecats performs its function of being a site about, well, cats. If cats are your thing, it has a decent collection of resources–if you can get past the horrible page design, at least. And the sad thing is, people have obviously very specifically spent a fair bit of time on the design of the site. The header, for instance, is beyond my Flash capabilities. Not that I’m some flash guru by any means, but somebody had some good quality bonding moments with Flash over that header. And they obviously try to offer a reasonable range of services. Why, I could register wasabijane@awesomecats.com if I so chose, or even have an awesomecats.com website of my very own!

Actually, this is what I find the most telling. Look at their site features: 5K free web space is but one example. For you non-techy people, this randomly selected image is 4K. A single-spaced, one-page Word doc is likely to be at least 25K. This blog post is probably more than awesomecats can handle. And, even more telling, the first line of their site features reads as such: “No knowledge of web design or HTML is required to create websites.” No kidding. But then, I think the only ones who would take them up on such an offer are people like the creators of Cats in Space.

…and anyway, I was always more of a dog person.

Uncategorized cats, design, rant, rhetoric

Sally pointed out this blog, which features strange maps and their function. I must admit I find it fascinating. This map, in particular, is a startling reminder that reality differs greatly from our perceptions thereof; this map, on the other hand, fills me with empathy for the designers. I’m actually working on a similar map for a conference program at the moment, so I can honestly say, given the design problem (too much text, too little room), the designers could have done worse.

fun, rhetoric design, maps, rhetoric