w00t! Need I say more?

Functionally, and practically, I'm finding it increasingly hard to find a difference between *any* organized religion and cults. I know I'm in dangerous territory, so let me clarify the broad personal definitions I'm using for both "organized religion" and "cult".

• Organized religion - A group of people that has particular meetings and guidelines, laid out according to an infallible authority, which results in a hierarchy (clear or informal) in that group, and that view themselves as the distinct possessors of truth that non-members either do not know or do no believe.
• Cult - A group that actively practices indoctrination and dogma, promoting conformity and isolation of beliefs and believers from outsiders.

I say this very self-critically, having been involved in an organized religion to varying degrees for much of my life. But I also am being generally critical, as well.

Saw a Wired article about Michael Dowd, who wrote a book and has(runs?) a site called Thank God for Evolution! He still calls himself Reverend, and talks about his Christian traditions, but I can't help but feel that he's mislabeling himself a bit.

Reactions to his ideas?

Aside - Am I the only one who finds it hard not use "an" right before an "a href" link, even though the link text doesn't require one? The first line keeps running in my head as "Saw a a href equals...".

So, here I've been going along, excited with 20 or more votes each derby, and we hit the new theme, "Patterns", and I'm in the top 20. A second design is in the top 30. I'm blown away.

Here they are, in order of popularity (the last one was rejected):
Fibonacci
Stripey
Natural Fractal
Hey, You!

Comments, critiques, and votes are welcome!

So the theme of this week's shirt derby was consumerism. With my wife's help on the concept and with the drawing (she drew it, I shaded it, and did the shirt thing to it), I present: Join the Herd, Take the Dive. I think it came out pretty well, but it's not getting very many votes, even compared to a couple of my past entries. Oh well - what do you all think?

This week's shirt derby topic was information graphics. I tried a different style this week, going for the quick graph on a whiteboard look, but I'm not sure how it went over. Any thoughts you have on the look would be appreciated! Here are my three entries:

Crowded
Analyzing Rockosity vs. Volume
Careful, you'll poke someone's eye out with that!

Fight drugs with poop!

My shirts for the Time Travel Souvenir derby:

My first rejected entry - From Constantinople to Istanbul - apparently NY owns the concept of I <3 anything...

The revision of the first - Constantinople, Istanbul not is as heartless as NY

Proof that the amount of time you spend creating something has no bearing on how interesting it will be to other people, this took half the time to create, but has received many more votes than Instantinople - blackhole tours ltd


What do you all think?

So, I'm on a killing spree, birds are falling free, shot from the heavens with the stone you see

in my hand

Ahem. First question, for those of you who are more metal that me: I dig heavy fast music, but not so much the guttural thing. Like Amon Amarth, or Lamb of God, whatnot, but if they had more... pleasing vocals. Something like Soilwork is good, some yelling, some melody in the singing. Rammstein-esque vocals are good too... Fast is awesome, aggressive is awesome, and, unsurprisingly (in a moment of clarity, I will add) awesome is awesome. I'm getting tired of trolling musical genres on wikipedia for good stuff. So, is there anything out there that fits the bill? If you know any metal friends (C-3P0 doesn't count, Ironman does) with suggestions, point them this way, too.

Second thing - shirt derby theme this week is nutrition, so I didn't have much. Here's what I uploaded. Comments?

This new fellow, slash-ideas, sure has some gems to contribute to the community.



What is he accomplishing?! Is it just a random spambot test?

Well, this is a return to a topic I posted about a while ago, but this time with some positive action in the mix. Howard Tayler posted another "Wikiwatch" , in which he relates how some of the people over at Wikinews have become aware of the particular brand of "notability" practiced by certain admins, and are preparing to do something about it. If you know about specific abuses of the notability guidelines, you can comment on Howard's post, or head over to the Wikinews link, and let them know about it.

Maybe change will happen.

Maybe.

Well, another week, and another topic. I didn't have much time this week, so I did three very text based designs, and one very simple graphical design. Not my best, but I like them still. Anyhow, without further ado, here they are:

Vampire Bytes
Vote DRACULA 2008
Halloween Sucks
Vampire Sensor Mk IV

Puns and political commentary were my motivators this time around. Thoughts and critiques are very welcome!

So, to minimize the spamming, I thought I'd wait until I was sure I'd submitted all the shirts I might design for a given derby. This week's theme is night, and elicited four designs from me (showed in the order that I thought of and created them).

• Attraction
• Dark Knight Looking for a Fight In Moonlight
• People's Movement for The Night
• Pixel into the 8-bit night (Pegasus constellation)

Again, I'm pretty low on the votes, but it's a lot of fun coming up with the designs, and posting them to see which ones people respond more to. Please let me know your thoughts, and if you see a way to improve them, let me know as well! Thanks!

I present the Y-Toucan problem.

Comments?

This week's theme: Cryptozoology

My entry: The elusive Turducken.

Thoughts and votes are very appreciated!

Encouraged by the underwhelming success of my original design, I have modified it and put up a new one, from my blue phase: Redshift 2. Votes and comments are very welcome. Thanks!