The blog format relieves publishers from the tiresome duty of producing covers and front pages and things to make their content more attractive and attract readers. In some cases, it enables publishers to surrender any responsibility for making content attractive in the first place.

There is a prophetic scene in the magnificent movie "Wall-E" where, after having floated in space for centuries in a self-contained shopping mall, the remains of the human race return to Earth. There, upon realizing that food once grew on trees and that trees must be cared for, the people ponder for the first time in their lives just how the pizza and ice cream sprouted forth from these stem-like thingies.

cousin's blog

"a better comment system for your site"

Some good ideas here that I hope to put to my own use.

Well, here is my experiment: a very simple setup for fast design and art direction around content. I’m approaching this is much the same way one would approach the design of a magazine: a system for the way content gets handled, but every layout and story can take on a look of their own within that system. I’ve established a visual language for the site: a basic eight column grid, a few typefaces, and more static branded elements like the masthead and utility information. Beyond that, the system allows me to adapt the design to suit the content. Typefaces, colors, images, background, columns and layout, can all easily be manipulated to whatever the art direction calls for.

Written by someone my cousin knows from high school. I don't normally read this sort of thing....

Theological conversations are happening all over the world on blogs. To help readers join in the conversations, in 2007 the Christian Century created CCblogs, a network of individual bloggers who have applied and been selected to join this community of Century readers. Member bloggers write about anything and everything, but most of the conversations engage theological and cultural issues.

Chalk this up, if you will, to deficiencies in my Christian character. But even for those more saintly than myself— and there are a few—the blogosphere inevitably accelerates the pace of debate to the timetable of daily journalism. In terms of how they treat substantive ideas, blogs are not very different from newspapers: they present an idea and then move on, as quickly as possible, to the next idea. Perhaps there can be, later on, some brief acknowledgment that that idea wasn't treated fully and adequately—but, as the newsreel in Citizen Kane reminds us, Time is On The March, and bloggers are under enormous pressure to march along with it.