“Erika Johnson will never be able to see her baby, Mikaela. But for 57 days she couldn’t keep her newborn close, smell her baby’s breath, feel her downy hair. The state took away her 2-day-old infant into protective custody — because Johnson and Mikaela’s father are both blind…”

• In America, the color green is associated with money, so why not?
• I find the modern environmental movement obnoxious, so I was reluctant to give them their color of choice.

• I believe that the United States dollar will sometime soon be collapsing like a house of cards. Since “greenback” will soon once again be a term of derision, the Realm of the Market will be given instead the color of fire, which may be more appropriate considering the power and destructiveness of that “Element”.
• Seriously, it only makes sense that the Realm of Nature shold be represented by the color that can be seen almost everywhere outside of the limits of any city. So you greenies can have your precious color. I respect your desire to preserve nature and keep things clean for future generations, and agree with it to a point, though for the entirely different reason that we are commanded to do such things by God. That said, I still think that your ideas about naturally occurring microbe-to-man evolution and human-caused climate change that you have foisted upon the minds of a fallen human race are highly preposterous hoaxes.

So I for one am finding this all very exciting. Whether anyone else ever does remains to be seen. On my to-do list is to start writing about the paradigm to a fuller extent with a view to getting more people interested, if not as obsessed with it as I am. As always, stay tuned…

• First of all, the pictographs will be going away (a least on the front page and some fo the other main pages) until I can make them clearer and more intuitive.
• After that, I will spend some time doing some house cleaning and tightening up the appearance of each and every page so that they don’t look so awful. Seriously, some of them just stink, mainly due to an inability/unwillingness on my part to get them completely right down to the pixel.
• Finally, when those tasks are complete, I will probably have the motivation to actually start writing content for the site again. Now that the personal site has finally grown up and moved out, I’ll be able to renew the focus of this site to cultural questions and issues.

One more thing: you may have noticed that the progress bars at the top of the main page have been frozen in place for quite a while. I have realized that with as many categories as I have, manual construction of individual category pages simply will not work. I’ll keep the top realm category pages (and make the new top element category pages) in the three-column format, but all the hundreds of subcategories will see the same standard template. I think I can make it so that they are all still color coordinated, but we shall see.

That is all. Carry on.

Finding that the current realm and interaction categories left something to be desired when it came to describing emotions, I let things simmer in the old noggin for a while, reading and wondering what to do. After pondering and trying it out for a while, I think I have found a solution based on some old ideas and some more modern additions.

For in order to be embodied, ideas must inhabit the stuff of the world, and it was this very stuff of the world that I was seeking. When it comes to making a world from scratch, what does one make it out of? I was in search of the elemental things: a system of describing embodied and emotional things that is at its root simple, but given free reign can lead to emergent and complex behaviors. I’m not claiming this to be any great discovery of anything, just my own personal means of trying to understand the things around me, probably to be used in a fictional setting if the Lord is willing. I have yet to determine what visual cues I want to use on this website to represent these things, but here they are:

• Light represents the force of Good in the world.
• Animal is the element that represents active life
• Plant is the element that represents passive life
• Fire represents anger, wrath, choler, bile.
• Wind is the embodiment of happiness, sanguinity.
• Water is the stuff of melancholy, sorrow, mourning.
• Stone represents slow, solid, phlegmatic impassiveness.
• …and Vacuum represents the force of Evil in the world.

• “Secured” means that the element is firmly established without a viable contender in the situation in question.
• One element may Foster another, that is encourage it in its essential nature or function.
• One element may Restrain another, or keep it from getting out of control without interfering with it natural inclinations.
• …and one element can Disrupt another element, or interfere with its natural place, function or inclinations to the point that it is at a high risk of being…
• Failed: the state in which an element loses it nature and the specific manifestation of it in question ceases to exist.

[All that said, I don't know if this isn't just a rewording of the "Relating / Checking / Invading" scheme and that one won't supplant the other over time.] I realize this all sounds somewhat medieval or something, but keep in mind that its primary purpose is for systematizing and symbolizing emotions and characteristics of nature that can’t be described in the purely logical terms of the Seven Realms.

These categories will show up mainly in the scriptural explorations of this site for now, because I want to understand how and where they appear in God’s Holy Word before I do much of anything else. Anyway, I just wanted to bring it up, in case you were curious as you watched these posts go by, for whatever strange reason that you’re watching me do all this.

Here are how things have rolled over the years, counted every February:

And here is the ever-lovin’ top ten list of cultural interactions:

1. Self Relating to Creation — 153 posts
2. Neighbor Relating to State — 133 posts
3. Neighbor Invading State — 115 posts
4. Self Relating to Neighbor — 115 posts
5. Creation Invading Self — 102 posts
6. Neighbor Checking Neighbor — 90 posts
7. Self Invading Neighbor — 89 posts
8. Self Relating to Church — 84 posts
9. State Invading Neighbor — 83 posts
10. Family Relating to Self — 82 posts

I’m pleased to report that all interaction categories have at least one post in each of them, as of last February.

Sadly, I haven’t gotten around to putting the divine, demonic, or generic interaction categories on the scoreboards, as last year’s efforts in that direction were terminally interrupted. I guess I’ll try again this year. Meanwhile, here are the top God categories so far:

1. God — 211 posts
2. God as Self — 160 posts
3. God Relating to Church — 155 posts
4. God Relating to Self — 126 posts
5. God Relating to Creation — 119 posts
6. God as State — 106 posts
7. God Checking Creation — 101 posts
8. God Checking Neighbor — 66 posts
9. God as Creation — 64 posts
10. God as Family — 64 posts
11. God Relating to Neighbor — 54 posts
12. God Checking Self — 51 posts

…And here are the top interaction categories:

1. Relating — 147 posts
2. Invading — 146 posts
3. Self Defense — 85 posts
4. One-Realm — 81 posts
5. Charitable Constraint — 78 posts
6. Redeemed — 76 posts
7. Checking — 64 posts
8. Internal Discourse — 64 posts
9. Downfall — 63 posts
10. Redemption — 63 posts
11. Internal Downfall — 52 posts
12. Two-Realm — 52 posts
13. External Constraint — 46 posts
14. Fallen — 44 posts
15. Self-Preservation — 44 posts

Around this time last year, There had been 3389 visitors to Seven Realms; today, the counter is at 4973. BlogAdSwap got hacked a few months ago, and has consequently been closed down. So I’m going to have to find another way to promote the site, preferably at no cost. I’m also toying with the idea of putting Adsense ads at the bottom of the page, but I’m not so sure about that.

Scripture

As of today, I have posted:

1461 out of 35527 verses posted. [4.11% comp.]
102 out of 1334 chapters posted. [7.64% comp.]
4 out of 66 books posted. [6.06% comp.]

Waiting in the wings are what I’ve categorized but not posted: 195 chapters & 11 books.

Historical Documents

New this year is the Historical Documents & References category. Thus far, I have one document completely posted — The Declaration of Independence — and two documents are in various stages of posting — The United States Constitution & Luther’s 95 Theses. The Historical category actually became the reason for an entire redesign of the site, so that Scripture, History, and Current events can be shown in parallel on most of the pages. The underlying structure is all in place, but there is a lot of busy work left to be done at this wriiting.

The development of the science fiction “front end” for the ideas of this site proceeds at a slow but steady pace. This idea has a lot of inertia: it is taking a lot of time to get moving, but once it is moving, I’d like to think that it will be hard to stop.

All this is to say that what has been happening lately on this site will continue: a stronger emphasis on Scripture [and possibly important historical documents], with the occasional news article instead of the other way around. I am convinced that this is what’s necessary to move my own cultural and historical understanding to the next level. Follow along if you like.

Also my recent “conversion” over to all things Apple has affected my sense of design and has increased a certain intolerance of clutter in my life (much to my Wife’s utter glee). This will probably affect the design of this site over time in ways that I don’t completely understand yet. Stay tuned.

Also, on a personal note, I will be on vacation over the next week, and all indications are that I will not have the internet access that I have become accustomed to. So activity this coming week will be very slow to non-existent.