James 1:27 // Plasticmind Journal

James 1:27

I just recieved this in my inbox. It's a PCC Alumni email dated September 2, 2005, two days after Hurricane Katrina demolished New Orleans:

HURRICANE KATRINA

Pensacola was far out on the edge of the storm and experienced only rain and minimal wind.

That's it. Under the 'Hurrican Katrina' header, that's it. No relief effort. No call for students to help churches a mere 3 hours away. No offer to house evacuees in the spacious Sports Center. Not even a paltry "we're praying for the victims". Just wipe your brow and *whew* thank God it missed you.

Now that's religion right there.

posted on 7 September 2005
by Jesse

Comments (9)
in the chapter, "Savior"

InterAction:

7 September 20051. xpressionccr:

sad...not surprising...but, still sad. I just pray that God will help us be who He asks us to be...we seem so powerless to get it right.

7 September 20052. Dad:

I have to agree. I couldn't believe this, so I searched for about 30 minutes looking for any new article or announcement saying they were helping, and found nothing. Sad.

7 September 20053. dramaturge:

That makes me angry. But--God knows what's going on. He'll take care of it.

7 September 20054. Jesse Gardner:

Also notice I posted an screen cap of the email that was sent out.

8 September 20055. earl of lennox:

Not defending pcc, but just stating the fact that it is unfair to judge any person/institution on just one vehicle of information. they may be doing something, but just didn't put it in their alumni email. but even now, stating that, having been a former student, it would not be out of the realm of possibility that they think too highly of themselves and their personal status with God. In fact, because of their sheer size and financial clout, they may take pride in the thought that they are extra special to God. Revealation of God according to PCC: First there was God, then Jesus, then the Bible, then PCC. As far as any response to a tragedy, one wonders what the motivation is for any organization. Is it true sympathy and compassion or is it just to look good and pat yourself on the back?

8 September 20056. Jesse:

Well, I seem to have stirred up some emotions with this post, so let me clarify. It wasn't my intention to raise up banners against Penscaola Christian College... there are plenty of other boards that do that and frankly, I don't see much help in that.

I think it was more a response of shock that in light of such great tragedy (officials readying 25,000 body bags) the response was so small. (Check their website.) Couple that with the lack of community involvement I saw as a student there, and you may better understand my response.

By the way, PCC's website makes me ill. Maybe I'll save it for another post. Tables galore, javscript dropdown menus and someone else's menu script on their front page... eesh. BJU's site is impressive, both artistically and programmatically. Compare:

http://www.pcci.edu/PCCStyles.css (they've even capitalized... ugh!)

vs.

http://www.bju.edu/css/styles.css

8 September 20057. filosofo:

What's your objection to JavaScript drop-down menus?

8 September 20058. Jesse:

Let me rephrase.

I don't necessarily object to JavaScript in menus, if used sparingly and of necessity. But a completely Javascript driven menu alienates those with scripting disabled and breaks very, very badly. And why would you use Javascript to accomplish something that can be done neatly in CSS?

Check out the Suckerfish example from my friends at A List Apart. Granted, a little bit of scripting is used, but only to deal with IE's noncompliance to W3C standards.

Fast, clean, and accessible. Makes a bunch more sense. (BTW, I have no qualms with your js menus... semantically correct. Now that's Java put to good use!)

9 September 20059. filosofo:

I had in mind my own JavaScript menus here. For the negligible percentage that disable JavaScript, clicking the top-level link will take them to a sitemap with all the menus nested in visible lists.

My complaint with purely CSS drop-down menus is that they have a limited number of sub-directories, at least for CSS that we can count on IE to support. Even my beta IE7 has added hardly any additional CSS support, so for now I'll go with JavaScript.

I asked originally because I'm trying to understand what seems to be a prejudice against all drop-down menus in trendy designs. I can't think of any user-interface problems with them per se--Windows, Mac, Linux: all of them use drop-down/fold-out menus, so everyone should be comfortable with them, and they allow one to understand the structure of a site and navigate quickly.

YourThoughts?

ElseWhere

ActionStream

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Jesse said, "Is Drudge well-designed? Great discussion. http://is.gd/88ap" Jesse said, “Is Drudge well-designed? Great discussion. http://is.gd/88ap” 2008-11-20T04:44:31Z 2008-11-20T04:44:31Z
Jesse said, "@kimonostereo » Whoa! People still use that! Guess I'd better give it some TLC." Jesse said, “@kimonostereo » Whoa! People still use that! Guess I’d better give it some TLC.” 2008-11-20T04:41:09Z 2008-11-20T04:41:09Z

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