Welcome to JeffLindsay.com (formerly known as the Cracked Planet of Jeff Lindsay). If you're looking for truth, wisdom, social justice, joy, sustainable metrics with an outward-centric inner focus, global peace, or even global warming, you've come to the right place.
2008 Update: I am no longer serving as a body double for Mitt Romney. Not even a mind double. But candidates of any party are given my license to adopt any of my views at no charge.
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices." - William James
What Happened to the Cracked Planet?
In my esteemed roles as a published Internet author and blogger, inventor of the Wonder Whacker, CEO of Pointless, Inc., Director of National Lawn Care Now!, President of the Citizens Union for Safe Smoking, and founder of Planned UnParenthood, I felt compelled to maintain a higher level of credibility untarnished by the occasional traces of "humor" that once blotted this site. Plus I was embarrassing my kids. So now I've gone 100% respectable. No more of that warped or cracked stuff.
Further, people were asking too many questions, and the answers were leading to hysteria. Why was my home planet cracked, they wanted to know. I tried the truth on them, but they couldn't handle it. Once they learned that the crust of my home planet had cracked up violently because of uneven heating from global warming, and that this cracking resulted in massive floods of molten lava that wiped out most life, especially economically disadvantaged puppies, well, they freaked out. There's enough insane hysteria in this world already. I'd rather just help people become hysterical sanely. (Sane Safety Tip #1: Never step onto fragile portions of the earth's crust - pretty much any place that appears to be "solid ground" - unless you are wearing thick asbestos boots. Sane Safety Tip #2: Never touch asbestos or let it come anywhere close to your body.)
"I'm Confused. What is JeffLindsay.com about?"
This eclectic little site contains my collection of writings on various topics over the last decade or so. It sprouts off in dozens of directions - photography, education, religion, RFID, investment ideas, politics, and my town of Appleton, Wisconsin.
This site began in 1994 (though it took a couple years before I switched to my own domain name) as a repository for satire and spoofs as well as serious writings on topics I care about, especially some of my religious writings. I've also added samples from my hobby of photography. It's out of control now (see the Site Index - some links are just iceberg tips), but I'm working on improving it over time. It's meant to be family-friendly and helpful, but since I'm not shy about my opinions on many topics, you're sure to be offended somewhere - especially if you mistake satire for reality. My National Lawn Care Now! page, for example, has offended both liberals and conservatives, depending on how humor-impaired they are. So be careful while browsing here. I apologize in advance for your pain.
Everything here was produced using 100% free-range Webmasters. And only organic electrons and photons are used with this site. Yes, JeffLindsay.com is 100% ORGANIC and completely free of preservatives, meaning that some things are stale, out of date, and full of bugs. If something does look broken, please let me know. It's getting a bit unwieldy, and though I'm overwhelmd with email, I try to listen and respond. Sometimes.
Things change a lot here. Sometimes the changes are reported on my "What's New" page, such as the launching of a page for one of my sons at BenjaminLindsay.com.
My Views: Photography
I've got many collections of photos throughout this site, such as the recent "Memories of Winter" gallery (winter scenes from the Fox Valley, Wisconsin, 2008). They are copyright 2003-2008 Jeff Lindsay. Please don't use them without permission. Here are a few recent thumbnails, with links to various pages of photos:
My Other Views
From where I perch on the great tree of life, I see a lot of things that I need to squawk about. Things that I think will help you, things you might enjoy, or things that might make you chuckle. I'm a bit shy in person, but not in writing. I love to write, and to blog a bit.
What, another blogger? Yes, sorry, I'm one of those people. Some of my views are shared on my new blog, Shake Well Before Serving. It's just getting started. I've been sharing investment tips and other information and views on the Sanity Defense blog, and many of my views on religion and social issues are shared at Mormanity. The latter is my most developed blogging effort with fairly food traffic, and where I have the most fun - just a few minutes here and there, of course. I still have a life!
Some of the issues that I take on at JeffLindsay.com include education, religion, social issues, politics, trends in Corporate America, and the most important issue of all, food (in the form of my restaurant reviews for my fabulous little town, Appleton, Wisconsin).
Regarding education, I hope parents will demand excellence and refuse fads. If kids aren't learning, they probably aren't being taught - at least not with proven methods. One fad in particular that I take on here is Block Scheduling, where I have provided resources used by many parents, teachers, and even students in resisting a popular but potentially harmful restructuring of schedules in schools. Sounds like an esoteric issue to most people, but it's a hot topic in education. The controversy illustrates quite a lot about some of the problems we face in public schools.
That Religion Thing
Now here's a topic that really spooks people. I should warn you that a portion of this site deals with religion. "Mormon? No, please, tell me you're anything but a Mormon!" - to quote one woman I met in Switzerland. Mormons? Latter-day Saints? What's up with that? Yes, I'm an active but highly imperfect member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (see LDS.org) and have written quite a lot about the Church and it's beliefs. I take on a lot of common questions and attacks in the section I call Mormon Answers (LDS FAQ) and even have a Mormon blog, Mormanity. While I am an amateur "LDS apologist" whose work is heavily used to defend the Church, I am not saying that the Church is perfect or has a monopoly on truth. In fact, I have tremendous respect for many religions and recognize that we can learn much from most of them. I also recognize that the Church has plenty of those pesky mortals in it, even running much of it, and that means errors and problems and embarrassments from time to time. OK, I can't give my full endorsement to every historical event and statement and practice over the years, neither in modern Church history or the Biblical record, for that matter. But I do think we have some amazing things that the world should know about, especially The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Got one? It's a major reason why I am proud to be a member of this Church. My experience with that book has greatly added to my conviction that Jesus Christ is real, that God lives, and that there is a way for men and women to find joy, peace, and meaning in this life and beyond. Oops, there I go, preaching again....
News
The Washington Post mentioned my "activist" work on block scheduling: "Class Schedulers Think Outside the Blocks" by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, Monday, March 10, 2008, p. B01, available online.
Finding Things
The new format is still under construction. Meanwhile, you can find materials here using the index page for this site, or you might prefer the old "cracked planet" page. But best of all, use the Google search box above.
Webmaster: Jeff Lindsay of JeffLindsay.com Contact:
Last updated: May 26, 2007
URL: "http://www.JeffLindsay.com/index.html"
This site is 100% free of bovine growth hormone, MSG, old growth forest products, baby seal fur, and trans-fat. All visual testing of this site was done without the use of rabbits, cats, mice, dogs, roaches, or other cute creatures, so only human eyes were subjected to harmful visual testing during site development. If you experience any adverse effects, please realize that your anguish may have spared a rodent.