Today[January 11th, AD 2008] marks a full year having passed since the first content was uploaded to the www.cross-nation.com site. There was a lot of trial and error at first, but things are starting to improve. This Article of the Week will focus on reviewing what has happened in the first twelve months of operation. As always, feedback is encouraged. Nothing nasty, mind you, lest civil dialogue be damaged any more by society.

Currently by count of webpages the Department of Nonfiction is the largest and the Department of Credocide is the smallest. Alot of external attention has been given to the Department of Apologetics and the Department of Fiction. For the Department of Apologetics, nearly all the attention has been focused on the essay "Beyond Sodom and Gomorrah", a work written with the intention to show non-religious and non-conservative sources that denounce homosexuality and the claims of gay rights advocates. An entire thread on the James Randi Educational Forum was created in response to it, although most of the postings involved the arguments for and against gay marriage and had nothing to do with my essay.

The hardest hit of the Departments has definately got to be the Department of Fiction. Another James Randi Educational Forum Thread was started not long after the thread on the failed effort to create a rebuttal to "Beyond Sodom and Gomorrah" with the sole apparent purpose to bash the short stories present. Most of the focus went to "Dinner Party for the Deceased", which got the title "Worst Short Story Ever" (when a high school assignment it was acknowledged as one of the best in the class, but such is life.). No effort shall be made to respond fully to the thread because a writer can always improve and in the end it is all a matter of taste.

Outside of the James Randi Educational Forum, occasional passing references or criticisms of the Department of Apologetics, in particular "Beyond Sodom and Gomorrah" have existed although nothing of actual evidence to refute the positions taken have manifested. During this time "Beyond Sodom and Gomorrah" did get transferred from word document to webpage, with some minor corrections added. This is mentioned because in the event some may state that the thread created in response to the essay fabricated quotes, this is (from what I can tell) not the case.

As the chief reason why there is a www.cross-nation.com, the "Answering James Randi Forum" webpage holds a special honor. Feedback regarding the webpage has been both positive and negative, with the positive featured on this site and the one negative response being seen as too vitriolic to be given the time of day. There are some future intentions to possibly expand the webpage to include other threads and postings that attempt to undermine fundamentalist Christianity, although this may be a hard route to take. When it comes down to it, the Forum and I agree on alot of issues, from 9/11 conspiracy theories to the paranormal.

This webpage has gathered a considerable amount of unexpected attention, mostly from atheist blogs but also from elsewhere. When one googles "Landoverbaptist.com" its actually one of the first results to come up and on the wikipedia entry for Landover Baptist Church the webpage is one of the footnotes. However, not all has been positive. For one, the wikipedia citing is inaccurate, since it regards efforts to shut down landoverbaptist.com, something that has yet to be endorsed by this website. Outside of wikipedia, several atheist bloggers have found it amusing that this site takes Landover Baptist seriously. Its not so much being taken seriously as it is seen by Cross Nation as a hate site and hate sites are best dealt with via reason. There are plenty of people who, even if they know landoverbaptist.com to be fictional, believe the claims made by the characters accurately represent fundamentalist Christianity. Most certainly if this was a very successful satire site that bashed atheism these very same bloggers would desire there to be a recognition that the satire doesn't accurately represent them.

In response to the increased attention offered to "Landoverbaptist.com Exposed", more contrasts between the satire site and real fundamentalist Christianity will be added. There might also be a direct response to the critics, although that is still in dispute. A similar proposal that may or may not be added is an essay on landoverbaptist.com in general or maybe some of its specific claims against the Bible.

Plans for the future include finally adding essays to the Department of Credocide. There are some older works that could have been posted by now, but they need to be cleaned up so to speak to fit the increased standards I now have for written works. The first essay that shall be posted will be "An Introduction into the Process of Credocide", so that the methodology to be used for the later essays will be laid out ahead of time.

Given the space taken up on this page, there will likely be an archives page for the Department of Nonfiction. If this happens, it will be linked to [The Department of Nonfiction] page.

Two longer short stories, "Above the Expanse of Time" and "Aquarius Draco", will most likely be added to the Department of Fiction. However, given that there is a very graphic scene in "Aquarius Draco" there is a chance that it will not get on. I have thought about putting a warning on it regarding content, although in truth the target audience for this site is voting age adults so its not like there would be any real issue per se.

For this and other things, I would very much like to hear feedback via email, crossnation@hotmail.com. Nothing nasty please, something civil instead. Dialogue can only happen if people are willing to be respectful; if not even that can be done than what will we come to?

That's all for now. God bless you all.