Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox

A cranky old professor who teaches graphic design

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@OleTimeHardball Absolutely!! It's the Hall of FAME, not the Hall of Stats!
Brock was an icon in his era.

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@catholiclawyer @OleTimeHardball Garvey and Fernando should be in. It's the Hall of FAME, not the Hall of Stats! Both those guys were huge for their era. Same for Dale Murphy.

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@BowTiedBroke 736 feet

[Anchored Soul @anchoredso37497]

Christianity as the Best Explanation:

The argument here isn’t “believe because the Bible says so”—it’s that Christianity, examined as a worldview, has extraordinary explanatory power. It is the best explanation for the way things are.

1) Christianity perfectly explains the universe: ordered laws, fine-tuning for life, consciousness, and objective morality originate from a rational, personal Creator (Genesis 1, John 1).

2) The universe perfectly explains Christianity: its precise constants, mathematical structure, beauty, and human longing for meaning/justice point to design by the biblical God, fulfilled in Christ’s resurrection as historical anchor.
It best explains reality by accounting for why anything exists, why science works, why evil is real yet redeemable, and why humans have inherent dignity and purpose—unlike atheism’s brute facts, chance, and ultimate meaninglessness.

Christianity doesn’t explain selected data points… it explains the whole package: existence, order, math, mind, morality, and history, with each piece reinforcing the others.

To the contrary, Atheism must treat each as a surprising coincidence. That’s not a stronger position, it’s a weaker one. And the coincidence isn’t an explanation, it’s just a polite word for “we don’t know.” Christianity does know—and it knew first.

Why is it important to have an explanation?

An explanation isn’t just an intellectual nicety, it’s the foundation of every decision you make. If your explanation of human nature is wrong, your politics fails. If your explanation of morality is wrong, your ethics collapses. If your explanation of meaning is wrong, your life drifts.

Bad explanations have body counts. The 20th century’s most murderous ideologies—Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism—weren’t failures of technology or resources… they were failures of worldview. They had wrong explanations of what humans are and what they’re for.

Do Christians just believe Christianity because it’s “comfortable”?

You can prefer a comfortable explanation, but if it’s false, reality will eventually correct you—personally, culturally, civilizationally.

This is why atheism and atheistic regimes have killed more people than every religion combined in all of history, and atheism remains a small minority. It is a bad worldview that produces little fruit, and the fruit it DOES produce is often rotten.

Explanations impact worldviews and worldviews impact fruit. And the fruit doesn’t lie.

A best explanation that also produces fruit points to truth and alignment with reality, and that’s not a leap of faith—that’s good logic.

[Supersonic Redhead🛫 @Supersonic_Red]

There’s a generation a lot of people forget exists. We were born at the tail end of the Boomers, but we are not culturally the same as people born in the 40s and early 50s. We are Generation Jones.

And honestly, it explains a lot.

We grew up in a world that still felt fundamentally analog, but we were young enough to be dragged headfirst into the digital revolution. We are the bridge generation between rotary phones and smartphones, between slide rules and AI, between Walter Cronkite and algorithm driven media.

We remember when there were only a few television channels and the entire country watched the same thing at the same time. We also adapted to the internet, email, forums, social media, streaming and now artificial intelligence. We lived before and after the technological singularity hit everyday life.

That is not a small thing.

People born in the 40s came of age in a post World War II America that was still industrial, deeply hierarchical and institutionally stable. Their formative years were shaped by the Cold War, Vietnam, the civil rights era and a society where information moved slowly.

Generation Jones came later. We inherited the aftermath of all of that.

We were the kids who watched Watergate destroy blind trust in government. We watched manufacturing begin to collapse. We saw divorce rates explode. We were the first truly latchkey generation in massive numbers. We learned independence early because many of us had to.

We grew up with one foot in old America and one foot in whatever this new thing was becoming.

We played outside until the streetlights came on but we also learned DOS commands. We learned cursive and keyboarding. We had card catalogs and Google searches. We went from vinyl records to cassette tapes to CDs to MP3s to streaming in one lifetime.

We remember maps. We remember memorizing phone numbers. We remember life before GPS and before every human interaction became filtered through a screen.

And because of that, I think Generation Jones developed a very unique perspective. We are adaptable because we had no choice but to adapt. We learned technology as adults instead of being born into it. We remember a slower world but were forced to survive in a rapidly accelerating one.

That creates a very different mindset than either older Boomers or younger Gen X and Millennials.

A lot of us also reject the caricature people now associate with “Boomers.” We were not buying houses for the cost of a sandwich in 1965. The interest rate on my first house was over 14% and that was after buying down a point. Many of us got hit by recessions, outsourcing, pension collapses and economic instability just like younger generations did. We watched promises evaporate in real time.

We understand older generations because we were raised by them. We understand younger generations because we had to evolve alongside them.

That’s why the Jones generation often feels culturally homeless. We are rarely discussed, rarely defined and usually lumped into categories that don’t actually fit us.

But we exist.

We are the human transition point between the industrial age and the digital age.

And frankly, there will probably never be another generation quite like us again.

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@The_Kyle_Mann Lieutenant Worf on TNG’s series finale:
“This IS a good day to die!”

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@michelleebrock Back in the 90's, people were buying a Mac and some software and calling themselves Desktop Publishers. Most found that they weren't talented enough to produce professional-level excellence.
I see this as a new variant of the same issue.

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@michelleebrock This has always been the issue with technology and the arts. Tech can make things faster/easier, but the human creative spark must still determine what to do and why it should be done.

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@michelleebrock Not really. What I meant by "why" was the judging of a good/successful design vs. a mediocre/less successful design. If you ask AI to generate 100 logo concepts, someone has to judge which ones are worth developing further.

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@boriquagato The film could end with him playing Eruption! Perfect!!

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@michelleebrock Can you tell you hit upon a hot-button issue for me?
😀

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@michelleebrock But they don't address the conceptual issues. That's still the realm of the human mind. Computers made iterations faster and easier. AI makes that faster and easier still, but that's all.

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@michelleebrock I was the first generation to use software for design. Switched from drafting pens to Illustrator/Photoshop. The software made drawing a perfectly straight line faster and easier, but it didn't answer the "why" question.

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@michelleebrock Unfortunately, I don't teach that class anymore. I'm teaching our intro class, which is a "how to use the software" class. Not as much conceptual work. The use of AI for design is a complicated subject. It's a tool, not a designer.

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@Kiradavis Preach!!

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@howertonjosh @INTERIORPORN1 Amen!

[Semi-Retired Professor Steve Cox @ProfSteveCox]

@TSHamiltonAstro @booksandbbq I totally agree - it means so much to the students. I'm in a "unique" situation in that I teach at a school in CA, but live in TN (100% online classes now at the end of my career). This is my year for commencement, so I'm flying out to SoCal next week.