i note many other more advanced blogs like yourself employ these buttons n tags n such, and so i will shamelessly ask, what is the benefit? (i could ask this offline but maybe yr answer will help other dumb-ass bloggers like myself.)
my other feedback, if i may dip my toe in, is that white type on a black background is sposedly tough on the eyes (or so my graphic-design pals tell me). your type is nice and gray which makes the contrast less harsh... but i still leave your blog feeling a mite bleary-eyed. like, i wanna keep reading the 3/1 posting on "flawed creation" but it makes my eyes fatigued. could just be the joys of being over 40
For me it's an attempt to add something of visual interest and group things by topic. Maybe one day I can have some icons on the sidebar and if you want to see all of my religious posts you click the cross.
Re: the color scheme I hate looking at a bunch of white on teh site and I'm trying to find a good background color. Then I need to find a text color that's readable on the background. Purple on purple seemed good for a year, but now I'm entering a redder phase. Thanks for the feedback!