Too much consistency in UI Design confuses me

Here are some problems I have with many UI designs:

If everything looks the same, I can't tell them apart.
If every page looks the same, I can't tell where I am.
If every menu looks the same, It doesn't 'compute' in my head.
If every table looks the same, how can I tell at a glance which table it is which and what it means?
If every list looks the same, each just looks like a block of grey.
If every block of text uses the same font then what is the difference between them?

This is not to say that some level of consistency is bad. I have seen pages where every block of text had a different color, font, size or something. That doesn't work either, But if an application or a site has 100 pages, Why not have ten different page designs ordered by some categorization within the program? or If there are ten parameters that can be consistent, why not have five consistent in every place, and five different as best suits that place?

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History of Inventions in My Time Travel Game

I have taken a page from the game Civilization and have identified 22 advances for each level. They have been sorted into 22 realms such as religion, art, government, economics, technology, migration etc. The waste items are things that are major and can scuttle an age. These advances will probably be part of my game although I'm sure others exist in reality.

The colors have to do with the sorts of things that predominate in one age or another. Red(pink) is chaos - darkness, distribution and communication advances. Yellow is material advances. Green is enlightenment - religions, newness, consciousness and scientific advances etc. Blue is organization advances. We are presently in an 'Enlightenment' Age. So was Gutenberg. I'm waiting for an analog to Gutenberg sometime fairly soon. I call these harmonics. Each age has a predominating harmonic. A,E,I are all Enlightenment. B, and F are organization. D and G are material. E and H are chaos. The most recent Chaos age was 1937 to 1993 which I call the Holocaust age.

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Here we have a Diagram of History

This diagram shows how the branch which Jesus created redeemed history when it reached the main branch in 928 AD.

                                           Jesus |
                                                 |
                                                 |
                                                 |
                                                 |
                                                 |
                                                 |                                   ?
                                                 |                                   |
                                                 | Church                      China |
                                                +++                                 +++
                                                | |                           Japan | |
                                               ++ ++                               ++ ++
                                               |   |                       America |   |
                                             +-+   +-+                           +=+   +-+
                                        Rome |       | Arthurian Br      Britain |       |
                                         +===+       +---+                   +===+  with +---+
                                  Greece |   |Germany|   | Europe      Spain |   | Jesus     |
                                 +=+=+=+=+   +=+=+=+=+   +-------+   +=+=+=+=+   +-          +-------+
                    Mesopotamia  |     Old World     |    Arabia |   | Amerindia |                   |
                 +===+===+===+===+                   +===+===+===+===+-----------+                   +--
 Egypt           |               |     New World                 |   |         without Jesus         |
=+=======+=======+               +-------------------------------+   +-------------------------------+
2662    2213    1765    1316    868 643 419 195  30 255 479 703 928 1152    1601    2049    498    2946
    2438    1989    1541    1092  756 531 307  83 143 367 591 816 1040  1376    1825    2273    722
    
                    *alphabet     *philo-                  *zero,     *science,
*building            *Thera/Exodus sophy                    algebra       *printing

Double lines indicate the main flow of history. Each character on the horizontal axis is roughly 56 years (20480 days). Each age is either half as long or twice as long as the one previous depending on whether it is an advance or a decline. The Arthurian branch is a branch existing mainly in folklore or in the spirit of the church but not in the world.

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Modified Terrain Generator Design

Here is the next installment of my artificial world terrain matrix. It allows a large number of terrain types for an artificial world by combining 22 different terrain characteristics in various orders. For example M-mountain, and P-plain combined become PM-plateau. The major change since last time is I have removed U-underground from the list and replaced it with U-undergrowth. This was because there were very few terrain types in my endeme set with underground components, and The set was not expressive enough toproperly handle things like grasslands, forest understories etc.

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Population Must Keep Growing for Civilization to Keep Advancing

Jesus may return in 2049

Jesus could return tomorrow (or five minutes from now). If we do something to destroy ourselves, I expect that Jesus would step in the day before we do it and rescue us, or the day after we do it and recover the situation. Failing that, I have a theory of history which predicts a number of possibilities for the return of Jesus.

History theory: History is composed of ages, existing in objective reality, which are either half as long or twice as long as the one before. Advancing ages are half as long and declining ages are twice as long. The age we are currently in started in 1993 and will last 28 years. If we continue to advance, history will go asymptotic in 2049 (infinite advancement), and Jesus will return in the late 2040's.

I am concerned however that we are in for a decline soon. The last times main civilization declined were 196 BC and 255 AD. Civilization declined from level 30 to 29 in 196 and from 29 to 28 in 255 AD (I have all of the levels of advancement numbered). The advance before 196 BC was in 419 BC, however something must have gone wrong in the ensuing age because after that there was a decline. I actually think the problem happened much earlier, but it took a couple ages for the effects to show up. One important characteristic of this period was that world population stopped growing much, and did not start growing until advancement was happening again around 1000 AD.

Generally, I have noticed that when history is advancing, population doubles each age. Since the age lengths are halving, this means that roughly the same number of actions get taken during each age. What concerns me is the worldwide population crash that seems to be showing up. Europe's indigenous population is declining. This is also true of Japan. America's population would be declining except for large immigration rates. I thought once that this might simply be an effect of wealth or something, but what is troubling me now is that Iran's demographic replacement rate has crashed. This is worrisome because Iran is neither wealthy nor particularly advanced.

So, since population has historically doubled along with advances, population stabilized during declines, and population now is threatening to stabilize, we could be in for a decline. If so, history will not reach infinite advancement for a much longer period. If this is the case, this puts Jesus' likely return sometime in the late 21st or the 22nd century. Here are some possible scenarios for Jesus return:

Scenarios (calculated starting from 1993):
Scenario 1: we do something to destroy ourselves ... Jesus steps in to rescue us (this could be tomorrow)
Scenario 2: continued advancement: 28 yrs - 14 yrs - 7 yrs - 3.5 yrs ... Jesus returns in the late 2040's.
Scenario 3: advance,decline then advancement: 28 - 14 - 28 - 14 - 7 - 3.5 ... Jesus returns in the late 2070's
Scenario 4: one decline then advancement: 28 - 56 - 28 - 14 - 7 - 3.5 ... Jesus returns in the early 2130's.
Scenario 5: Adv-Decl-Decl-Adv...: 28 - 14 - 28 - 56 - 28 - 14 - 7 - 3.5 ... Jesus returns in the early 2170's
Scenario 6: Decl-Decl-Adv...: 28 - 56 - 112 - 56 - 28 - 14 - 7 - 3.5 ... Jesus returns around 2300
etc.

Alternatively perhaps at some level population will no longer need to grow for history to advance.

I believe failure of classical civilization to advance required two declines to return to the level at which their development mistakes had been made in order to correct them at that level. If the same pattern holds and we need to decline two ages this means that scenarios 5 and 6 are the most likely. If the source of our failure happened in the age from 1825-1937, then scenario 6 is most likely. If the source of our failure happened in the age from 1937-1993 then scenario 5 is most likely. If we continue to advance scenario 2 is most likely.

Therefore Jesus is most likely to return in the 2040's, 2070's, 2130's, 2170's, around 2300 or tomorrow.

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