Tag: Vridar blog

Hi, everybody.

Recently we had some trouble with the WordPress JetPack plugin and outgoing emails. I’ve moved us over to a different plugin called Subscribe2. You may have noticed a slight change in the sidebar over on the right.

Issues:

• If you think you haven’t been getting mail from Vridar even though you used to, first check your spam or junk mail folder. If you don’t see any mail there, let me know. You can reach me here:  widowfield (at sign) gmail (dot) com.
• If you would like to receive entire posts in your email messages from Vridar rather than just an excerpt, drop me a line. With Subscribe2, I think we can finally do that now.
• If you would like to be removed from our subscriber list, let me know.
• In the future, we may be able to send out weekly digests instead of an email notification for each post. I’d be curious if anyone is interested in that feature.

Thanks for reading Vridar!

–Tim

We’re back!

Did you miss us?

Our recent downtime was self-inflicted. (I know Watts you’re thinking.) But anyhow, we’re on a new server in the Netherlands now, and so far everything seems to be working fine.

Dr Patrik Lindenfors, an associate professor at the Stockholm University, has asked me if I would be willing to help him by advertising his crowdfunded research project on this blog. I am honoured to do so and have just sent a donation to help out as well. He’s asking for public assistance because it’s outside his normal area of research.

His university website lists his areas of research and publications. He also has a personal webpage.

His Facebook page contains summaries of the new project.

The following is extracted from his webpage dedicated to explaining the project and the campaign for public assistance.

I propose to review potential placebo effects of religion and how these may explain why religious beliefs and practices are so common across human populations.

In my regular work I am a researcher of cultural evolution at Stockholm University. I have previously authored the books God Probably Doesn’t Exist, which has been translated into seven languages, and “Samarbete“, a popular science book in Swedish about the biological and cultural evolution of cooperation, currently being translated into English.

Now, I want to explore a proposal that has circulated in books and on-line discussions for a while – if there are any placebo effects of religion and whether these may be a partial explanation of the spread of religious beliefs and practices across human societies. . . . . . 

You can read more and find out how to assist on the above links, in particular at the Divine Placebo webpage. Don’t delay though. He’s running out of time.

More from the site: Continue reading “Divine Placebo: A Request to Readers”

Best wishes for 2014 for all from Tim and me.

We have had our fair share of blog difficulties this year. They were initiated by one of those Bible scholars we are told so often are such terribly very nice people. Thanks to Tim Vridar was moved to a new site where we are no longer at the mercy of server owners who are prepared to act precipitously on the whims of disgruntled members of the body of Christ. Tim has also been responsible for troubleshooting the difficulties we had since our move and regular readers would have noticed a steady improvement in the interface and loading times. Unfortunately we have learned that our new server does not offer the quality service it used to give — we were down for some hours earlier today — so Tim will be moving us once again soon to a new site with lots of promise governance-wise and technically.

So a special thanks to Tim as well as to all readers who have continued to appreciate some of our posts, critically and otherwise.

Vridar is getting over 400 spam comments a day. This is too much for us reasonably to be expected to regularly check in any detail.

We do know that some comments for some unknown reason do get caught up in spam.

So if you post a comment that does not appear immediately please do email either Tim or myself (see the contact info page for how) and we will rescue your comment from the spam bin. Continue reading “Comments and Spam”

There is no doubt that Joel Watts attached a CC (Creative Commons) Licence notice to the blog post of his that I copied and reused.

So what IS a CC licence?

The whole idea behind a CC licence (we might even call it the CC philosophy) is to foster a win-win situation in the world of ideas. That is, the person who creates the new work will not lose anything if someone else, who likes that work enough to want to re-use it, picks it up and does re-use it to create something new.

So, for example, if I post a new literary work, all sweated from my own furrowed imagination, like,

I feel so egg-ceptionally, god-blessed smart today that I think you have egg all over your godless dumb face

and you think, Wow!, I like that! — then the CC licence is just for you! But it’s also for me who was inspired to write the original!

It’s for me, since I only need check of the tick-boxes in the CC form to tell the world what I want and don’t want others doing with my inspired words — e.g. do I allow you to make $$$$ from my words? do I allow you to re-use without telling the world I was the original creator of those words?

And it’s for you — you can re-use my words any way you would like within the constraints of the check-boxes I ticked.

So if you take my words and create something that argues against their original intent, and even proves they are shite, no worries! If you have also created your post under a CC then I can take that, re-use it, and argue the exact opposite!

We could even have a dialogue! Continue reading “What is a Creative Commons (CC) Licence?”

Hi Everyone,

The original Vridar site has now been restored by WordPress.com minus one controversial post. I have disabled comments on that legacy site, though, since Vridar.org (the site y0u are reading now) will be the active one from now on.

The Vridar blog was deactivated by its hosting company, WordPress.com, in response to my reactivation of a post that I did not realize had been taken down as a result of a reader’s complaint.

I have since issued a counter-claim and WordPress.com has responded by contacting me to say they have reinstated the original blog minus the post in dispute. That post will remain inactive pending a further response from the claimant within 14 days.

We have Tim to thank for getting up this new site for Vridar so quickly.

 

I would like anyone who has produced a blogpost or knows of a blogpost discussing what has happened to the Vridar blog to drop a comment and link, here, please. Also — any online discussions maybe.

I have left comments on a couple I chanced upon and would like to reestablish contact with those (and I do apologize — last few days have been a bit chaotic and I haven’t kept records to recall who I have visited recently). We’ve lost all our old blog links and subscriber lists as far as I can tell and need to reestablish these from scratch. I’d also like to offer personal thanks to any blogger who has commented on this fiasco and perhaps give an explanation on any blog that has been misinformed about the facts.

Cheers and many thanks,

Neil

Here’s one I came upon a few moments ago. I’m sure there are a couple more somewhere (including another I commented on recently) . . .

 

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• Reinstate Vridar

Here’s the other one I was trying to recall at the time I wrote the above:

 

 

http://irrco.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/joel-watts-neil-godfrey-censorship-and-dishonesty/

and another:

http://irrco.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/dmca-censorship-and-the-wattsgodfrey-debacle/

 

Also Pithom’s —

 

 

http://againstjebelallawz.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/the-prayer-of-monsieur-twats/

 

Well, we’re alive again.  Did I miss anything while we were dead?

“Waaaah!  They stole my content!”

Here’s the short version of what happened. In one of Neil’s blog posts, he copied the content from one of Joel “Takedown” Watts’ posts, not to steal content (heaven forbid), but to prove that Joel had merely scraped Google for links related to “the science of history.”

Joel took issue with it and claims he sent Neil an email. Perhaps he did. Neil still can’t find any evidence of it, not even in his spam pile. Joel then complained to WordPress.com, and demanded that the post containing his stolen property be taken down.

As far as we can tell, what happened next is that the WordPress guys put that post on private, but neglected to tell us why. Yesterday, Neil asked if I’d changed a post’s status to “Private,” or if we were experiencing another WordPress glitch. I said I might have fat-fingered something.  I had been setting some posts I was working on from Draft to Private, because I was worried I might accidentally publish them.

“Nice blog ya got here. It’d be a shame if sumpin’ was tuh happen to it.”

So Neil, unaware of the storm brewing on the horizon, set the post back to Public. At that point, it appears WordPress interpreted our behavior as evidence that we were flouting the rules and ignoring the DMCA takedown order. Please note that neither Neil nor I received any warnings from WordPress about the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.

Continue reading “Rising from the Ashes”