2014-03-09

Vridar Subscriptions and Email Notifications

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Tim Widowfield

Hi, everybody.

Mr. ZIP
Mr. ZIP (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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


2014-02-12

Vridar’s Second Resurrection

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by Tim Widowfield

Resurrection Pinacoteka-3
Resurrection Pinacoteka-3 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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.


2014-02-06

Divine Placebo: A Request to Readers

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by Neil Godfrey

Dr Patrik Lindenfors

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”


2014-01-01

NYE Best Wishes

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by Neil Godfrey

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.


2013-08-15

Comments and Spam

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

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”


2013-07-17

Joel Watts Fails to Defend His DMCA Takedown Application Against Vridar

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Today I received notice from WordPress that I was free to restore to public access my blog post in which I exposed Joel Watts as an incompetent scholar and lazy fool with respect to his efforts to argue against mythicists and even against the generally accepted nature of history itself as understood among historians. He did not contest my counter-claim to the original takedown notice within the 14 days required.

Screen Shot 2013-07-17 at 8.39.06 PMBut after learning that Joel had clearly turned back his system clock to make it look like he had indeed sent me an email to try to arrange a one-to-one settlement to the dispute as required, and that he had subsequently removed the Creative Commons notice to the page that I had (rightfully) copied for critical review, I sent an amended counter-notice four days later. I asked about this and Automattic assured me that the amended counter-notice made no difference to the time schedule and that I am free to republish the post in question. Continue reading “Joel Watts Fails to Defend His DMCA Takedown Application Against Vridar”


2013-07-07

Last Piece of the Vridar Takedown Puzzle

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by Neil Godfrey

Updated about 20 minutes after original post -- detail added to the "So why I did not find. . ." paragraph.

The only detail so far unexplained in the deactivation of the Vridar.wordpress blog is why I apparently did not receive a warning notice from WordPress itself.

The times below are in Australian Central Standard Time, my local time. (Some images may be over-size for iPad viewing but to reduce them further would make them difficult to read.)

  • 2:26 AM, Tuesday June 28th, WordPress/Automattic email me notice of their takedown of my post about Joel’s nonsense.

screen-shot-2013-07-07-at-6-55-40-am

  • But being 2:26 AM I am, as usual for that time, asleep.
  • Around 3 AM I wake up (as I do from time to time) and check my iphone for current news and recent blog activity.
    • If I looked at my Gmail at that time (I don’t recall if I did, but if I did then I would have ignored anything that did not look interesting — I would have ignored anything from “WordPress” since it’s usually some notice of a new product, new theme, — I’m not interested) the subject header would have meant nothing to me (what’s “DMCA”?, looks technical, some outage time?) and I would have ignored it.
    • The only thing I know for certain is that I did not take any notice of my email at that hour.
  • But I did see something odd: my post on Joel’s history/science nonsense is in ‘private’ status. Maybe Tim is doing something with it. I decide to check with him later and go back to sleep.
  • Once awake I check the post in “private” status, see nothing wrong with it, so restore it to “public” status.

2013-07-06

What is a Creative Commons (CC) Licence?

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

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?”


2013-07-02

Joel Watts, “Email Evidence” and Perjury: The Answers Are Beginning to Emerge

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Watch this space for a new post by Tim.

Meanwhile read Manoj Joseph’s recent comments.

On a related matter: Joel Watts has been writing quite a lot to portray WordPress.com through Automattic as diligently investigating the merit of his claim before posting a DMCA takedown notice. See Ugh – Once Again the DMCA and his various comments on James McGrath’s post, Vridar No Longer Available.

Well, if one reads the statement by Automattic that Joel has kindly posted for our benefit one can see that Automattic explained to Joel exactly what they checked. Read that second last one-sentence paragraph:

AutomatticCheck

 That’s it. They explained to Joel that they had received his DMCA takedown notice and reviewed it for completeness.

It was the same when I submitted my counterclaim. I had to check off a whole lot of boxes confirming I had included everything in my statement that they required. They did not check my or Joel’s blog sites to see if my statement was true.

That is, Automattic at this stage does not investigate and confirm the validity of the claims. That is a later process and the responsibility of a court. Automattic’s job is to be sure that each party submits its sworn statements according to due process.

But there’s (much) more . . . . . Continue reading “Joel Watts, “Email Evidence” and Perjury: The Answers Are Beginning to Emerge”


The Prayer of Master Watts

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by Neil Godfrey

One reader has posted a classic cartoon of the recent events as explained by a certain M. Joel Watts, MA. . . .  For full details of the particular post by M. Watts that this cartoon depicts, as well as the original source photographs on which it is based (they are also classics!) you must visit the original post by pithom on his blog. It includes a little webliography of recent related posts, too.

watts

 


2013-07-01

The Old Vridar Rises Again

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

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.

 


2013-06-30

Looking for Vridar Blog Posts

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

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) . . .

 

Related articles

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

Irreducible Complexity
Irreducible Complexity

 

 

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 —

cropped-macalisterewall
Against Jebel al-Lawz

 

 

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

 


2013-06-29

What Happened to Vridar? (updated with more reflections on Joel’s role)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

ccOn 26th June I wrote a post exposing the incompetence and culpable ignorance of Joel Watts with respect to a particular point he was using in an attempt to lampoon mythicism.

That blog post contained a detailed, point by point criticism of Joel’s post. Whenever criticizing the works of others I habitually bend over backwards to be sure I am fair to the other side and let their own views be understood. And since Joel Watts had always had a Creative Commons license condition attached to all of his blog posts (I also have a Creative Commons license) I saw nothing amiss in quoting his blogpost in full — especially seeing it consisted of nothing but a list of 25 web links, a tweet from someone else, and no more than about half a dozen lines of typical Watts-like puerile insult. I made sure I linked to the original site, and that I identified the author, and that the views of the post did not reflect mine. After all, all of those conditions were in large measure the whole reason for my post.

Evidence for the cc licence on Joel’s page is at

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jd245jz4rwxon7u/unsettled.jpg (excerpt including address details) —

and (full page): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XkmNH86CWEE9ulHdSas5zwvfFZ7gt-7FA5F5sKyrAp8/edit?usp=sharing

This CC notice was removed from Joel’s blog only on the morning of 29th June 2013 Australian Central Time. It appears as if this was removed soon after this CC notice on Joel’s blog was publicly advertised: http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?p=7493335#post7493335

At no time before my blog was deactivated did I receive any notice from Joel Watts, the owner of the blog post I copied for critical discussion, or from WordPress warning me or asking me to remove or modify the post. My email account is Gmail and files can be verified and in the event of legal proceedings I would welcome such a check.

Indeed, when one began to read the comments by Joel Watts on James McGrath’s blog regarding the take-down of Vridar, he gave no indication that he had anything to do with what had happened. See, for example: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2013/06/vridar-no-longer-available.html#comment-945224032 As another has noticed, all Joel did until I posted that evidence was joke about his efforts to take down other blogs he did not like, joking that it was an impossible task.

If Joel really did send me a warning letter then one must wonder why he only confessed to his own involvement after I posted the evidence — did he not expect me to be able to that from the beginning?

It was only after I posted the evidence from WordPress that Joel suddenly changed his tack and began to accuse me of being responsible and even for effectively taking down my own blog!

Joel Watts did not follow the specified steps to contact me directly with a complaint about my blogpost. This was in contradiction to Automattic’s direction to complainants according to their directions at  http://automattic.com/dmca/ :

2. Contact the blogger directly. Go to the blog post in question and leave a comment with your complaint to see if the matter can be resolved directly between you and the blogger.

Joel Watts left no such comment on my blog. I received no email from him in my Gmail account and I have offered my gmail account for inspection by legal investigators. Continue reading “What Happened to Vridar? (updated with more reflections on Joel’s role)”


2013-06-28

Rising from the Ashes

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by Tim Widowfield

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

Folio 55 verso : Phoenix (Fenix) rising from i...
Folio 55 verso : Phoenix (Fenix) rising from its ashes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“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”