Archive for the ‘way of the mind (site)’ Category

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The State of Way of the Mind

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

As you’ve probably have noticed, this blog hasn’t had any new posts since May 2008, which has led to some queries about it being dead. Fortunately, it isn’t (it’s just pining for the fjords… sorry, couldn’t resist), but I feel I have a duty to explain things to my dear, (formerly) faithful readers.

One reason for my absence (from WotM and every other blog I author) was the changes in my life during these past months. New job, several new places of work (in the same job), new girlfriend, and even many physical changes at my home. Now, this by itself should have only affected my blogging for a couple of weeks or so, but then, as any blogger probably knows all too well, it’s hard to come back; you always feel that you have to apologize for “not doing your job”, and it’s easier to delay it… and delay… and delay…

Another reason is that, while my interests and hobbies tend to remain forever, they change in intensity. I’ve always gone through “phases” in my life: more reading, more video games, more socializing, and so on; and even each of those also tends to vary; for example, while reading atheism-related blogs was my passion in 2006 and 2007, these days I tend to go for, incredibly enough, U.S. politics (go, Obama!). If you don’t read, you don’t feel inspired to write, after all… so you get the idea of what happened. I’m happy to report that I’ve began to read Planet Atheism again for the last couple of days, and I’ve only just realized how much I’ve missed this subject for the last 5 months.

(incidentally, Planet Atheism is yet another problem – I have more than 100 new blogs and blog changes in my “to-do list”. But that’s a subject for another post, coming later today, or tomorrow.)

Since recently I’ve been fascinated with the U.S. elections, as I’ve said, until November I’ll be writing about them as well (probably mostly about them). Atheism and religion will go back to being the main themes afterwards.

Anyway, sorry about my absence; the least I could have done was to explain things, and I didn’t do so. I’ll try to be more careful about it in the future.

Posted in way of the mind (site) | 4 Comments »

Comment deleted by mistake

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

A short while ago, as I was deleting a few spam comments that Akismet missed, I clicked one too many times and deleted a recent, legitimate comment from a post. I don’t even know which post it was, or what the comment was about (everything went too fast). Therefore, I apologize to the commenter, and hope he or she re-posts his/her comment.

Again, sorry about this. I’ll be more careful in the future. I believe that anyone who takes the time to comment here (except when the comment is insulting, off-topic or spammy, of course) should have their “work” respected and preserved, and I always endeavor to do that.

Posted in way of the mind (site) | 5 Comments »

RSS feed back up

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

As readers had noted in the post below, the RSS feed for this blog had been missing since the update to WordPress 2.5.1. That version introduced a bug where the feed on /feed/ worked, but not that on /wp-rss2.php and similar. Since I use the latter for FeedBurner, this blog was affected. Everything should be fine now, as the WordPress guys have already fixed the bug in the development version, and I was able to install their fix here (just follow the link above if you’re having the same problem).

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How to link to a site without supporting it

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

This is something many readers have probably known about for ages, but since this blog may appeal to non-technical people, this may still be of help to some.

Reading Planet Atheism, from time to time I see someone mentioning an “enemy” site (say, one by creationists, or liars… but I had no need to say it twice), and saying something such as “I’d link to that site / page / article, but I don’t want to support it.”

While this is perfectly understandable, it may also be counterproductive not to direct your readers to what you’re talking about. In other words, what you probably want is to show your current readers that page, but not “support” it, in terms of having a permanent link to it which will be picked up by search engines such as Google. To search engines, a link is akin to a “vote of confidence”; indeed, a huge part of search engine optimization is getting other sites to link to yours.

So, what if you don’t want to promote a site, but still want to show it to your readers? Easy: you use the rel="nofollow" parameter.

A normal link goes like this:

<a href="http://www.wayofthemind.org/">Way of the Mind</a>

While a link you don’t want search engines to pick up as a vote of confidence goes like this:

<a href="http://www.expelledthemovie.com/" rel="nofollow">Creationist anti-science dishonest ad-hitlerum propaganda</a>

See the difference? With the second method, you can show a site to your readers, but not improve its ranking in search engines.

Of course, if your site is hugely popular (think Pharyngula), the simple fact that your “army” of readers visits that site may be seen as “promotion”… but, then again, if you’re pointing out a site filled with wrong claims, attacks, lies, and so on, your regular readers are unlikely to turn into regular visitors of that site (unless they want a good laugh, of course).

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Posted in blogging, way of the mind (site) | Comments Off

About being tagged: tomorrow! :)

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

I’ve been tagged by other atheist bloggers at least 3 times now (one for the PA blog, two for this one), so, just so you all don’t think I’m ignoring you (since these things can actually be fun), I’m going to write my “8 random facts” tomorrow, OK? :)

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Posted in personal stuff, way of the mind (site) | 2 Comments »

New features: Editing and Subscribing to comments

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

I’ve just added two plugins to WotM, which provide the following new features:

  • Edit your comments: for 30 minutes after posting a comment, you can edit it as you will. This allows you to correct typos or any other mistakes you notice immediately after posting, or to add something you remembered when you were re-reading what you just posted. The 30-minute limit is so that users can’t cowardly :) pretend that they didn’t say something way back in the discussion.
  • Subscribe to comments: below the comment text box, there is a checkbox labeled Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. By checking it when posting a comment, you can be warned of replies to that discussion by email (of course, you’ll have to include a real email address in the “email” field for it to work; that email is never shown to other readers, though). Every email includes a working “unsubscribe” link, in case you change your mind later.

Any problems, please let me know.

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Posted in way of the mind (site) | 5 Comments »

Coming soon: short posts

Monday, April 9th, 2007

No, I’m not saying that all my posts will be shorter from now on. :) What I mean is that I’m thinking of creating a new category on Way of the Mind, with (yes) shorter posts, which, unlike the “normal” ones, will simply suggest an idea, a point, a thought… without being followed by any kind of opinion or conclusion from me. They’ll be “short” precisely because of that. :)

Obviously, any comments on those posts (and, indeed, on any post) will be welcome.

Hopefully, the first one will appear tomorrow; I already know what it’ll be about. But don’t worry, the “normal” posts will still be written from time to time. :)

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Posted in way of the mind (site) | 1 Comment »

Good and bad news

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007

The good news is that Planet Atheism now has 5 (*) blogs. Not bad for 12 hours. :) I’ve already started to send some invitations to candidate blogs, but I’m doing it slowly, so don’t feel offended if you haven’t been invited yet. :) Still, there’s no reason to wait; if you’re interested, let me know (details here).

The bad news is that the server where this blog was hosted, apparently, couldn’t cope with the StumbleUpon effect of so many hits per second. Who’d guess that my 16 Common Myths about Atheists post would get so popular again? Therefore, I had to temporarily move Way of the Mind to my old server, located at my home in Portugal. Bandwidth may be worse (though it should still be OK), but the server itself is much more powerful, and it laughs at the StumbleUpon effect. :twisted: :)

I’ve contacted the hosting people for a server upgrade, and in a couple of days (hopefully) this blog should be physically in the U.S. again. Other sites such as the forum and Planet Atheism are still in the American server.

Is it too obvious that I’m a sysadmin as well as a blogger? :)

(*) 7 now. :)

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Posted in planet atheism, way of the mind (site) | 2 Comments »

Self-censorship, and the fear of offending

Tuesday, January 9th, 2007

Note: this one is big (note the “Continue reading…” link, if you’re on the blog’s front page), and is kind of a rant. It will also, probably, make some of you leave this blog for good, though that’s not my goal.

Since August 2006, this blog has been mostly about atheism and what’s wrong with religion. I’ve been criticized for that, and lost some of my previous regular readers, though I also gained some new ones. But it’s what I’ve wanted to write about… I’m still allowed to do that, right? :)

And, yet, every time a post of mine, criticizing religious belief, is more popular than usual, I get the same kinds of criticism – sometimes, “trolling” would even be a better word. Many commenters don’t even read what I write; they simply think “atheist… enemy!”. You can see, for instance, that most of the replies on my 16 Common Myths about Atheists post weren’t about the myths themselves, or about whether they existed or not, or about whether atheists were like that or not. No, most were about whether God existed or not (and almost everyone said he did, of course). And a lot of replies called me – and atheists in general – “arrogant” – again, not because of what I wrote, but simply because I, like other atheists, have the nerve to say that there is almost certainly no god, and that millions of believers are, therefore, wrong. Because, again, it’s not arrogant to believe without evidence, but it is arrogant to disbelieve due to that lack of evidence, apparently…

It is not in my nature to deliberately offend. It is, however, in my nature to be as honest as I can, and to say what I believe to be true. And, yet, with so many accusations such as the ones I’ve read in several months of comments, I have found that I have been more “careful not to offend” than, I, perhaps, should have been. Because people who get offended when I say that they have no real evidence for the existence of God, and, therefore, are guilty of wishful thinking, are usually the same ones who say that atheists are pure monsters living on earth, putting their “faith” in science, being too “arrogant” to believe in God, and disbelieve (or say they do) simply because they don’t want any rules of morality above them.

That, dear readers, is a much greater insult than saying “you are wrong”. Even than saying “you are deluded”, or “you are refusing to think”. And yet, it is I who have been, perhaps, saying less than I should, who have been censoring myself.

(more…)

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Posted in atheism, censorship, religion, way of the mind (site) | 12 Comments »

Way of the Mind’s 10 most popular posts in 2006

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

Since every other blog seems to be doing it… :)

Sorted by number of visits, in ascending order:

10 – The problem of Agnosticism, part 2 – it’s a “part 2″ (see below for part 1), but it’s perfectly readable on its own. Discusses the contradiction of being “agnostic” about Yahweh, but “atheistic” about every other made-up deity.
9 – Christian myths about Atheism: discussion – there were so many comments for the “16 Common Myths about Atheism” post (see below) that I had to close that thread and open a new one, or my web server would have been very, very angry at me. :)
8 – The problem of Agnosticism – explores why agnostics are agnostic, and what’s wrong, in my opinion, with it.
7 – How I’ve become an atheist – one of the oldest posts on Way of the Mind, this tells of my own “deconversion”, and links to a brilliant Douglas Adams interview
6 – Why Atheism is not a religion – oddly enough, many people seem to think that it is – in other words, that it requires as much “faith” as theism. This post shows why that is not the case.
5 – Are the myths about atheists real or not? – after the popular “common myths” post, many people said I was creating “straw men” – in other words, the myths didn’t really exist. A simple search on Google News proved otherwise.
4 – “Closed minds” – disputes the common (and unfortunate) belief that “being sure of something is closed-minded” (also known as “reality is fluid”).
3 – Deism and Pantheism – a latecomer, this post describes those two not-very-well-known beliefs, whose proponents included many of the U.S. Founding Fathers, and Albert Einstein.
2 – Atheism: arrogance? – discusses why believing that 2+2 will still be 4 tomorrow isn’t “arrogant”.
1 – 16 Common Myths about Atheists – a list of what many theists believe — wrongly — about atheists in general. No, we don’t sacrifice babies. We don’t even boil young goats in their mothers’ milk. :)

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Posted in atheism, way of the mind (site) | 1 Comment »

Please update your links… pretty please. :)

Tuesday, November 21st, 2006

I’ve asked readers before to update their bookmarks so that they access this site using its new address.

However, there’s a second thing I’d like to ask you: if you have any links to this site on your own site or blog, please update them as well. Whether it’s a link to the main page, or to a particular post. I’d really appreciate it. ;)

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: a link to the Way of the Mind Forum would also be nice. ;)

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Change of address, and new forum

Saturday, November 18th, 2006

Since a short while ago, this blog has moved to www.wayofthemind.org, instead of wayofthemind.dehumanizer.com.

The old address will redirect to this one, with a warning. If you try to access an old post directly, you will also be taken to the same post on the new address.

However, to spare my poor home server :) and save bandwidth, please update your bookmark(s), and, from now on, use the new address. I appreciate it. :)

Meanwhile, the new forum is up, right here: Way of the Mind Forum! I hope you register and participate. It’s still somewhat empty (naturally…), but I hope that that changes in the near future, with your help. I, myself, will use it (and keep writing in the blog, which I hope you keep commenting on as well). The main point of the forum is that you people can start your own threads.

Any problems with it, please let me know. There are still few categories, but more will be created when necessary.

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Posted in way of the mind (site) | 5 Comments »

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