March 26-28, 2010 is the Northwest Freethought Conference in Renton, Washington (13 miles outside Seattle).

Details HERE.

It may be big:

The first Northwest Free-thought Conferences were planned and run by the Corvallis Secular Society, Eugene Atheists and Freethinkers, Humanist Association of Salem, Humanists of Greater Portland, and United States Atheists. The first conference, attended by 100 people, was held in 1998. Subsequently, conferences were held in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002.

The 2009 conference, “Darwin@200, and Other Matters,” at Portland State University was the resumption of this series. It featured Dr. David Domke, Roy Speckhardt, and Dr. Bob Park as keynote speakers. For 2010, we hope to expand the program to include a wider variety of speakers, workshops and panels.

The Northwest Free-thought Alliance coordinates the efforts of almost 50 free-thought groups in the Northwest, including member organizations of the Northwest Free-thought Coalition (NWFC), in planning and hosting this annual regional conference.

2010’s keynote speakers include Ophelia Benson and Dr. David Domke.

Thanks to Pharyngula.

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After some discussion, Jenny and I agreed that a discussion forum could be useful here at the Paliban Daily site.

Once upon a time there was one, but it got overwhelmed by spambots and was generally ignored.

Now, there is a new one. It’s at http://www.palibandaily.com/forum

• The forum will operate within the existing Paliban Daily site, complete with header/footer, sidebar, etc. (It’s in an iframe.) Soon it will have its own headers, footers, etc. instead of using an iframe, and will thus use fewer database resources. The link to access it will remain the same, and all data (your posts) will be retained as the forum improves. -Jenny
• When a new article is published on PalibanDaily, it will immediately also be published to the forum in the “Articles” section, by our trusty automated friend named “Articles”, with an excerpt and link back to original article on the main site. (If you have forum issues, send a PM to me, JennyD, not to Articles. Nobody will be checking his/her/its messages. It’s not a person. -Jenny)
• Following the “Join the discussion in the Forum” link at the bottom of an article will lead you directly to that article’s discussion forum thread. (On older articles which don’t have threads, the link won’t appear. Whenever an older article is updated, a thread will automatically be created; I’m happy to “force” a thread upon request.) For the foreseeable future, “regular” commenting will remain active.
• Project Honeypot and StopForumSpam databases will be tied to the SMF forum, essentially eliminating spam.

I haven’t prettied it up yet. Yes, it’s blue and grey, and yes, it could look a lot better. It will, soon. – Jenny

Neither Jenny nor I have a lot of time to devote to moderating or promoting a discussion forum; it’s simply there as a resource for your use. We’ll check in once a day or so to clear out spam, but can’t promise we’ll be doing much more than that right now.

Warning: It is really bare-bones, and not especially pretty right now. We (that is, Jenny) will get to that, adding functionality and adjusting the look to blend more with the website.

Let us know what features you want.

This announcement has been edited by — you guessed it — Jenny.

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The basics of the redesigned site are in place. Here’s what we’ve done:

• A new, faster interface.
• A cleaner, simpler layout featuring a number of categories on the front page.
• New, better commenting software.
• Ad revenue-sharing for our authors.
• Paliban World blog aggregator.
• New categories to help you find interesting stories faster.
• Fewer ads to interrupt your reading.

There are still things to be tweaked:

• We haven’t designed a logo/header yet.
• We want to add a second row of tabs, for the various information pages (about, contact, etc.).
• There’s some assorted weirdness toward the bottom of the front page. We’re working on that.

Please leave comments to let us know your thoughts. Do you like the new layout? Does it work well in your browser? What would you like to see improved? Are there things we should add, or things we should remove?

Let us know what will make this site more useful to you.

Thanks!

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We’ve installed the IntenseDebate software. It appears to work well with our site.

This software provides a much richer commenting platform, enabling user profiles, comment rating, and responding to comments via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. For some special features, like posting via Facebook or Twitter, you have to register for a free account with Intense Debate.

The only glitch we’ve found so far is the resetting of existing posts to Greenwich Mean Time. So, those comments that were posted 7 hours before the article they’re referencing? Yeah.

We’re working on it.

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It includes the author’s name, gravatar, website, and whatever bio he or she has entered on this site. (Ahem, Mike?)

I edited the plugin to remove email address. (You’re welcome, folks.)

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All are available at the (currently very small) Paliban Daily Zazzle Store. You can customize the shirt (pick almost any shirt Zazzle offers) and the mug (mug, beer stein, or travel mug options).

A portion of sales helps support the Paliban Daily site.

Enjoy!

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WTF is “Paliban World”?

Paliban World is a RSS feed aggregator for authors like you. It works just like Google Reader, except instead of you picking feeds on your own screen, Paliban World provides content from others who enjoy this site. In looking through Paliban World, you can get connected to interesting blogs you might never have seen.

What does Paliban World provide to its users, and to authors like me? Will my whole article be out there? I want traffic at MY site.

The Paliban World page shows the name of your blog, the title of your article, and an excerpt. To read the rest of the article, a reader has to click on the link . . . which leads directly to your site.

What does this cost me?

Just your permission to add your feed to Paliban World. It probably will generate more traffic for your site; we presently average about 1200 unique visitors per day. We hope you won’t mind if some read your work, too!

Will I still control my content?

Absolutely. Just like Google Reader, Paliban World stores no data, and your articles are only visible in their entirety by visiting your site.

What’s in it for you?

We’re working to make the Paliban Daily your go-to site for information on the intersection of religion and politics. Paliban World will provide us access to content we might miss as well, great networking opportunities, and the chance to see what authors we want to invite to contribute articles or a regular column.

Should my site be on Paliban World?

Maybe you’re:

• A freethinker?
• In favor of separation of church and state?
• An atheist?
• An enjoyer of political theater?
• An antitheist?
• Involved with a non-profit?
• None of the above?

If you think that the Paliban Daily’s readers would like to check out your latest blog posts, we will be more than happy to add your RSS feed to Paliban World! Just drop us a line through the Contact Form — pick Paliban World from the dropdown menu — and point us to your site. We’ll have a look, and gladly add you if the site’s appropriate!

But . . . a lot of my posts aren’t really Paliban-type stuff.

If about half or more are things you think Paliban Daily readers will find interesting, that’s fine by us!

What’s not appropriate?

This is a work-friendly site. ‘Nuff said.

What if I want to be taken off later?

We’ll be sad to see you go, but just ask and it shall be done.

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I have no doubt that you’ve noticed how slowly the site loads. This is partly due to increases in traffic.

However, the other part of the equation is the existing skin, or “theme”. We love it, but it is code-heavy and inefficient. It loads a tremendous amount of code with each page load, but it is too complex to operate properly with plugins designed to speed things up.

We have realized we need to try something new in order to maintain a good experience for you as the site continues to grow.

We’ll be trying out a new look over the next few days. There will be plenty of code editing required in the change.

If the site happens to be down, or look really out of whack, please give it a few minutes and hit refresh. Whatever’s wrong, we’re working on it.

Don’t worry. The database is safe.

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If you’re a regular reader, you know that this is pretty much a two-person operation, “The Jenny and Mike Show”. (We do enjoy and appreciate the occasional, delightfully snarky commentaries from Dr. Tom.)

We both work full time, and try to maintain lives off the Internet as well. So, while we manage to catch stories sooner than many sources, or connect the dots in ways not apparent elsewhere, there’s a lot of news about the Paliban — people who want to inject religion into politics generally, and Christian theocrats more specifically — that we don’t report on.

We’re hoping to find a few good men and women who’d like to do some writing.

Subjects might include:

• Biographies of the Real Paliban (anyone from Pat Robertson or Sarah Palin to R.J. Rushdoony or Gary DeMar — a long-neglected project)
• Reviews of books, movies, video games, etc.
• Paliban scandals (Which pastor got caught with a teenage prostitute this week? Who is backpedaling from his support of the Ugandan Death-to-Gays law?)
• Intelligent commentary on current events, popular culture, etc.
• Pro-atheist or antitheist commentary
• Education on religion; what the Bible (or other religion’s scripture) really says, compared to “popular” beliefs
• Attempts to manipulate school curricula
• Or something completely different!

If you’d like to see your name (or your nom de plume) on our virtual pages, drop us a line using our swanky new CONTACT FORM. Tell us the sorts of things you’d like to write.

Do you have a blog already, and want to cross-post some of your work here? We’ll be happy to have a look at your writing and see if it’s a good fit!

Our author guidelines are available online HERE.

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While PZ seems happy “Pharyngulating” polls — that is, sending his readers to sway results of polls with questions like, “Do You Believe in an Afterlife?” or “Is That Really Mary in the Sun?” — he stayed out of one.

There was another poll out there that I studiously ignored, because I was on it: Which miracle do you think Americans would most support? One of the possible answers was “PZ Myers publicly converts from atheism to follow the One True God.”

You can guess who won.

While I found some of the poll responses more compelling, like “a miraculous display”, or “Stephen Hawking healed of his ALS”, I imagine that God responding to prayer by showing evidence of His existence to an outspoken and well-known atheist would be a convincing display.  I don’t think the ladies hosting the “pray4healing.com” site will be very successful; people seem to think their site is a gag.  Probably because it started as “pray4trig”, which sure smacks of one.

So, I’ve set up this page and also a section in the discussion forum.  I’d like to see this little experiment happen, and will do what I can to help.  I’ve even registered the domain name “Pray4PZ.com” and directed it to this site.  (Really, try it out!)  I don’t have the “pray4healing” ladies’ buy-in yet.  Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, they say!

But as I’ve already explained, I’m not sure I believe God answers prayers, so I’m probably not the one to “git ‘er done”.

Click HERE to head over to the discussion forum!

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