Tool for the job

Twitterfeed tweeting a del.icio.us bookmark
Twitterfeed tweeting a del.icio.us bookmark

After becoming a more avid Twitter user, I’ve noticed that many people tweet things they’ve bookmarked or links to their blog entries.  I love to be able to follow this kind of thing, but to do it personally seems like a lot of work.  I like to share bookmarks and my friends are twitter (but not del.icio.us) users, but it seems like del.icio.us is so much better at saving and sharing bookmarks.  I want to tweet my blog posts and bookmarks, but don’t want to have to do it specifically.  I realized this when I started using Goodreads’ twitter update functionality to tweet automatically when I tag a book as reading or to-read.

Twitterfeed + tagging – a solution

I found the Twitterfeed service that converts an RSS feed to tweets and set it to read the RSS feed for my del.icio.us bookmarks.

But, I don’t want to bombard my twitter followers with tweets every time I bookmark something or write a blog entry.  Luckily, del.icio.us generates tag specific feeds and I’m sure I could get WordPress to do this without too many problems.  So, I’ll just point twitterfeed at a tag-specific feed and tag everything i want to be tweeted with that tag (e.g. tweetit)

Update: The tag specific feed for a wordpress blog is /wp-rss2.php?tag=your_tag or /feed?tag=your_tag

Pages vision

A college student who is working with Pages as part of one of their classes asked me what I thought the organization’s long term vision was.  It was a good question, and this is what I responded with, though I feel like it’s just a starting point

> What is Pages long term vision?
> What type of social impact would you like to see Pages make(prisoner
> rights/awareness/literacy)?
Really, these are two parts to the same question, so I'll answer it as
such.  I think Pages' long term vision is a world where everyone has the
knowledge, perspective, and skills to live an interesting, dignified
life.  Pages' focus is on making sure that incarcerated and formerly
incarcerated people are included as part of everyone.

Like any social movement, community project, or nonprofit, I think that
our vision includes envisioning a day when our project doesn't need to
exist.  I will be the first to admit that the model of the prison book
project is not a particularly efficient way to get books to incarcerated
people.  Sadly, for many, it is the only way that they can get access to
the knowledge and perspective that they want, which is why our project
continues to do the work of sending free books to incarcerated people.
The aspect of the project that moves us toward a world where we are no
longer necessary is the volunteer experience of service and of reading
the letters from incarcerated people and, hopefully, complicating the
volunteer's perception of incarcerated people and incarceration.  

I want people who volunteer with us to be able to think and make decisions
more rationally when it comes to community safety, crime, incarceration and
incarcerated people.  I also do work with a local group called Decarcerate
Monroe County which is resisting jail expansion in this county.  In some
ways it addresses some of the same issues as Pages, but more fundamentally,
because it aims to make one government entity spend money on empowering
people instead of incarcerating them and finding solutions to keep people
out of jail.  However, in doing this organizing, attending county meetings,
and talking with people who have conflicting ideas, it makes me appreciate
Pages because I feel like people who volunteer here get a perspective that
helps them think beyond the cultural stereotypes about crime,
incarceration, and the people affected by incarceration.  At Pages, we're
not trying to portray every incarcerated person as an innocent victim of
the system. Instead, through their letters, we're letting incarcerated
people speak for themselves in the hopes that those reading the letters
will at least appreciate them as an individual.  Ultimately, I hope the
experience of volunteering with Pages will make people realize that
incarceration in this country, as it stands now, is not working very well
for anyone - whether it's the incarcerated or the community at large. 
Hopefully people will keep this perspective in mind when they are voting,
working, and involved in their community.



	


	






	


	
Asian Americans Reluctant to Stand Up for Immigration Issues


	

		
From Asian Americans Reluctant to Stand Up for Immigration Issues:


NEW YORK – The Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston recently released a study showing that many Asian Americans pay close attention to immigration issues but few of them are willing to stand up and do advocacy work. According to The World Journal, a survey of 412 Asian Americans by Paul Watanabe, director of the Institute and associate professor of political science at the university, and his colleagues found that about 80 percent of them were “very concerned” or “concerned” about immigration. The study shows that 58 percent of Asians are sympathetic to undocumented immigrants and 52 percent of them are supportive of the idea of legalizing undocumented immigrants. About 33 percent of the Asian Americans surveyed said they would become involved in collecting signatures on petitions for immigration issues, but only nine percent said they were willing to do anything further, such as participating in public protests.


Even the most informed of us, I think, gets a certin picture in their head when they hear the phrase “immigrant” and “illegal immigrant”.  I remember being surprised when I learned that the first law to limit a specific group’s immigration to the U.S. was directed to Chinese Americans.  I wonder if there’s any data about Asian American political engagement in general and whether the behavior in this study is any different from the general case.


I can only think of my dad yelling at the radio, but being pretty resigned to the way things were in the world, even if he acknowledged that they were unjust.  I was excited that my mom told me that my dad had volunteered during the Obama campaign, making calls to potential voters.  Things are always more complicated when it comes down to it.

	


	






	


	
New Neighbor


	

		
Moved House


Sometimes people move into your neighborhood, and sometimes it’s the whole house.  I think the house moved from N. Walnut St. to a block from my house.

	


	






	


	
hasLayout


	

		
Doing some web design and making stuff work for IE is making me crazy.  This is largely in part to the hasLayout property in IE.  On having layout gives a super-helpful rundown. 


I’ve been using the IE Developer Toolbar to help me hunt down some of these problems, and this forum post provided a good clarification:


-1 means haslayout is true, 0 means it’s false


and if you check the box to “show default styles” it will show you the haslayout status regardless of whether it’s explicitly set or not This is proving very useful in finding the child selector override hacks that are breaking

	


	






	


	
Harry Potter, Social Networking and Things Not Changing


	

		
I just read the end of the final Harry Potter book for the second time.  Well, listened to really, as it was read as a bedtime story floating through the house as the evening wound down.  I still think the epilogue is pretty feeble with the principle characters marrying their high school sweethearts and having babies, but hearing it for a second time made me think of a few things.  First, I think it’s fitting and real that Harry would become the thing that he never had and always desired – a loving parent.  Second, the epilogue speaks to something that I think has made the books incredibly popular, particularly among children – the comforting fantasy that the people you care about will surround you always.


The Wizarding World is a small one, it seems, where everyone seems to be on a first name basis.  With the magic of technology through social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, we create our own special worlds, ones that seem large and connected but that are still manageable and familiar.  I’ve always had a tough time digesting these online social networks.  Too often, they tend towards the worst kind of collective consciousness – not where individual consciousness is collected to reverberate, ignite, and react, but where we laze towards a single consciousness where the same language, ideas, and inside jokes abound.  It gets tiring hearing the same in-town drama over-and-over at a party, let alone regurgitated the next morning in a flurry of digital messages.


The thing that I like the most about the social networks is less hearing from people who are close and constant, and more from those who are distant.  I like the message from the person I’ve known since high school and still manage to see every few years.  I like reading someone’s words, and feeling the gentle fingerprint that underlies them.  I like the rush of excitement and energy that I get from reading someone’s new ideas, what they’re working on, what they’ve just made.  And, I like to see someone’s profile, to see the latest version of themselves, and all the things that haven’t changed.

	


	








	


	
Questions about teaching


	

		
I’m thinking about being a public school math teacher through a teaching fellows program such as New York City Teaching Fellows.  I’m hoping that teaching could be a convergence of my technical knowledge, desire for social change, and belief in transformation and experience with teachers being important to me.  Still, I’m not 100% sure this is the best way for me to do these things, so I’ve compiled a survey of questions that are important to me.  If you’re a teacher, can you comment on this post with your answers?  If you want to give me feedback by e-mail or phone, just e-mail me and I’ll get back to you.  If you know someone who is a teacher (or who was a teacher and decided to do something else), can you please forward this to them?


Why did you decide to teach in a public school?


What are some elements  of your identity and personal history that have caused tension with your students, what are some that have created unity?


In what ways were you able to develop your own curriculum?


How has standardized testing and other aspects of NCLB affected your classroom experience?


What are things that affect your classroom that you feel are beyond your ability to change? 


How have you been able to incorporate personal interests or passions (playing music, cycling, etc.) into your teaching? 


What were some things that were different from your expectations about teaching?


How does your teaching affect social change?  How does you teaching fit in with other community organizing/activism you do? 


What things have been most frustrating, disappointing about teaching?


Do you feel like your values and ideas are shared by fellow teachers?  By the administration?


How have you tried to make what you teach relevant to the community where you teach?


How have you collaborated with community groups or national movements? 


How much time does teaching take up in your life?  How are these hours spent?




How do you set boundaries to make time for your personal life? 


In what ways are you involved in your school outside of your classroom? 


Anything else you want to add?

	


	






	


	
Join the ninth annual CALLS FROM HOME radio broadcast for prisoners.


	

		
The United States has 2.4 million people behind bars. Thousand Kites wants you to lend your voice to a powerful grassroots radio broadcast that reaches into our nation’s prison and lets those inside know they are not forgotten.

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We are asking you to call our toll-free line 877-518-0606 and speak directly to those behind bars this holiday season. (An answering machine will record your message) Read a poem, sing a song, or just speak directly from you heart. Speak to someone you know or to everyone—make it uplifting.


So call right now at 877-518-0606. We will post each call on our website as it comes in! Check our website www.thousandkites.org  to listen to your call and others!


CALLS FROM HOME will broadcast on over 200 radio stations across the country and be available for download from our website on December 13.


Call anytime (now through December 9) at 877-518-0606 and record your message.


Learn how you can help blog, distribute, broadcast, or support <http://ent.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=248930273&u=2643683> this event.


CALLS FROM HOME is a project of Thousand Kites/WMMT-FM/Appalshop and a national network of grassroots organizations working for criminal justice reform.


www.thousandkites.org

thousandkitesproject@gmail.com


In Peace,

Thousand Kites Team (Nick, Julia, Dudley, Donna, and Amelia)


Thousand Kites

91 Madison Ave

Whitesburg, KY 41858