IMPORTANT NOTE
Obviously this is pretty short notice. To respect Peter’s time, we will only be holding this event if we can get at least 50-100 solid RSVPs. (And ideally we would get much more than that!) What that means is that, in order for this event to happen, you’ll need to call, email, and text your friends. And don’t forget to share this link (http://tinyurl.com/schiff-rsvp) on Facebook and Twitter! We’ll email a final confirmation to everyone who signs up, regardless of the outcome.

Also note that Peter will also be speaking (along with lots of other great speakers) at the 2011 Grassroots Economic Summit hosted by iCaucus on the same day. There is a $25 charge to attend that event, but it may be worth it for those who have the time and money to attend an all-day event. There are more details on that event on the iCaucus site.

RSVP HERE!

What: Python’s 20th Birthday (well, public release birthday) Extravaganza Lunch Party!

When: Monday at 12:15

Where: Izeni. We’re located at the Novell TCN, also known as the building formerly known as OSTC, also known as (but not really numbered as) building A. (Campus Map: http://bit.ly/Pythons_BDay_Party)

Who: Python Users worldwide*, plus a special invitation to Guido van Rossum: We’ll pick up the plane tickets and hotel if you want to join us :)

Queridos Pythonistas,

As any faithful subject of Guido (the Benevolent Dictator for Life) must already know, this Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of Python’s first *public* release[1]. (I know, such a tender age…) Since we all know that attending a birthday party for the awesomest computer programming language of all time is on the top on everybody’s bucket list, Izeni would like facilitate the fulfillment of your wildest geek dreams by throwing perhaps the best programming-language-themed birthday celebration ever known to mankind.

We’ll be gathering Monday to have pizza, giant subs, spam with eggs**, and a specially commissioned Python-themed cake by Joseph Hall of 3D TuxCake fame[2]. We’re working on getting a snake charmer too! (Know anybody?)
Come join us, mingle with other Python users, and enjoy some great food! And spread the word!

Please try to RSVP by either by tweeting me @izeni or emailing me offlist so we can get a (rough) food estimate.

Thanks, Gabe

* While everyone is welcome to join us for cake, there are certain restrictions for free pizza/subs/spam-and-eggs. Specifically, you must meet at *least* one of the following qualifications:

0) You have commit privileges for Python.
1) You have read and given *serious* thought and consideration to ‘The Zen of Python’.
2) Your license plate says PEP-0008.
3) You use Python professionally or as a hobby.
4) You have an untrimmed beard that’s longer than 1 inch (or are at least trying).
5) You have a Monty Python tatoo.
6) And lastly, you enjoy playing the game “snake” or just like the name Guido.

Due to what we expect to be an overwhelming response, we *will* be checking for non-pythonista freeloaders by verifying *basic* knowledge of the Python language. We also reserve the right to inspect your keyboard for disproportional wear on your “{” and “}” keys and may additionally do random spot-checks on your webservers for the ‘X-Powered-By’ headers for any traces of PHP.

** We really will be serving spam and eggs.

[1] http://python-history.blogspot.com/2009/01/brief-timeline-of-python.html

[2] http://blog.josephhall.com/tutorials/tuxcake/

BTW, if you’re looking for a gig writing clean code in Python, we’re always looking for sharp Utah Python hackers. Let us know!

Gregory Doermann will be presenting on “Migrating Django Databases with South“. Pizza will be provided by my company (Izeni), so please try to RSVP to me directly for a basic head count.

Also, if you want to stay informed about future Utah Django meetings, please sign up for the Google group and the Utah Tech Event Calendar.

I hope to see you there!

UPDATE: My brother and business partner Gabe volunteered to do a mini-presentation on some of the non-standard ways we’ve used Django for some of our clients (like to output config files for VoIP applications). It’s titled “Unconventional Uses of Django” or “When All You Have is a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail”.

That’s what a “jobless recovery” looks like. My prediction: it’s going to get much, much worse.

Gabe is the CTO of our small startup company (Izeni), and our team has built, and continues to build, some pretty cool projects based on these (and other) open source telephony technologies.

Some of the recent FreeSWITCH customization projects we’ve built for our clients include a custom call center that can handle up to 100 concurrent agents on commodity hardware, and a distributed SIP load tester that’s capable of pushing thousands of concurrent SIP calls (suitable for stress testing extremely large telephony infrastructures).

But those are just 2 examples of the many ways a company can customize a free software phone switch to enhance their current products or services with open source telephony. Whether you need a hosted IVR (Interactive Voice Response) solution, or just some method to bridge phone calls, record calls, make outbound calls, etc; FreeSWITCH and Asterisk are up to the task.

Anyway, if you’re in Utah and are interested in learning more about Open Source telephony, you should come by tomorrow to check out the discussion. You can also can review the (expansive) FreeSWITCH and Asterisk feature sets. And if you need some phone-related development done for your company, that kind of work is highly specialized, easy to outsource, and right up our alley. We’d love to help!

Along those same lines is something that’s been on my mind lately: I’d be interested in starting a Utah FreeSWITCH Users Group, originally meeting in only in Utah Valley, but hopefully spreading as the FreeSWITCH project comes into more common usage. If you’re local and would be interesting in participating (or leading), please let me know.

And if you think of some way you’d like to have your product interact with phones, text messages, even IM –that’s just what we do. We’d love to help you work through it –even if it’s just to help you see what’s possible.

My favorite comment: “That must be the new ‘Future Czars of America’ class.”  Too true.

(Link via Campaign for Liberty.)

A quote from the clip:

“Right now we’re saying we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to some kind of eco-capitalism where at least we’re not, you know, fast tracking the destruction of the whole planet.

Will that be enough? No it won’t be enough. We want to go beyond systems exploitation and oppression altogether; but that’s a process.

And I thing what’s great about the movement that’s beginning to emerge is that the crisis is so severe in terms of joblessness, violence, and now ecological threats that people are willing to be both very pragmatic and very visionary.

So the green economy will start off as a small subset, and we’re going to push it, and push it, and push it, until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society.”

Yes, that’s the guy Barack Obama picked for his green czar. Any clues as to what made him so attractive? But he’ll just be replaced by somebody with like ambitions –only the next guy will not have made the mistake of divulging the specific game plan.

Sadly, the rhetoric employed by the likes of Van Jones discredits the whole green movement, which undoubtedly has some real merit.

Now, just a couple comments about the quote itself:

1. It’s interesting to see that saving the planet is not enough. What’s even more interesting is that the end game, a moratorium on capitalist “exploitation and oppression altogether”, actually has nothing to do with the initial pretenses at all.
2. It’s interesting to see Van Jones revel in delight at the size and scope of the crises. After all, the bigger the crises, the more heavy-handed the solution can be.

Lastly, this crisis-mongering reminds me of a couple favorite quotes (via quoty):

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things.”

Author: Rahm Emanuel (White House Chief of Staff under Barack Obama), Source: Inteview with CBS News program “Face the Nation”

‘We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.’

Author: David Rockefeller, Source: Statement to the United Nations Business Council, 1994

Here’s the video they showed in school assembly (which included 1st graders).

Overall, I thought there were several inappropriate parts (including a part about flushing “deuces”), but perhaps the most dangerous lines were:

“I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama.”

and

“I pledge to be a servant to our president and all mankind.”

Remember these are first graders here: impressionable sponges (and not too discerning). We ought to be indignant.

But those quotes seem to be in line with Obama’s compulsory service plan:

“Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.” (emphasis added)

I would be very surprised if Obama’s September 8th’s in-school address to students didn’t have similar sections, intended to grease the skids on the “Community Service” draft.

Regardless, we should never pledge allegiance to the president –particularly when that president willfully reneges on his presidential oath to uphold and defend the constitution. To me, this projection of blind subservience into the classrooms of our unsuspecting youth is profoundly disturbing.

“When an opponent declares,
‘I will not come over to your side.’
I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already…
What are you? You will pass on.
Your descendants, however,
now stand in the new camp.
In a short time they will know nothing
else but this new community.’”

–Adolf Hitler

PreK-6 Menu of Classroom Activities: President Obama’s Address to Students Across America

Produced by Teaching Ambassador Fellows, U.S. Department of Education

September 8, 2009

Before the Speech:

• Teachers can build background knowledge about the President of the United States and his speech by reading books about presidents and Barack Obama and motivate students by asking the following questions:
  • Who is the President of the United States?
  • What do you think it takes to be President?
  • To whom do you think the President is going to be speaking?
  • Why do you think he wants to speak to you?
  • What do you think he will say to you?
• Teachers can ask students to imagine being the President delivering a speech to all of the students in the United States. What would you tell students? What can students do to help in our schools? Teachers can chart ideas about what they would say.
• Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?

During the Speech:

• As the President speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note-taking graphic organizer such as a Cluster Web, or students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children can draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:
  • What is the President trying to tell me?
  • What is the President asking me to do?
  • What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?
• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?
• Students can record any questions they have while he is speaking and then discuss them after the speech. Younger children may need to dictate their questions.

After the Speech:

• Teachers could ask students to share the ideas they recorded, exchange sticky notes or stick notes on a butcher paper poster in the classroom to discuss main ideas from the speech, i.e. citizenship, personal responsibility, civic duty.
• Students could discuss their responses to the following questions:
  • What do you think the President wants us to do?
  • Does the speech make you want to do anything?
  • Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?
  • What would you like to tell the President?

• Teachers could encourage students to participate in the Department of Education’s “I Am What I Learn” video contest. On September 8^th the Department will invite K-12 students to submit a video no longer than 2 min, explaining why education is important and how their education will help them achieve their dreams. Teachers are welcome to incorporate the same or a similar video project into an assignment. More details will be released via www.ed.gov.

Extension of the Speech: Teachers can extend learning by having students

• Create posters of their goals. Posters could be formatted in quadrants or puzzle pieces or trails marked with the labels: personal, academic, community, country. Each area could be labeled with three steps for achieving goals in those areas. It might make sense to focus on personal and academic so community and country goals come more readily.
• Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.
• Write goals on colored index cards or precut designs to post around the classroom.
• Interview and share about their goals with one another to create a supportive community.
• Participate in School wide incentive programs or contests for students who achieve their goals.
• Write about their goals in a variety of genres, i.e. poems, songs, personal essays.
• Create artistic projects based on the themes of their goals.
• Graph student progress toward goals.

This is dangerous, in my opinion.  I don’t care what party a public leader is from, they should not have direct access to children in their classrooms.

But this is what happens when your tax dollars are filtered through the leviathan state.  It inevitably uses them against you.

Why are we subsidizing this stuff?  And why do we not have a decent way to opt out (and into a private school) without incurring additional –dare I say punitive– costs?

All this reminds me of a couple of quotes I’ve used before:

If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies.

–Milton Friedman, Economist. Awarded 1976 Nobel Prize in economics.

“The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.”

Karl Marx – Father of Communism (1848)