What Do You Care?

I was saddened to discover from this blog post that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is currently (and, most likely, call me paranoid if you will, deliberately) unaccounted for in the Russian prison system. I have never met this woman, but I know she has a family, and friends, who love her and need to know she will be kept safe. I also know that she tried, with her fellow band-members, to bring to the world's attention the fact that their homeland might not be ideal. For which they are all being punished.

If you won't just bring this one tiny injustice to your world's attention, what do you expect other people to do for you when you need help?

The Russian state needs to understand that unless it chooses to give up any pretense of listening to public opinion then it must get used to the fact that it too is being watched. If you can't find time to help Nadezhda, who should find time to help you?

Of course if you'd rather just write computer programs then this is just another annoying whiney post in a long series. Whose number is, by now, doubtless legion, sorry about that. But when you need to find your significant other in the TSA miscreants' repository don't come round asking me for help.

You think this could never happen? I so hope you are right.

Lending Pythonistas

Too often I hear people bemoaning their inability to change the world, so I wanted to bring Kiva, and specifically the Pythonistas team, to your attention because if you have even a modest amount of money to spare you can put it to use again and again to help worthy enterprises, typically closely allied with their local community.

I started lending money through Kiva a while ago, and more recently joined its Pythonistas team. I suggested starting such a team shortly after I joined Kiva, but it took Anna Martelli's energy to actually get it off the ground, and I received my invitation a couple of months ago - thanks, Anna! If you decide you want to become a "Kiva Pythonista" all you have to do is follow this link.

Even as a Kiva Pythonista you still decide to whom you want to lend money, you simply say you want your loans to be counted as a part of the Pythonista effort. The enterprises you will fund are typically far from hi-tech: here are some of the groups I am currently funding to give you some idea of the kinds of activity you can support.

Secretarial Services in Uganda
Second-Hand Clothing in Guatemala
Fish Retailing in Senegal
Cattle Farming in Azerbaijan
A Grocery Store in Cambodia
Animal Rearing in Tajikistan
A General Store in Togo
A Cooperative Bank in Bolivia

This came to mind because I got an email this morning reminding me that I had received repayments of $150, and so I am just about to use the Kiva site to lend those repaid funds to new borrowers, keeping my money actively at work. And now I can do it as a Pythonista!

PyCon is International

Various national conferences have started to use the PyCon name, and this has now been formalized by making the various national sites available under the pycon.org domain. So now you can go to:

• br.pycon.org
• eu.pycon.org
• fr.pycon.org
• it.pycon.org
• uk.pycon.org

That's a long way for a community conference to spread in five years! The eu conference is a redirection to EuroPython, which is a trans-national conference and (if I am not mistaken) was actually started the year before PyCon. But it's nice to have them in the family.

Thanks to Marc-Andre Lemburg for maintaining the domain. Let's hope to see more PyCons as the Python's influence spreads further and its popularity continues to increase.