Nafisto the Great

Last week, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights issued a statement indicating that there is a growing threat to Iranian Baha’is as a result of a systematic plan on the part of the current regime to eliminate the Baha’i community. As Iran’s largest minority, the 300,000+ Baha’is living in the country have been consistently denied their basic human rights–to work, to receive an education, and above to all to practice their religion. In the light of other recent events, it should not come as a surprise, then, that this has caught the attention of many world leaders, including the White House.

It’s pretty clear that the situation is getting worse… let’s all hope and pray that the light at the end of the tunnel comes sooner rather than later.

So my funny funny wife decided what I would look like if I were a character on South Park. Well, I decided to return the favor:

When you’re done laughing (or feeling sorry for me, knowing how much trouble I’m in), check out Peter, Farshid and Mara.

Isn’t this so much fun? Now it’s your turn.

From Wikipedia:

The Bahá’í Faith, a religion with its origin in Iran, celebrates this day (spelling it “Naw Rúz”) as a religious holiday marking not only the new year according to the Bahá’í calendar], but the end of their Nineteen Day Fast… Bahá’ís all over the world celebrate it as a festive day, according to local custom. American Bahá’í communities, for example, may have a potluck dinner, along with prayers and readings from Bahá’í scripture. While Naw Rúz, according to scripture, begins on the vernal equinox, Bahá’ís currently celebrate it on March 21, regardless of what day the equinox falls. Bahá’ís are required to suspend work and school in observance.

One of the best things about blogging has been the ability to keep in touch with friends from the four years of volunteer service at the Bahá’í World Centre. But one of the problems I’ve found is that it’s difficult to keep track of the growing number of people who have blogs. Sure, when I find out about someone that I want to receive updates about, I can add their RSS or Atom feed to my blogreader, but it’s a pain to have to keep track of all of the new ones that keep popping up all the time. (I love you all–it’s just that there are so many of you!)

So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I put together a pretty simple web site called FeedCube that allows me to aggregate a bunch of feeds into a single one. It’s not really a new idea, but what’s different about FeedCube is that anyone can submit their own blog to be included in the combined feed. Then the manager of the list (currently me–I’m still working on opening this up to the public) can approve the blog and it will automatically appear in the list

The benefit is that anyone who wants to keep up with my BWC friends (or any other shared community or interest) can subscribe to a single Atom feed. As the community expands, that single feed will include blog entries and podcasts from its growing membership.

I’m still working out the kinks in the system. For one, it only works with Firefox for now–support for Internet Explorer is coming soon. Also, the way it handles characters beyond the Latin alphabet is really dodgy (so Shingo’s kanji text doesn’t show up!). But for a few hours of coding here and there, I’m pretty happy with it and very excited about the possibilities.

Sooo… if you’re interested in subscribing to the “BWC Buddies” feedcube, point your newsreader http://feeds.feedburner.com/bwc. To view the feed in a browser, enter the following URL: http://www.feedcube.com/feeds/bwc.

If you want to add your blog to the feedcube, just go to http://www.feedcube.com/feeds/bwc/add.html and add the URL of your site’s Atom feed. If you don’t know what that is or can’t get it to work, just drop me an email and I’ll figure something out.

Happy blogging

A few days ago, I talked about a student film prepared by students at the University of Georgia ridiculing the 55 mile-per-hour speed limit (which is still prevalent on highways in most major US cities).

Well, apparently I’m not the only one that thought it was a great film and great idea. Not only did it win the best comedy award at the film festival it was submitted to, but it also caught the attention of the American media: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ABC News, and CNN Headline News (CNN JUST started airing the story this morning so no link yet).

Drop me a line if you know of other major media outlets that have covered the story and I’ll add the links here.

In case you didn’t catch it the first time, check out watch the video.