All posts by ariah

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Looking for some software advice

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I’m looking for something that would help me take a series of data and look at it from a variety of angles. I want to be able to input a bunch of information: student names, grades, teacher names, subjects, etc. Then I’d love to be able to group and graph things a bunch of different ways: average grade by student, average grade by teacher, average grade by subject, etc. I can’t figure out how to do this smoothly and quickly in excel, and I’m wondering if there are other programs that would be better.

Any programming geniuses out there that might be of some help?

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Cover the Uninsured Week

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I didn’t realize it till now, but this is Cover the Uninsured Week. This might be somewhat of a controversial issue, but I think it’s something we need to seriously consider. Rather then spewing my own unintelligent thoughts about this, I’d like to direct you to my brilliant wife’s words:

Healthcare. Is it a right? Is it a priviledge?

No matter where you stand on this issue it is absolutely horrendous that in a country where we have the means to address the health of every individual many go without the healthcare that could preserve or greatly improve their wellbeing.

Health is something that we all have in common. Good or bad, we all have health; and this is a leveling factor. Disease knows some discrimation (as far as affecting on a greater level those of lower socioeconomic status due to the lower qualities of sanitation or higher levels of pollution in certain areas of the United States) but on a large scale the diseases that are plauging citizens of the United States have a higher correlation with life-style and access to primary care than at any other time in history. No longer are we treating infectious disease as a number one killer, but we are addressing cardiovascular health, preventative cancer screenings, and screening for diabetes.

Read the rest of the article at The Fine Print.

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Love Your Bike

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Love Your Bike

I regularly bike to work. I say regularly but I haven’t been lately. I could blame it on the stinky weather, the unpredictablity of my new position, the lack of time with my wife, or just my plain laziness. I really like to bike though. It’s fun, and it’s freeing. It means I can eat more food, breath more fresh air, save more money, and just have a darn good time.

Love Your Bike.

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Diamonds are Forever

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I saw the poster below and wanted to provide a brief commentary along with it concerning diamonds. Let me first say, this is not meant to be a guilt trip for those who have already bought a diamond ring. Unfortunately, many people have already heard about some of the atrocities and ignored the issue anyways. Our world is in the terrible state that it is because we do not live by the values we pretended to uphold.
The quest and desire for diamonds have caused terrible atrocities in our world. Would you buy a diamond engagement ring if someone lost a limb for it?


Flash animation
Flash animation on the trade in conflict diamonds

Read More.

Do More.

Diamonds

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The Perpetuation of Abuse

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I watched the deleted scenes in the movie North Country a while back. There are plenty of scenes through out the movie that will make the same point I’d like to emphasis here, but there is one in the deleted scenes that struck me.
To give a brief explanation of the movie, Josey is a single mother of a young daughter and a 13 year old son, having left an abusive relationship. The movie is about the horrific way she and others are treated, sexual harrassed, abused. It still happens everyday, and I guarantee happens to someone you know, so pay attention.

The scene that so struck me was when the two kids are playing on the trampoline. The young boy, Sammy, is jumping up and down and the daughter is underneath, playfully yelling stop, but clearly enjoying it.
Josey runs out and starts yelling at her son and pulls her daughter out from underneath.North Country

This is just one tiny point where you can see how abuse has affected Josey and how it comes out in raising her kids. Josey can’t control or take her anger out on the men that have abused her, so it tends to come out on one of the few men she can control in her life: her son. It’s true she shouldn’t do this, she should be more gentle and loving with her son, but I can’t blame her.

Far too often I think we look at someone doing wrong and we tend to place all blame and responsiblity, as well as all anger and hate, on that sole individual. It’s true they are responsible for their actions, but I think very often there are some terrible dark secrets that have affected their lives.

Let’s not be too quick to judge. Let us be more gentle, understanding, and willing to listen. In the end, Love Wins.

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Immigration Rallies across the Country

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From
Quotes from California’s immigration rallies

“This country needs us. We are the strong arms doing all the tough jobs.” Donna Maria Mostache, 43, an illegal immigrant from Mexico protesting in Los Angeles.

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“We’re here. And all we’re asking is fair treatment for everyone. We don’t want immigrants to be criminalized.” Catalina Hernandez, a protester who marched to Los Angeles City Hall with a niece and nephew.

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“We pay our taxes, we obey the law, we are learning English, our lives are here.” Monica de la Torre, a 24-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, at the Los Angeles demonstration.

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“If he’s even five minutes late, I worry that he’ll never come home. This is in our face every day. And it’s not just about Mexicans. It’s about people like me. It’s about all of us. It’s about what it means to be American.” Linnea Pierrard, 37, a teacher who attended a San Francisco rally with her husband, an illegal immigrant.

Photo by: AP
Chicago

LA

Google News: Immigration Rally

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The Revolution: a book introduction

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So a new friend, Heather Zydek (the cool editor who’s edited everything I’ve written for Relevantmagazine.com), took her editing to another level and has put together a book called The Revolution: A field Manual for Changing Your World.
She sent me a copy to read and post a review or two about. Since I tend to use my blogging as a notetaking place on the cool books I read you can expect a handful of reviews on the chapters of the book.

Let me start by saying the book is gonna be sweet. There are 12 chapters written by smart folks about important issues that should matter to Christians. Here are the chapters:

1. Clean Water by Dan Haseltine (read chapter)
2. Hunger by Rev. David Beckmann
3. Woman’s Rights by Marie Smith
4. Fair Trade by Joe Curnow
5. Gang Violence by Doak Bock
6. HIV/AIDS by Jena Lee
7. Capital Punishment by Very Rev. Archimandrite Demetri C. Kantzavelos
8. War and Peace by Rose Marie Berger
9. Torture by Reagan Demas
10. The Environment by Peter Illyn
11. Human Trafficking by Penny Hunter
12. Poverty and Homelessness by Cranford Joseph Coulter

Sample Chapter(Clean Water).

Watch the Video Promo:

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Indoor Composting Instructions

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My wife, Mindy, wrote an article about Indoor composting at
One/Change

When my husband, Ariah, asked me if I wouldn’t mind trying to compost inside our apartment I had some visions of sharing our apartment with overgrown, slimy, yucky little critters. I envisioned dirt everywhere and a huge mess with rotting food smell to boot. It turns out that I was wrong, and we have about 500 little clean worms under our sink contained in a wonderful home-made little composting system that (my happiest little part) DOES NOT smell!

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Movie Commentary on The Sentinel: Affairs are NOT okay

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I’m not a big movie reviewer, or theatre goer (unless it’s free), but I went to see this one with the fam this weekend. The Sentinel is your basic action-packed, high-intensity, plot-to-kill-the-president thriller. In general I liked it, except for this one thing: Affairs are NOT okay.

WARNING: You MIGHT consider this spoiling some of the movie for you, in which case please avoid reading this till after you’ve seen the movie. I personally don’t think it’ll really ruin much of it for you.The Sentinel

One of the main facets of the movie is that this top notch Secret Service officer is having an affair with the First Lady. Somebody finds out about it and he spends a good deal of effort trying to hide this fact. Basically, No Affair=No Movie. Yet, throughout the movie there is no hint of commentary showing that having the affair, or lying to cover it up, was a bad thing. At one point the Secret Service officer says something along the lines of, “I didn’t see it coming,” implying the affair just “happened.” If anything you leave the movie feeling nothing for the torn relationship between the president and first lady, and rather a desire for the first lady and SS officer to stay together. Which, by the way, this might be considered a sub-plot (or just Ariah’s conspiracy), because the actual movie is about an assassination attempt on the president.

What’s the point of me sharing all this and ruining the movie for you? Just to say that I think we need to be more critical thinkers, and realize what values we are upholding and teaching ourselves. The movie seems to uphold the value that love (the affair) is more important then commitment (the marriage), and that risking everything to protect the person you love (as in keeping your affair a secret) is admirable. Personally this is what I think you should learn: If you sleep with another person’s spouse and then lie to cover it up, you will be shot at, chased down, yelled at, forced to hide, blackmailed, and you’ll live your life in fear.

Affairs are NOT okay.

P.S. Treating women like objects is NOT okay either. (A couple comments in this movie just annoyed me)

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Enron: The Smartest guys in the Room

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enronI watched this movie last Tuesday. It’s a documentary about the Enron downfall. It’s very informative for someone who didn’t know a lot of the details of what Enron was and did. From my perspective the movie did not take any sort of slanted bias in any direction. They did seem to make the governer of California (previous to Arnold), Gray Davis, look like a victim of the corruption of Enron, you can decide if that’s biased or not. Now for my commentary.
It’s not very often in life we see big examples of the negative consequences of not following basic values. Our world seems to teach our children, “don’t lie, cheat, or steal… but if you can do it secretly and get away with it, then go for it.” I spend my days trying to teach high school kids that living by virtues like honesty and respect is in the best interest of ourselves and our world. Yet, everyday there are a thousand situations like the Enron scandal where people get away with it. They go on to live lavish and enjoyable lives while others our cheated out of their mere survival needs.
In the movie you see a guy who’s worked his job laying powerlines for twenty some years. Enron took over his company and the guys on top fraudently took a lot of money. Now this gentleman’s $300,000 pension is just $1200. That’s his retirement, that’s his life. I think far more often then we realize, those situations are happening. It’s rare that it comes into the light and we can point and say, “this is not good.”
I don’t have any real strong point to make about this whole thing. When I saw the front page news about Worldcom and Enron, or political corruption like Abramoff and Tennessee’s legislative corruption, the first thing I thought was, “Is this surprising?”