All posts by ariah

Blog

A small piece of internet fame

Leave a comment

So, I was testing out google’s suggest feature and I realized this interesting bit of information:
me
(Search for Ariah Fine)

If you do the search you’ll find that the majority of those link to me in some way, shape or form. Call it what you will, I think it basically means there isn’t a good chance I’ll be able to hide myself from those on the internet.

That said, I wonder what implications something like this has. I don’t think there is much of a case for the internet paranoid these days. Those who don’t want any of their information to be online at all. There’s a good chance I can find something about you somewhere if I want to. Then it becomes a matter of personal space and privacy. I’m sort of open to the fact that anyone can read a lot of deep stuff about me.

Does this mean someone is more likely to stalk me? Not likely. I don’t know if I’m good stalking material anyways. What do you think?

Blog

Guest blogger: My dad.

4 Comments

I’m contemplating having my dad do some guest blog entries on here. I hope my small readership doesn’t mind. My family was in town for the weekend and I really enjoyed our time together. My dad and I always talk business ideas and this weekend was no exception. I told him I was thinking of starting to write about my research into all these online businesses, home businesses, make money quick schemes, and the rest. Then it occured to me, he knows a bit about all that too. Maybe he could guest blog a couple times a month and talk about what he’s found. Then maybe I’ll start him off on his own blog and folks who are interested can go over there and keep up on things.

What does everyone think? I sort of like the idea of an increased readership, and at the same time I like this being small enough that I can ask a question to all of you (whoever you are) and hope that I might get an actual response.

Blog

Already Forgotten?

Leave a comment

Article Banner

Today, a day to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I wrote another article for Relevant Magazine concerning King’s legacy and it’s impact today. Read it here.

If upon reflecting on King and his legacy, you only naively rejoiced that his “dream” has been accomplished, but did not weep at the complacency of we the Church in carrying out the work that King, in Christ, called us to, you are deceived.

If you’ve come by this site after reading the article, please post a comment below just to say hi, I’d appreciate it.

Blog

Real Estate with Ethics

4 Comments

I’ve continued to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and it continues to put this driving question in my mind. How can we invest in Real Estate in a way that is ethical?
Currently though only thing I’ve come up with is to do Real Estate in rich areas where it’s not directly affecting the poor. As I said in a previous post, so many options of making money in Real Estate seem to be doing so at the expense and oppression of the poor.

So, here is the deal. I want to make a lot of money. I want to make money so that I don’t have to raise it, or break my back working for it; I want to have money so that I can do all the things I desire to do and not have to worry about it. The stock market sounds interesting to me as does Real Estate. Lucrative business ventures are great too, but here’s my catch. I want to invest in things and in ways that I believe are ethical.
I’ll try the real estate thing, but not if it means ripping off someone just because they are in a tight spot, and not if it means pushing the poor out of their neighborhood, and not if it means charging oppressive rent prices.
I’ll try the stock market, but I don’t want to invest in companies that run sweatshops. I don’t want to support companies that make their millions in alcohol, pornography or the slave trade. I want to make money helping the world become a better place.

Anyone know of any good places to go for that kind of financial advice? Because I haven’t a clue.

Blog, News and Politics

Coverage of death in the Middle East

1 Comment

I have BBC news as my homepage on Firefox. It helps keep me aware of what’s happening in the world. Today the frontpage news is the Hajj Stampede. I don’t have much commentary on it specifically. I do know that there have been stampedes like this in the past, and it was never frontpage news, at least it wasn’t before 9/11.
This could be my own bias perception, but I did a quick search on CNN and here’s what I found: Between April 97 and December 99 (3 years) there where 19 stories about the Hajj Pilgrimage in general (searching for ‘Hajj Plgrimage’). In the past year (from Jan 05) there have been 27 new stories and most of them have to do with deaths, crime or weapons of some kind.
I know our interest in the Middle East has increased, but I fear our news coverage of it has leaned more towards the negative and violent coverage. I’m not trying to throw out any government conspiracies, but I worry about how convienent and desensitizing it is to us to hear that those our country seems to dub our “enemies” are killing each other anyways. I worry our negative coverage of Arabs in general is going to make our continued war on “terrorist” easy and cloudy; All Arabs are not terrorist.

Blog

“We are not all football players” (nor do we want to be)

1 Comment

Another interesting point that came up in the movie Rize is the idea that in the inner city the one thing you can always seem to find is a sports team. Maybe is one of those catch-22 types of things, but the truth is that a lot of do-gooders come into an inner city neighborhood and start sports teams. This makes some sense because there are a lot of kids that want to play sports, and thus we have our little catch-22 (I could be using the term all wrong, sorry).
But there are plenty of youth in the inner city that have no desire to play sports and would love to have other outlets. In the movie they mention the lack of performing arts schools and studios which is very true from what I know. There is a definite need for more of these things in the inner city.
If you have tons of sports options available to youth, you’ll continue to hear plenty of “rise out of poverty to sports star fame” types of stories. If you make performing arts more available, and good education available, you’ll eventually hear many more, “rise out of poverty to” broadway renown, ballet all-star, symphony elite, science genius, and the list goes on.

Blog

The sweet beauty of healthy race relations

Leave a comment

Eventually, someones going to figure out that I am fairly emotional (i.e. I cry very easily). I was watching Rize today (I’ll write more about it later), and a quick 30 second scene brought a tear to my eye.
The movie is a documentary about a dance culture in the African-American community. In the one scene there is a party happening and you see an elderly white couple watching from their driveway. Three girls from the party (all three black) come up to the couple and do a little dance for them and then give them a balloon animal. The couple claps for them.
The scene isn’t really crucial to the rest of the film, it’s just a snippet during a music and dance segment. The part that touches me about it and other occasions, is the sweet beauty there is in healthy communication and interaction between people of different races. I see, hear and know of so many injustices and racism that occurs that you just long to see more and more relationships that are healthy.

Maybe I’m alone in that, but maybe not.

[IfeelWhenYou]
[Rize]

Blog

The trouble with Real Estate

3 Comments

As a gift over the holidays, Mindy and I received the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It had been recommended to me before and I had browsed the first chapter but hadn’t picked it up.
I’m currently a good chunk of the way through it and it brought up an interesting financial issue that I have. In the book Robert Kiyosaki will give examples of was that he made money. The two primary ways have been small stocks and Real Estate. I’ve read my fair share of money making and finance books and a lot of them, as well as plenty of people say there is money to be made in Real Estate.
You look at the ideas, me being somewhat of an entrepuneur, and your mind start whirling through all the possiblities and the idea of being able to make a ton of money quite quickly through buying and selling real estate (I know some of you are surprised by me talking like this). When I think only about the financial side of the real estate business, it’s quite tempting to try and jump in. And that’s when I step back and think about some of the social implications.
I’ll start with a typical example. Pick up your average ‘Make millions in Real Estate’ book and one of it’s tips will be to go to the bankruptcy office, or look for foreclosure notices, those are places to get houses for dirt cheap. Never have I seen in ANY book or tape or information anything that addresses the needs or situation of the person that is bankrupt or foreclosing. If anything it might mention that they’ll be glad to have the money, but I highly doubt they are glad to lose their house. “Your misfortune is my fortune,” that’s basically what it is, and that just doesn’t sound right to me.
The other major problem with real estate that I see is the power it has to push people around, particularly poor people. Gentrification is somewhat of a buzzword, but it’s happening and it’s frustrating and sad. Pick any major city and what’s happening is people with low incomes, but people who had a stable home, are being pushed out of their residence and left to move somewhere else. Now that the city has become popular again, those with money are forcing (I’ll explain in another post) out those without money. This includes housing projects (Cabrini Green of Chicago is now condos). This troubles me.

I like the idea of buying a house some day. I like the idea of living in community with people in a place that we own. I worry that my purchasing and profiting will be at the expense of others. There is oppression in the way we do real estate and I want to have no part of it. I only hope I can find out a way that is possible.

Blog

Is “Socially Responsible” catching on?

1 Comment

When you see the term on a McDonalds brochure you know something is up. I don’t frequent the golden arches much, but I was in there a couple weeks ago and I saw this brochure.
“We Share One Community: Socially Responsible Neighbors”
Brochure from McDonalds- We Share One Community

I’m not posting to bash on McD’s (that’s what you’d expect from me though isn’t it?). I think it’s great to see a company like this and others (Walmart, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, etc) put out Press Release and make statements in the direction of Social Responsibility. I applaud those efforts, but I want to caution us as well. I think we’ve seen countless times (look into statements from companies about stopping sweatshops) that just because they make a statement or give their word does not mean a change has happened. There are times when all we can do is take their word for it, but let’s also be all the more aware when the news reveals that they have not been keeping their commitments.
When Social Responsibility becomes the buzz word everyone will jump on board, at least in word, not necessarily in deed. You see being Social Responsibility cost your company money. Paying garment workers more cost more. Treating animals humanely cost more. All these things our money lost from the company and any good economist knows that money is the bottom line. Let’s just be aware.

On that note here is an exciting company, Maggie’s Organic that looks like they are doing things right. Watch the Video.