Deploying Polaris

Over the past week, I have been working very closely with the technology office to deploy Polaris. To my surprise, my first week’s work has turned out to be very challenging. I have encountered numerous problems with both the server and Polaris itself. In this blog post, I will be discussing some of these problems as well as the lessons I learned from them.

Who to blame – Henry

Reading about injustice of any nature will invariably make you mad.  It would be fair that this is in some ways the point.  Reading Joe Feagan’s Racist America has made me angry.  Racism stirs my emotions for sure.  I can’t seem to push this anger in any one direction.  The omnipresent, ever-changing nature of racism makes it nearly impossible to direct this energy.  It’s eternally frustrating.  I want to pin racism down and punch it until its head becomes the consistency of pulpy orange juice.  Of course, this is impossible. So, who takes the blame? All those who originally manifested racist viewpoints are dead.  Not to say that people don’t actively perpetuate these issues today and have for the last four hundred years of history on this continent.  Who can I turn towards to throw my rhetoric at and all my will power towards? I think this quest for a physical manifestation from which all racism stems from is precisely what gets in my way.  Racism is everywhere winding its way into almost all interactions.  So, I suppose the next question is, is racism the root or result of an idea?  By “fighting” racism are we simply treating the symptoms and not going after the disease.  Is there even one root cause of racism? All these questions persist moving into the second week.  I hope to at least bring some answers.

Buildings and Bias – Tom

As I said I would last week, I have dived into reading the research of others on implicit bias. I wanted to use this post to share some of what I learned. The study I read is called Community Perception: The Ability to Assess the Safety of Unfamiliar Neighborhoods and Respond Adaptively. Unlike many of my other sources, this one was focused on the implicit biases people create from neighborhoods and the buildings within them. The study had two goals, to see if the subjects could accurately estimate the safety of an unknown neighborhood, and to see if they were using indicators of disorder to do so.

The Lake Project: Canadian Geese

I woke up this morning at 6:30 and walked down to the lake before the ground had been warmed by the sun. Since it was grey and damp outside with no sunshine, I was freezing. I mean, I thought I could handle going down with just my hat and jacket and boy, was I wrong. Holding a metal camera lens for long periods of time without gloves on in below freezing weather is seriously painful. But it was worth it, because when I went down I saw the largest collection of Canadian geese on the lake I’ve ever seen.

Balance Sheet Equations – Ricky

The Balance Sheet Equation

 

There is one basic underlying grammar rule in writing a balance sheet, and that is the balance sheet equation. The balance sheet equation goes: Assets = Liabilities + Stockholder’s Equity. This means that the resources of a company is represented by the claim of resources by the owners of the companies and the outsiders. An apt example of this is housing mortgages. If I pay a part of the price of the house and leave a percentage of it as mortgage, the price that I paid becomes my, the owner’s, claim of the property, which is the house in this case, and the mortgage is the outsider’s claim of the resources.

Financial Accounting – Ricky

Financial Accounting

 

Last semester, due to the heavy workload that every first semester senior goes through, my independent seminar digressed a little bit from the mathematical fields of business. Therefore, this semester I decided to focus on something much more math-related in the field of business, and I picked financial accounting as the starting point of the study.

No Film School – Ria

While I have been working on my treatment and plot for my film, I have also been researching how to make a documentary. I found a blog that is very interesting, not just for someone wanting to make a film. No Film School is similar to a news source like Buzzfeed or Fast Company but focused on filmmaking.

Getting My Groove Back – Amaan

I’ve been uninspired recently but I think I’m getting back into the swing of things.

Empowering Citizens Through State Legislatures – KC

Congressional gridlock has created deep dissatisfaction with the United States Congress. People are concerned that politicians are working for special interest groups instead of  ordinary citizens. This gridlock phenomenon has created a shift of focus towards alternative ways of creating change.

The Survival of the Tribe- Will

I’ve been thinking about group dynamics recently. How are groups kept together? What makes them stronger and, more importantly, what breaks them apart? Attempting to answer these questions has been important to me due to the nature of my novel. For those of you who don’t know, my novel is centered around a group of nomads in North America a couple of hundred years after modern society has collapsed.