Dumbest Protest Signs

[guizonde]

Anonymous isn't an ideology beyond "We want to do some shit without people knowing it's us."  Sometimes you have politically-minded Anons going after the FBI or the Church of Scientology, sometimes you have cash-hungry Anons stealing people's credit card information to get their money, and sometimes you have bored anons who try to trigger epileptic fits because hurting others is hilarious.

Anonymous is less of a group and more of a tactic.  It has no overarching ideals, aside from a desire to do what they want without consequences.  Sometimes they do good things.  Sometimes they do absolutely terrible things.  There are many groups within Anonymous, because it isn't a consolidated group.  It's just a bunch of different people who all took up the same idea of keeping up anonymity to let them act with relative freedom.

And no, even when Anons hack the FBI or make obscene phone calls to a teenager, they're still not engaging in terrorism.  That's regular old criminal activity and being a douchebag.

tl;dr: anonymous is chaotic neutral [/dnd]

[Lithp]

They might be related, but it is not the same.

Read the link. There is no dividing line between LulzSec & Anonymous. What you have is that Anonymous itself was divided on whether or not to do the hack, which they usually are. If that's a disqualifying factor, then they can't claim credit for Steubenville, either.

Additionally, the blame lies on Sony for not protecting their customers. It was inevitable that someone, whether a group or person, would try it.

It is inevitable that someone would eventually succeed, no matter how careful Sony was. We make the job 200 times easier if we sit here & pretend the hackers don't actually do anything wrong. Sony then investigated the matter, improved their security, & mandated a password change. What did Anonymous do? According to me, they hacked the fucking website in the first place, according to you, nothing. Neither is particularly heroic.

And, no, I'm not.

Then you really don't understand something as simple as "Anonymous is no more heroic or villainous than any other group of dickheads with computers"?

Actually, now that I think about it, Anonymous identifies around being hackers, which you would probably ordinarily say makes them bad.

My point is, all groups have their bad actions and bad members.

I said that Anonymous does both good & bad, they are not idealistic in any way. You said they were fucking superheroes.

If you want to say that since LulzSec is just a branch of Anonymous, it's still their fault, then you have to agree with the Republicans that since radical Islam is a part of Islam, all Islamic terrorists are the fault of all of Islam.

It's more like if Mosque A had a bunch of people so it split off to form Mosque B, then it helped Mosque B with practically every bombing it ever performed, made easier by the fact that many of the patrons & leaders were patrons & leaders of both mosques, then both mosques would be part of the same terrorist organization. Only not even that, because these situations aren't even remotely similar.

Of course, you won't agree with that, even though it's the same logic.

I won't agree to it because it's not the same logic, it's a retarded strawman.

Anonymous does more good than bad,

Your claim.

and that makes them good.

Also your claim.

[Cataclysm]

yeah, schools should teach this stuff, but if you don't know the basis of complex mathematics, you're probably going to be too poor to pay income tax let alone buy a house or car. Also, you kind of need to know math in order to understand taxes in the first place.

[Sigmaleph]

They don't teach you how to vote or what taxes are in American schools? Huh. I'm pretty sure it came up in my civics classes.


As for why you're taught the Pythagorean theorem, well, you're not likely to find that out independently and if you intend to go into a STEM field, it's kinda important. And you can't know that you don't want to go into a maths-intensive field unless you, y'know, actually learn some maths first.

[Flying Mint Bunny!]

yeah, schools should teach this stuff, but if you don't know the basis of complex mathematics, you're probably going to be too poor to pay income tax let alone buy a house or car. Also, you kind of need to know math in order to understand taxes in the first place.

I don't understand why "How to vote" is on that list.

It couldn't be simpler. All you have to do is go into a booth and put a cross next to the person you want to vote for.

If you can't work that out for yourself, you've got no chance when it comes to taxes, banking and car/house buying.

[SimSim]

I learned how to do my taxes in high school. We learned it in a math class.

[Thejebusfire]

I learned how to vote in elementary school.

[Auri-El]

Maybe it should be "how to vote intelligently"? Sure, the actual voting process is simple and straightforward, but being educated on things like why it matters, how to research candidates/issues, etc., would be beneficial.

[PosthumanHeresy]

The shirt has a point. Chances are, if you enjoyed math beforehand, you'd already want to go into math classes. For people like me, who think math is about as enjoyable as getting shot in the nuts, always have, and always will, I could have done without the shit taught in high school, outside of financial mathematics (which is why I'm taking it this year, my senior year), and taken courses that I would actually apply to my life and use to expand my knowledge. Guess what I don't remember any of? Did you guess "Algebra or Geometry"? You're completely correct! It's being able to regurgitate it long enough to pass, not learning.

[Sigmaleph]

The shirt has a point. Chances are, if you enjoyed math beforehand, you'd already want to go into math classes. For people like me, who think math is about as enjoyable as getting shot in the nuts, always have, and always will, I could have done without the shit taught in high school, outside of financial mathematics (which is why I'm taking it this year, my senior year), and taken courses that I would actually apply to my life and use to expand my knowledge. Guess what I don't remember any of? Did you guess "Algebra or Geometry"? You're completely correct! It's being able to regurgitate it long enough to pass, not learning.

Without at least some maths classes, you can't actually know whether you'll like maths or not. Most maths-liking people (e.g. me) don't actually know that we are until we, y'know, go to school and learn some maths beyond basic arithmetic. For example, Pythagoras' Theorem (which is actually useful in general beyond going into a maths-intensive field, but I digress).

I would also make the (weaker) argument that learning maths teaches fundamental reasoning skills that can be applied in general outside the specific domain. Most fields have some use for abstract logical thinking, but mathematics is made of it, which makes it ideally suited for teaching it

And, finally: statistics. It can come up in nearly everything, it is frequently misunderstood, and it takes some mathematical reasoning beyond basic arithmetic to use it at the 'bare competence' level. It is as fundamental to an informed populace as history or civics, and schools have just as much of a duty to prepare students to deal with it.


To acknowledge my biases here: I'm a mathy person, and I tend to think in mathematical terms, which can lead me to underestimate the difficulty of learning maths and overestimate its importance. Which is why I qualify as weak the 'abstract reasoning' argument.

[TheUnknown]

Maybe it should be "how to vote intelligently"? Sure, the actual voting process is simple and straightforward, but being educated on things like why it matters, how to research candidates/issues, etc., would be beneficial.

About a month ago I saw a post on tumblr explaining how voting in Australia works, and how apparently some people there honestly don't fully understand how to vote effectively because it's not taught, creating a problem.  Of course, I don't live in Australia, so I don't how big of a problem it is.

[PosthumanHeresy]

The shirt has a point. Chances are, if you enjoyed math beforehand, you'd already want to go into math classes. For people like me, who think math is about as enjoyable as getting shot in the nuts, always have, and always will, I could have done without the shit taught in high school, outside of financial mathematics (which is why I'm taking it this year, my senior year), and taken courses that I would actually apply to my life and use to expand my knowledge. Guess what I don't remember any of? Did you guess "Algebra or Geometry"? You're completely correct! It's being able to regurgitate it long enough to pass, not learning.

Without at least some maths classes, you can't actually know whether you'll like maths or not. Most maths-liking people (e.g. me) don't actually know that we are until we, y'know, go to school and learn some maths beyond basic arithmetic. For example, Pythagoras' Theorem (which is actually useful in general beyond going into a maths-intensive field, but I digress).

I would also make the (weaker) argument that learning maths teaches fundamental reasoning skills that can be applied in general outside the specific domain. Most fields have some use for abstract logical thinking, but mathematics is made of it, which makes it ideally suited for teaching it

And, finally: statistics. It can come up in nearly everything, it is frequently misunderstood, and it takes some mathematical reasoning beyond basic arithmetic to use it at the 'bare competence' level. It is as fundamental to an informed populace as history or civics, and schools have just as much of a duty to prepare students to deal with it.


To acknowledge my biases here: I'm a mathy person, and I tend to think in mathematical terms, which can lead me to underestimate the difficulty of learning maths and overestimate its importance. Which is why I qualify as weak the 'abstract reasoning' argument.

As a completely non-mathy person, who generally needs technology to aid in anything more than the basics, I can say, it's a lot more difficult than you might think, and I generally find that nothing I ever do ever needs much more than the basics. That said, I will agree, statistic is important, but if they had a statistics and financial math option, I'd just do that. Those two are actually useful, while the rest, for many fields, is not. I'd suggest less math being required, because by the time you get into high school, a majority of people know whether or not they suck balls at math, and it would be better to allow students to take classes that interest them, so they have a better shot at finding a career that suits them. For my senior year, I have one space for an elective. That is it. While I selected from multiple options for most of my required classes (which means I have three to four AP classes, I need to get one more out-of-school, online-only one set up on the first day), I have pretty much nothing that really raises my interest. This is, in my opinion, a huge issue. It causes burnout when people are not doing anything they massively enjoy (at least I like the AP US Govt and Economics and AP Lit), which is rather bad considering burnout is not good for education, and certainly not for someone who already suffers from high anxiety and depression, which let me tell you, describes most high schoolers these days. I don't know more than a few people that don't self harm, and it's a small (400ish) people school where I know just about everyone.

[mellenORL]

PHH, do you enjoy working with your hands - building things, art, playing an instrument, cooking, etc? Everybody should have some source of physical creativity in their lives. I think it just grounds you, gives you a break from the mental-only activity typical of a school life, and it damn sure reinforces and builds self esteem. I would have lost my freaking mind in high school if I hadn't played tennis, guitar, and making stuff with tools in the garage. I made scary mini Medieval weapons on those bad days  .And bamboo water bongs on the good 'uns 

[PosthumanHeresy]

PHH, do you enjoy working with your hands - building things, art, playing an instrument, cooking, etc? Everybody should have some source of physical creativity in their lives. I think it just grounds you, gives you a break from the mental-only activity typical of a school life, and it damn sure reinforces and builds self esteem. I would have lost my freaking mind in high school if I hadn't played tennis, guitar, and making stuff with tools in the garage. I made scary mini Medieval weapons on those bad days  .And bamboo water bongs on the good 'uns 

I write when I have time, and if I had the money (family's poor), I'd buy a guitar and learn to play. I'm not a sports person, and my artistic skills are somewhere between cat and mentally disabled toddler.

[Sigmaleph]

I have no idea how the American high-school system works with electives and all that, so I can't really comment on it. I wouldn't doubt that it can use a fair bit of rewriting, though.

My point is that removing relatively basic stuff* from the curriculum will have negative side effects. And I'm sure it's annoying to have to learn maths when it looks like you'll never use it; I've had roughly similar experiences with most things I learnt in my last couple of years of secondary school. Quite a lot of which I've forgotten by now. But I also think that there should be a fair amount of the school curriculum that's there just for the purpose of getting exposed to new fields you didn't know before, and you might actually be interested in. I knew I'd go into science several years before finishing secondary, but I know a lot of people who changed their minds on what to study on their last years of secondary (or later). If they had determined too much of their final years' material beforehand, they would have never been exposed to the things they later decided interested them.


*and Pythagoras' theorem is pretty fucking basic, in terms of maths that isn't just arithmetic. I actually find the idea of learning it in high school rather troubling; it should be learnt at primary school level, whatever it is you call that in America.