Even More Occupy Wall Street and a Little Bit About The Internet

Things I Learn In History Class.

While I do support the Occupy protests wholeheartedly, I, like our other author here (awesomepurplepowdermonkey) believe that, well, ur doin it rong. 

So, we've reviewed your motives, your reasoning, and your ideas, and we respect them, but come on, guys. If you're going to have a reasonable protest, you have to look good to the public. You're a nuisance on businesses and police forces. You bastards in Oakland are being violent, destructive, and disruptive. I'm not saying that you should quit, I'm just saying that you should be a little more considerate of your surroundings, and think about whether your actions are the right way forward.

Now, I know that not all of you are behaving this way, and many of you are trying to do this the right way. You use democracy in your decision-making, and you respect the police force. If all of you did that, you could have one hell of a revolution on your hands, and the public would listen to you and respect you in a new way.

The Internet

How many of you believe that the internet should be a free, usable place for sharing ideas, art, and developments? I see a lot of hands raised high out there. Well, too bad, I guess. Congress is to vote soon on a new bill that would effectively strip the internet of so much of its wonderful content.

The bill would force ISPs to monitor and regulate their customers' activity online, and make themselves responsible for what these customers upload, post, or think. If ISPs don't want consequences, they'll have to police the internet, creating bias in what can and cannot be said. If you want to try to convince congress that this is a bad idea, head on over to demandprogress.org (currently undergoing a bit of technical difficulty, it seems) and send an e-mail to your state's congressman, share on facebook, and make it known that we do not want this.

In Conclusion

It's been fun as always, and I hope I caused many of you to think about these two important subjects. Good afternoon, all.

More on occupy Wall Street.

    Think of this as a kind of follow-up to unborn's post (probably below, but I don't know, he might be messing with things again).

    So, to summarize what unborn said, for those of you too lazy to scroll (I know, sometimes the resistance on that scroll wheel is pretty tough); the main point of the Occupy protests is to show popular discontent toward the fact that 5% of the population in this country hold 50% of the money. If you want more detailed numbers and proof and such, see unborn's post.

    This is my criticism of the protest.

    While I 101% agree with the message that the movement is trying to get out there, they are going about it completely wrong.

    These people, instead of telling people about there problems, being friendly, and talking about their problems; are alienating, confusing, and annoying people. The employees in the bathrooms in the many coffee shops on wall street might even support their movement, if the protesters walked in, bought a coffee, and chatted about why they were there and what they were doing. Instead, they walk in, use the bathroom, and walk out. This would probably lead the employees there to think that the protesters are just a bunch of inconsiderate jerks who are angry about something or other. 

    Now with Occupy Oakland, there is a completely different story. These protests are now a rallying call 'LOOK AT THIS POLICE BRUTALITY' people are saying, 'THE POLICE WERE UNPROVOKED BY THE INNOCENT PROTESTERS AND THEN THEY MOVED IN A TEAR GASSED THEM'. 

I'm sorry, moderately annoyed people, but you're quite mistaken.

    Sure, the original movement was about non-violence. But watch this video from the English newspaper, The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/nov/03/occupy-oakland-protest-port-video

     What we see here is protesters who are clearly a teensy bit angry smashing windows, lighting things on fire, looting, and throwing fireworks and the police. Now, if the police at this point were not willing to move in, then you might want to hire new law enforcement. 

    This is not the way to spread the message. The original idea of the occupy wall street movement is golden. Spend 100 days camping out on wall street, to show these big banks, the top 5%, how unhappy we are. But now, its become violent. People are not spreading the message, they are spreading fear. The protesters on wall street are alienating people who might want to join the movement. How can people join your cause if they have no idea who you are, whats going on, and why the hell you're so angry about it? Setting things on fire is not a protest. Looting stores is not a protest. What they have achieved is chaos, and chaos is never going to make anything better.

Great job guys.

You broke it.

Oh, America.

A Legitimate Post (Fully Rantomatic)

Today I'd like to touch on several subjects.

• The PATRIOT Act
• Occupy Wall Street
• Music Rights
• Software Rights
• Religion (I'm not trying to offend with this one.)
• Kinder Überraschung

The PATRIOT Act
The PATRIOT Act is an Act of the United States Congress signed into law in 2001. It is a disgrace. It is wrong. It is disgusting, and I'm here to tell you why.

The act claims to be a means of preventing terrorism through proactive means, and while I suspect it has been effective in detaining some legitimate terrorists, it also calls into play unfair and unjust means of finding them. It also can be applied to ANYONE even remotely suspected of terrorism.

The law allows for wiretaps, scouring records of transactions, both public and private, and even surveillance of any suspected terrorist, even those not believed to be linked to an organization or group. So, essentially, if you act like a terrorist, you can be monitored like one. This is a grotesque breach of rights. I bet HOMELAND SECURITY (yeah, I know you guys love to hear your name mentioned online) loves it, but we, as American citizens must bring it down. Hell, you might be on one of their lists. I might be on one of their lists. It could happen to anyone, based on a purchase, a public statement, a phone call.

I'm not sure what we're supposed to do about it, but we have to find a way to stop it.


Occupy Wall Street (and the injustices involved)
OK, look. I know a lot of people don't understand what it's all about, so I'll explain it in the simplest way I can.

In the United States of Capita- oops. In the United States of America, Half of our money, that's 50%, is controlled by 1/20th (5%) of the population. If the population of the United States is, as The Census Bureau's Clock states, 312,560,662 people, then 62,512,132.4 people control an equivalent amount of money as 250,048,529.6 people. Those are some big numbers, except that 5% of people. That seems relatively small to me... Is it fair that so few people control so much? Especially when those people can fund the government executives that they choose, and sway them to causes they like. Causes that usually result in them gaining, you guessed it, more money.

This is what the Occupy protests around the country are about. They just want economic equality for everyone. The argument is made by opponents of the movement that, if these people had worked harder, started their own businesses, or had their own ideas, they would be up there with the wealthy. Well, something I've learned by observation is that it most certainly takes money to make money. Making it in the world is a real Catch 22.

I urge all of you reading this to consider the economic equality of the nation, and evaluate for yourselves whether this is fair.

Music Rights
This is a bit of a change in topic, but it's an important subject.

We live in what is supposed to be a free market system, people buy and sell for what they think something is worth, but has the question ever been raised, "What exactly is music worth?" To some, the answer is obvious. Music is worth money. A few bucks for an album. To others, the answer is, "Nothing. Art should be free and public." But what about the middle ground? Those who say, "It's subjective" are rarely considered in debate.  I am one of these people.

Music purchases should be based on taste, and quality as defined by the listener. If you like something, but you don't like it enough that you want more, why on Earth should you pay for it? If you absolutely love something, and crave more of it, you should support the artist behind it. Doing this is currently illegal, but should it be? People that buy paintings only buy the ones they love, they simply admire or take a photograph of others. Why can't we apply the same theory to music?

Software Rights
On the subject of digital mediums, and the purchase thereof, let's talk software.

With hardware, there's no contention. It's a physical product, and you should have to pay for it, but what about software? Should the poor, migrant family have to pay large sums of money, just to have basic functionality of their computer? Should the College student, barely making ends meet, and piling up debt, have to pay five hundred dollars so that he can type a paper? No.

I'm not saying that all software should be free, but I am saying that basic software, that is not classified as art (as games now are) should not be something with a price tag. Those of us that can hardly pay for dinner are paying hundreds for simple things. Would you pay fifty dollars for a banana? I certainly would not.

Religion
Allow me to start off saying that I am, in fact, an Atheist, formerly a Lutheran.

Religion causes wars. Religion starts conflict and causes death, but this is not what I am going to attack. The one thing I truly dislike, is why it does so.

Any monotheist believes in the same thing, but has a different creation story, and their version of a deity is only slightly different from the next. Their customs may be different, but they all pray to the same god. They attack each other over small discrepancies in their descriptions of a deity. This is why I am pissed off. It's like starting a war because one person likes Burger Kind and the other likes McDonalds. Slight differences in the same product. It's sickening. Listen to those Coexist bumper stickers, assholes. They've got the right idea.

Kinder Überraschung
A dear friend of mine writes a food blog, in which he cooks, eats, and discusses food. One day he posted about a German candy called Kinder Überraschung (the title of this little section of post is a link to his post)

The candies have been banned in the United States due to some lawsuit or something. Rumor has it that if you bring these through an airport, HOMELAND SECURITY will seize them.

Anyway, he posts an innocent little piece showing pictures of one. He checks the stats of the post a couple days later, and HOMELAND SECURITY has been viewing this page at least once an hour. Can someone say PATRIOT Act?

In Conclusion
I hope this post hasn't earned a colossal tl;dr from you all. It's been fun. Goodnight, everybody.

The American School System is a Piece of Shit.

    Let me start this off by pointing out that America last year scored 46th in the world in the International Baccalaureate rankings. Last year the average SAT score was a 1509. That's a 63% on the test the school system is giving itself to make sure things are working. So the school system here gives itself a D, by its own standards. This is me trying to explain why that might be.

    Lets start of with a mistake that I just made. The A, B, C, D, F grading system. The idea behind this scale is C is 'average', above this indicates that the student is excelling and needs no further help, but a below 'average' indicates that the student should receive additional help, because clearly they are not understanding the subject matter. This translates into a GPA, which in itself is utter nonsense, but I'll get to that later. Now all students strive to achieve A's, and teachers give most of their points on 'participation'. Which in many cases is 'you show up to class you get 100% on participation'. Teachers are giving students the grade that should be used to indicate exemplary understanding for simply showing up to class on a regular basis. Of course, this does mean that students fail if they do not show up, but are teachers really trying to award students for an exemplary understanding of showing up to class on time?

    Well no. Because the other thing teachers have resorted to now is using a similar approach for homework. If you have attempted each question on some homework, you will receive full credit. The score supposedly reserved for exemplary understanding is being given out for simply giving it 'a jolly good shot'. Students could guess and achieve this A. Students who do actually possess this exemplary understanding of the subject score the same as the ones who have no idea what they are doing, and just scribbled some dates in the boxes before class. Eventually, it reaches the point where it is conceivable that all students who do know the material   cease to bother, because it is not worth their time to put the work in when they can achieve the exact same score by writing random dates.

    All this eventually just means that all students are doing no work, and all scoring the 'exemplary understanding' points, for doing diddly-shit. So, what happens when it comes time to take a test? Well. No one has any idea what they are meant to be doing, because they were all writing random numbers and achieving an exemplary understanding of showing up to class. This is most likely the cause of America's abysmal academic performance when compared to the rest of the world.

   Now at this point, I assume there will be much protest along the lines of "Ahha! But schools offer more challenging classes! So we're not all stupid!". In response to this, I would like to raise the epitome of this horrifically flawed system, the Grade Point Average. GPA. The bane of high school existence. If students take these higher level classes, then they are no longer graded on being able to show up and guess the answers. Their grade will suffer. They might only score a 'B' <gasp>, or worse, be 'Average' for their higher level class. This may sound like it means nothing, because it shouldn't, right?

Wrong.

    Consider a student took harder math and science classes throughout high school. They scored a C in all of them, due to the harder level. If they took 6 classes per year and 2 out of these were math or sciences, assuming they scored the A for showing up in the other 4, their GPA is a 3.333. Compare that to that of a student who simply took the easy A. One has a 4.0, the other has a 3.333. Just from that, most Collages would automatically assume that the 4.0 student is a better student, because they should possess an exemplary understanding in all subject areas that they took the classes in.

     I know of high school students with a 3.9 GPA, taking all higher level classes. And when it comes to it, those are the ones who will do better in life. So why does the school system punish this by giving it a lower 'score' that the students who took all easy classes and aced them, simply by showing up?

Yeah. I don't understand either.

I just watched Fox news.

    Ok. Don't yell at me for 'old news', I write as quickly as I can, but I'm human. There is a limit to how fast I can churn out a decent length post. Ok, for anyone who hasn't yet heard (hello from Planet Earth, btw), Osama Bin Laden (Or if you watch Fox News(WHY!?!?!), Usama Bin Laden) has been killed by US forces. I'm not writing this to inform you of that, I'd be a little late. Nor am I writing to point out how terribly Fox failed, even though that could be a full post in itself (Or possibly a full length novel). I am writing this to give MY perspective on this. Not what happened. Not what I have heard. What I see here. If you disagree, feel free to comment. I might even read it (if it is well written, intelligent, and not "ZOMG UR A RETARD").
   Ok, my perspective. The way I see it, the point of terrorism is to cause terror. Terrorists have nothing against airplanes, buildings, or public transportation. All they want is to scare us.  They don't want to let us think that we can make them stop by killing high-up members of their organization. If we thought that, we would just keep killing them. If they killed Obama, what would we do? We would seek revenge on them. So immediately we would assume that their revenge will target us. This is completely incorrect. You have to see how they think. They see everyone that is not one of them as the enemy. They will blame the rest of the world for the death of their leader. Why would they attack the United States when they know that that is what we expect? We are scaring ourselves here if we expect an attack here, doing their job for them. What would strike fear into the whole world is attacking another major world power, out of nowhere. (Yes, America, there are other world powers.) If you consider the G8 summit as an official measure of power, then you have:

• Canada
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan
• Russia
• United Kingdom
• United States

Now, United States was already eliminated for possible attack. That leaves 7. Speaking as a former resident of the UK, I would say that the government and private businesses are far too paranoid there for anything to happen. So. Down to 6. Now that security has been taken care of, the issue is now the attractiveness as a target. i.e. how massive the impact of what they do will be. Well, there go Canada and Russia. Despite the fact that Russia supplies most of Europe with oil, that would not have the same spectacle as ramming a plane into the World Trade Center in New York. The four remaining targets are all plausible. Personally, I predict an attack on either France or Japan. Thats just me.

The next thing I'm about to say will seem pretty obvious. They don't care about death. Their own, or those around them. Bin Laden loved the fight (If you question how I know this, he used to be a part of a CIA anti-terrorism squad, this is from an American), and would happily have blown himself to tiny pieces if it killed a few "infidels". Despite the fact that no Americans died on the mission, Osama would be happy to hear in his afterlife filled with forty ex-virgins that his death caused Al Qaeda to launch attacks all over the world, resulting in mass loss of life.

 Basically, we achieved the death of a few terrorists. Leave it a few months, then let me know if it was worth the effort.

~Witty title goes here~

Life. Don't talk to me about life.