Diplomacy, Relationships & Tactics: the Art of War [Monday, Period 1]

[atreideslioness]

Ghanima was sitting on her desk as the students arrived, her text placed neatly in her lap. Exactly like any other day of class.

The moment the last student was seated, she flipped her book open. "Good morning, class, and welcome. Today with the Third P'ien," she said, holding up the book. "'Attack by Stratagem.' Or as one of my former co-teachers once called it, 'Avoiding Attack by Stratagem from my side of the fence: Make Love, Not War and Drink Sake and Keep Calm ♥.'" Some days Ghanima missed Shunsui very, very much. "Or, in the words of Tzu, 'Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.'"

"Sun Tzu also said that 'He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.' And, of course, there's the phrase everyone knows, but rarely do they know the source. 'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.' Know thy enemy and know thyself."

"So, how do you formulate a plan of attack, if are forced to fight? Resorting immediately to violent means is not always the best option. 'Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans;'" Ghanima recited, watching all of them carefully. "'The next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.' So speaks Tzu. I'm curious as to how you feel this reflects the every day world, and if you have seen this applied at all in Fandom."

Library, Monday

[intotheout]

Tip wasn't sure how it was possible, but she was still sore from learning sword basics from Kanan on Friday. They hadn't even been working on it for that long! Clearly something was wrong. She was on WebMD today, trying to figure out what it meant to still be so sore after 3 days.

Sure, okay, it could be that she was actually just really out of shape, but wasn't bone cancer or something way more likely?

. . . Okay, fine, maybe not. But it was more interesting to read about that and freak herself out than to just drink more water and do some stretches.

[open!]

Ethics, Monday, September 18, 2017

[sith_happened]

"Today we're going to talk about something that's a current moral dilemma," Anakin began. And one he heard Rory ranting about almost daily. "It's also an extremely valuable life skill: learning how to read information with a critical eye to discover the motivations of the people releasing it. Their morals might not be your morals."

"Regardless of what kind of society you grow up in, it is likely you'll believe certain sources of information better than others," Obi-Wan said. "What those sources would be, varies. Sentients do, however, feel inclined to believe something that parrots their own beliefs more readily than what does not."

Anakin nodded. "Do you believe what your friend tells you? Does her opinion weigh more heavily than, say, a news article you read, even if hers is only a single perspective? In journalism--" he smiled at Obi-Wan, "--as my wife has lectured me more than once, there are primary and secondary sources of information. How do you know a secondary source is credible, or that a primary doesn't have an axe to grind?"

"And what does credibility mean to you?' Obi-Wan asked. "Most have an agenda, but some might be more benevolent than others. How do you judge such a thing? What do you pay attention to?"

"And does the credibility matter very much if it's about something that doesn't really affect your life? Celebrity marriages, wars on planets you'll never visit?" Anakin added. "Are you more interested in a good story or the bald facts?"

"Please share a story where you were entirely convinced one set of events was true, but the reality turned out to be rather different or more complicated," Obi-wan said, "If you have any. If you don't... why don't you?"

Computer Science- Tuesday- 3rd period

[throughaphase]

So already Kitty was starting to wonder if another semester of all the jobs was going to be a bad idea, because being there for final inspection stuff at Caritas this morning meant that she was running late for class, and thus, there was an email sent out last minute telling the students to come to the classroom.

"Sorry for the change in plans," Kitty said. "Long story, boring adult stuff. But on the bright side, you get a movie day. It's from 1995, is horrifyingly out of date, and I don't really know if people back then knew what computers actually did. Enjoy!"