Tuesday, March 15. 2011

Today's schedule is B-A-D-C

B - Earth & Space Science 11 - Today we start our Tectonics unit by watching the first 20-25 minutes of National Geogaphic's DVD “Amazing Planet: Born of Fire”. The scections of the DVD we'll watch deal with the stellar nebula hypothesis and the scientific theoy of Earth's creation, along with the basics on plate tectonics (including the interior structure of the Earth and convection cells driven by radioactive decay). After watching the DVD, you may work on the Plate Tectonics Worksheet 1 that I'll hand out to you.



A & D - Criminology 12 - Today we shift our focus and look at White Collar Crime. We will begin by learning how to identify a pyramid / ponzi scam (for more take a look at How Stuff Works). After, we'll quickly look at individual exploitation of an institutional position, influence peddling & bribery, theft and employee fraud, client fraud and corporate crime. We'll end the class with a discussion about business and corporate culture. What is it that makes a successful business person and what kind of ethical behaviour is valued by corporate culture? From the Business Ethics Forum blog site:

An outstanding in-depth article on the Value of Corporate Values can be found in an article by Reggie Van Lee, Lisa Fabish, and Nancy McGaw in this month's S+B. Based on a survey at 365 companies in 30 countries, the authors claim "increasingly, companies around the world have adopted formal statements of corporate values, and senior executives now routinely identify ethical behavior, honesty, integrity, and social concerns as top issues on their companies’ agendas". The highlights of the survey and article are:

1. A large number of companies are making their values explicit. That’s a change — quite a significant change — from corporate practices 10 years ago. The ramifications of this shift are just beginning to be understood.
2. Ethical behavior is a core component of company activities.
3. Most companies believe values influence two important strategic areas — relationships and reputation — but do not see the direct link to growth.
4. Most companies are not measuring their “ROV.”
5. Top performers consciously connect values and operations.
6. Values practices vary significantly by (continental) region.
7. The CEO’s tone really matters.

The article provides quantitative data about these 7 findings and concludes with "A commitment to corporate values may be in vogue, but the public will remain suspicious until corporations both understand and can demonstrate that they are committed to using values to create value". What we are looking at is what makes people abuse the public trust in corporations. We will look at stings, swindles, and chiselling and discuss ImClone (Martha Stewart) and Bre-X. For more on Corporations look at the website for the documentary The Corporation (which we'll watch part of tomorrow)

C - Geography 12 - Today, you'll need to work on the physical weathering questions in your week 7 package (definition of frost action, exfoliation, and pressure release jointing along with questions 10, 12, 13, and 15 from page 442 of your Geosystems textbook). You can find the answers between pages 420-423 in the text and this flash animation website from the University of Kentucky Geology department will help as well.