Friday, May 13. 2011

Today’s schedule is D-C-A-B

C - Geography 12 - We'll spend the class finishing our review of hurricanes. We’ll start with the Raging Planet Hurricane episode (yesterday, we left when Dr. Ivor Van Heerden was on the Cape Verde islands off the west coast of Africa) and then we’ll switch to the National Geographic Inside Hurricane Katrina DVD. I hope that through my stories and the actual footage of the catastrophe you can start to understand the human component to natural disasters. Through this maybe you'll get an inkling as to why I say that this is the most important class you'll ever take in your life. Consider the Political, Environmental, Economic, Physical, and Social effects of the hurricane on not just the Gulf Coast, but the entire United States as a result.

A & D - Criminology 12 - Today we will spend a few minutes reviewing our discussion of violence from yesterday. We'll look at the difference between serial and mass murder and then try to understand a little bit about psychopathology. To better understand the people that commit heinous acts of murder, we'll take the class to understand what a "psychopath" is. Too often people throw the term psycho around without really understanding what it means so we'll look at Dr. Robert Hare's PCL-R (Psychopathy Checklist Revised). The diagnosis "Psychopath" is closely related to Antisocial Personality Disorder in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th Edition). We'll end the class looking at the motivations of mass and serial murder and dispel the myths surrounding those who commit them. After I'll have you watch a Law & Order Criminal Intent episode "Jones" about a psychopathic killer. From Wapedia...

In this episode, Detective Goren and Eames are investigating the death of a pretty, petite woman found drowned in her bathtub.

The detectives go to work, turning down a more high-profile case because this one looks interesting. Suddenly, they find themselves awash when a second victim is another petite woman found naked and washed up on shore just days apart. Goren quickly deduces she, too, was drowned in a bathtub. But the case turns out even bigger as a third body is found, with similar body type and strangled but not drowned. Later, a fourth woman is killed.

The investigation leads Goren and Eames to an abusive, cocaine-addicted lawyer. The connection is that the women were his clients and he also was taking them for a significant amount of money to help feed his gambling addictions. The detectives dig into the case, knowing that he has one more unknown victim remaining on his list. Since Goren and Eames are unable to get help from his wife, they race in a desperate attempt to save the potential victim.



B - Earth & Space Science 11 - You're back in the library today for your next day to work on the major project for the year. Don't forget that it is your responsibility to create a review of the Earth & Space Science curriculum for a student in grade 7 (12 to 13 years old). Your next checkpoint is in two weeks (the Friday after you return from your May long weekend) and this will be your first project mark for term four. After that there are just three weeks left in the course to complete your project so please make sure that you use your time wisely.