B Block Social Studies 11 - Today we'll get to the video we didn't yesterday...the National Geographic DVD “Six Degrees Could Change the World”. This DVD shows the potential environmental changes (not the actual ones) that may happen with incremental degrees of climate change. After the cheeseburger carbon footprint section I'll have you answer the following on a piece of paper:
- What is a carbon footprint?
- Who will be affected by the increasing size of our carbon footprint?
- How does the cheeseburger study
highlight ways in which you could reduce your carbon footprint - and not just by
stopping eating cheeseburgers!
After the European heat wave section could you
answer the following:
- What happened? – What is a heat wave? How long does it have to last and how hot does it need to be?
- When did it happen? – You should be able to quote the month and the year.
- Where did it happen? – The case study discusses the ‘European Heat Wave’ but which city does it focus upon?
- Why did it happen? – The heat wave caused the deaths of many people. What human systems caused the death rate to be so high?
- Who was affected by it happening? – The impacts of the heat wave were particularly harsh upon one section of the population? Which section of the population was it? You should also be able to explain why.
NASA has a good website (Earth Observatroy Global Warming) that tries
to explain the concept of climate change and global warming without a biased
political viewpoint for or against the subject. Check it out. You could also
look at the Hyper Physics website from the department of
Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University.
D Block Crime, Media and Society 12 - Yesterday we talked about the tropes of: "Police are Useless"; "The Only One"; and "Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop". In yesterday's episode of Lie to Me, called "Moral Waiver", Dr. Cal Lightman and Ria Torres investigate the case of a female soldier who claims to be the victim of sexual assault by her commanding officer. At the same time, Dr. Gillian Foster and Eli Loker work on the case of a college basketball player who is accused of accepting a bribe from his university. In both cases the Lightman group employees are experts who are hired by authority figures (the US Army or a University Ombudsman) to do the work that they themselves can't quite get done...notice any tropes/themes here?
Today let's continue. We'll watch an episode of Elementary from season one called "The Deductionist". From IMDb.com:
A convicted killer who is supposed to donate a kidney to his sister ends up killing the surgical staff before escaping. Holmes is forced to work with a profiler (whom he can't stand) because she supposedly can predict what he will do next.
The "Great Detective" trope is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. In this version (Elementary), Sherlock Holmes was a consultant for Scotland Yard in England, before "hitting bottom" and ending up in rehabilitation. Joan Watson has been hired by Holmes' father to be his sober companion, to help him adjust from rehab back to everyday life. Holmes has come up with an interesting post-rehab regimen to keep himself busy-resuming his role as a consultant, this time for the New York police. Watson finds herself coming along for the ride. Of course the BBC did a modern version where Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) solves crimes through sheer intellect and his Sherlock Scan, but is a (self-proclaimed) "high-functioning sociopath" barely kept in check by his friend Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman).
In both modern versions Holmes has what can only be described as high functioning personality disorders but supreme intellect that assuredly saves the day for the police who clearly can't do their job properly without his help. Hmmm...sound familiar? Remember Dr. Cal Lightman in Lie to Me?
In Elementary, following the tradition of depictions of Sherlock, his brain literally seems to work differently than other people. He has a lot of common personality traits with Asperger Syndrome - socially awkward and extremely gifted within a certain area (in his case detective work), straightforward and with a lot of brutal honesty, often oblivious to others' feelings but not lacking in empathy. He also has certain physical tics like the way he stands hunched in on himself sometimes, his jerking head movements and the way he grips his hands which are also consistent with someone who has Aspergers or Autism. So he's an insufferably awkward loner of a genius who is "the Only One" who can help the NYPD because "Police are Useless".
C Block Geography 12 - Today we will take the first part of class to complete the Multiple Selection portion of our final exam. After this, we'll watch the rest of the movie Home that we started yesterday. We'll talk about the things you can do to address the problems / issues that the movie raises. Think about the title. What is our collective home? Now think about the statement from the beginning of the film...
Listen to me, please. You're like me, a homo sapiens. A wise human. Life; a miracle in the universe appeared around 4 billion years ago and we humans only 200,000 years ago, yet we have succeeded in disrupting the balance so essential to life. Listen carefully to this extraordinary story, which is yours, and decide what you want to do with it.
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