Room 611: Friday, September 16. 2016

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

C & B Blocks Social Studies 11 - OK so yesterday we had fun taking a look at the legislative branch of the federal government system. Remember the job of the legislative branch is to legislate - to create or repeal/change laws in Canada. To demonstrate your fabulous new knowledge you will have to draft a simplified bill that you would like to see made law, where you'll write the idea in a simple sentence or two and then use the Make It Law handout to organize your ideas (you got it yesterday in class). After this, you'll create a comic strip demonstrating the process of how a Bill becomes a Law in Canada using the legislative process steps I'll outline with you in class. If you need help look in your Counterpoints textbook and the Parliament of Canada "Follow That Bill" website. You'll have more time Monday to work on this assignment and it will be due on Wednesday next week.

D Block Criminology 12 - Yesterday I asked you to come up with a list of 10 Violent, 10 Property and 10 Social crimes in Canada and identify if you think they are on the increase, decrease or are steady. We'll look at what you think and then we'll start with a look at the BC Crime trends from 1998 - 2007 and then we'll talk about the disparity (difference) between the public perception of violent crime and the actual rates of violent crime in Canada...hint take a look to the left. The crime data indicate that rates have declined significantly in the past few years and are now far less than they were a decade ago. Suspected causes for the crime rate drop include an increasing prison population, more police on the street, the end of the crack epidemic and the age structure of society. The data sources show relatively stable patterns in the crime rate. Ecological patterns show that crime varies by season and by urban versus rural environment, however there is evidence of gender patterns in the crime rate: Men commit more crime than women. Age is one of the largest influences on crime; young people commit more crime than the elderly (and there are fewer young people in society). Crime data show that people commit less crime as they age, but the significance and cause of this pattern are still not completely understood. Similarly, racial and class patterns appear in the crime rate. However, it is still unclear whether these are true differences or a function of discriminatory law enforcement.

Some people think that since there is so much crime happening they feel the need to take on crime themselves. There are some costumed "super-hero" vigilantes in Seattle - members of the Rain City Superhero Movement. Check out the Seattle PI article on them here. You can check out the article and video from Good Morning America on Phoenix Jones broken nose here. You can watch the Young Turks video on the Rain City Superheroes here.

And the full doc can be seen here...

A Block Geography 12 - Today we'll do a brief introduction to topographic maps and I'll show you how to identify location, estimate area, calculate slope, and determine direction on them. We'll look at large versions of the 1:50000 scale topographic maps for the Comox Valley (92F10 and 92F11). For a large copy of the Forbidden Plateau 92F11 map click on the Online - En ligne (PDF or TIFF) at the GEOSCAN Fast-Link site. Using these maps we'll try to make sense of topographic maps in partners.