Thursday, January 5. 2017

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

D Block Crime, Media and Society 12 -Today we continue the Casey Anthony trial coverage from 2011 in the USA. Yesterday we watched the 48 Hours Mystery "Only Casey Knows" that showed one perspective of the case (in this instance pretrial and mostly from the defense's point of view) and today we'll watch Nancy Grace

After this we'll talk about the German psychology/sociology term Schadenfreude. This term deals with a big concept - that as humans, we have a private rush of glee when someone else struggles (we take delight in another person's pain and misfortune). Schadenfreude registers in the brain as a pleasurable experience, a satisfaction comparable to that of eating a good meal.Schadenfreude is a common and normal part of life but can become dangerous if we lose empathy, fall into demonizing others, or lapse into “us vs. them” thinking. I'll ask you to answer the following:

There is a human fascination with murder as entertainment and news media companies have turned the story of the death of a toddler into a prime time circus...a story that we can safely watch and perhaps feel a little guilty pleasure in the fact that we're better than Casey Anthony. Her pain and suffering on television brings us delight and makes us feel good in that we are not the monster that the media has portrayed her out to be...sigh.
HLN's Nancy Grace covered the Casey Anthony trial heavily in 2011. Here's an example of the daily coverage she and HLN broadcast



And after the verdict here's what she had to say - which further shaped the public's opinion of Casey Anthony even after she was found not guilty by a jury of her peers


Now, here's what the media had to say about the media covering the Casey Anthony trial

Does the trial have a longer lasting impact on the USA or was it just 15 minutes of fame and a distraction from mundane daily life? Because of her actions, Nancy Grace has been spoofed on SNL and MadTV to name just two





HBO had a television series called The Newsroom and they had an amazing bit on Nancy Grace's coverage of Tot Mom...

To her credit Nancy Grace was a criminal prosecutor in Georgia. Here is a CNN bio on her..


We'll watch the Biography Channel "True Story" called Casey Anthony How did we get here?

CNN did a retrospective piece on the trial here

Whew...so in the end here's my three questions for you to answer:

1. What are your immediate reactions to the Dateline video we just watched and why do you think that the Cindy Anthony (grandmother) Casey Anthony (mother), and Caylee Anthony (murdered daughter) debacle generated so much media coverage in the USA?
2. Who would you want deciding your guilt or innocence? A jury of your peers or CNN and Nancy Grace? Regardless of your opinion of Casey Anthony is it possible for her to escape the negative label of "Tot Mom" and will she ever be able to avoid the horrible mother image presented by CNN and Nancy Grace?
3. How does the concept of Schadenfreude apply to the Casey Anthony trial? How would low self-esteem make someone more likely to seek out schadenfreude-filled crime media?

C & B Blocks Social Studies 11 - Today in class we'll continue our look at World War Two by focusing on the internment of Japanese Canadian citizens here in British Columbia. This sad event in Canadian history was the culmination of years of racism and xenophobia on the west coast. Japanese Canadian citizens were excluded from a 160 kilometer range from the coast, were sent to detention camps and were deprived of their civil liberties. Japanese Canadians lost all their possessions (houses, farms, fishing boats, companies and personal goods) which the government sold off to keep them from returning to British Columbia. It wasn't until 1949 that they regained all of their rights and that all restrictions were lifted. You'll have to work on questions 1 a and b from page 127 out of the Counterpoints textbook. After this, I'll give you the rest of the class to work on your propaganda poster that you began yesterday last week...remember what you put on your poster has to be relevant to Canada (Encourage men to enlist; Pressure women to encourage their husbands, brothers and boyfriends to enlist; Encourage women to help out at home e.g. conserving food, buying victory bonds; Encourage children to help the war effort e.g. purchasing war stamps; Persecution / suspicion of enemy aliens; Encouraging pacifism; Glamorizing the Canadian war heroes; or just plain Demonizing Japan, Germany or Italy). Your poster is due next Wednesday.

A Block Geography 12 - Today we will continue looking at biomes and biogeographic realms. Biomes are the major regional groupings of plants and animals discernible at a global scale. The distribution of these biomes is connected to climate, soil, and the physical topography of the earth. Biogeography is the study of the distribution and patterns of plants and animals throughout the biosphere. Remember, using chapter 20 of your Geosystems textbook, I would like you to describe the adaptations and structure for flora and fauna (plant and animal) in each of the biomes I listed yesterday and in your week 16 package. While you work on this I will have the Planet Earth Pole to Pole episode on for you to watch. For more on the biomes covered in the Planet Earth series check out Planet Earth

Planet Earth 01 - From Pole to Pole by cocokoreena

I will also remind you that you have a weather unit final next Wednesday (January 11th, 2017) and if you have any questions you should ask me as soon as possible. For the test the topics include:

1. the structure of the atmosphere (tropo & strato) ozone depletion (CFC's), the enhanced greenhouse effect (GHG's) & air pollution (acid rain) 
2. solar energy & insolation (heat, albedo, energy distribution, & seasons) atmospheric pressure & global wind patterns (Coriolis force, wind pattern names, pressure zones) 
3. low & high pressure systems (how they happen, winds & weather associated with them, including air masses) 
4. precipitation (lifting mechanisms - orographic, frontal, radiative, convectional - fronts and storms) 
5. weather maps (station plots / models and low pressure cyclonic storms - cold and warm fronts) 
6. severe weather (specifically hurricanes - how they develop & how they cause damage)