Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Wednesday, June 6. 2018

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

B Block 9:00 – 10:00
AG 10:05 – 10:15
A Block 10:20 – 11:20
Lunch 11:20 – 12:00
D Block 12:05 – 1:05
C Block 1:10 – 2:10
Personalized Learning 2:10 – 3:15

B Block Introduction to Law 10 - Today I'll give you time to finish your work on questions 1-7 on page 74 from the All About Law textbook.  Next, I'll give you a handout on Actus Reus and Mens Rea and have you work through it in class.

A Block Law 12 - Today I have the library/learning commons booked for you to continue your work on the major civil law project that is due tin two and a half weeks from now. Including today you have Seven (7) library blocks left to finish this assignment...no pressure really. And don't forget if you're choosing to do three cases with a video for your law firm...you had better start script writing and planning your production dates ASAP.

D Block Human Geography 11 - Today our key issue is, "Where Are Business Services Distributed"? We'll examine urban settlements known as global cities (also called world cities) that play an especially important role in global business services. Global cities are most closely integrated into the global economic system because they are at the center of the flow of information and capital. Business services (including financial institutions, headquarters of large corporations, and lawyers, accountants, and other professional services) concentrate in disproportionately large numbers in global cities. In the global economy, developing countries specialize in two distinctive types of business services: offshore financial services and back-office functions. These businesses typically located in developing countries for a number of reasons, including the presence of supportive laws, weak regulations, and low-wage workers. So a couple of videos and then questions for me




  1. Explain why business services are disproportionately concentrated in global cities.
  2. Why have LDC’s have been able to attract back offices?
  3. Describe the type of job you’re hoping to start after college. Is it a service? What does this, along with your knowledge of where service industry jobs are clustered, tell you about the range of service jobs?
  4. Would it be difficult to do well at the job you’ve described above if you lived in a very small town? Use the concepts of threshold, range, and central place theory to describe why high-paying jobs are easier to find in large cities

C Block Criminology 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 the second half of the 2017 Investigation Discovery documentary Casey Anthony: An American Murder Mystery


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. 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.

Matt Wild wrote a piece called The guilty (and not-so-guilty) pleasures of Dateline NBC and in it he stated
...for an alarming number of Americans—myself included—Dateline has become appointment viewing. Mad Men, Downton Abbey, and their ilk are fine, but there’s a distinct, guilty pleasure in staying home on a Friday night, dimming the lights, sounding off on Twitter with other likeminded fans, and watching the sordid true-life tales of murderous spouses (usually husbands), sorrowful family members (usually parents), and sinister motives (almost always infidelity) unspool over the course of an hour, all narrated by the stern and sonorous Morrison, or the rumpled and incredulous Mankiewicz. Murder, shattered families, and desperate cries for justice: perfect for a cozy night of popcorn, wine, and incessant tweeting.
So you have a question to answer for me:
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?
Tomorrow our focus will be on Nancy Grace and her coverage of the trial.

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