Thursday, October 29, 2020

Friday, October 30. 2020

Today's classes are: 

9:15 - 11:50 D Block Social and Environmental Science 
12:30 - 3:05 A Block Criminology 

D Block Social and Environmental Science - With Benton (actually he's away so with Ms. Petrie) you'll be working on your farm activity in room 120 (computer lab). Remember, you are an aspiring horticultural farmer (not livestock) and after our visit to Amara Farms you now have a deeper understanding about the knowledge and skills needed to be a farmer. I would like you to focus on one crop, which leads to the questions...

Why is it beneficial to diversify and grow at least a few different crops?
What you need to answer is What crop are you going to be growing and why?

Research the following points before answering the above questions with a practical and financial plan:
  1. Soil type and nutrient requirements, planting temperature, water needs, infrastructure (greenhouse?), time to harvest (multiple crops per year?), volume harvest/ acre (or hectare).
  2. Seed or seedling costs (source?), labour involved (weeding, thinning, etc.), market value (grocery or farmers market).
  3. Pests, diseases or problems with this crop 

With Young (in 115), we will focus on consumption and waste connected to food. From Unnatural Law: Rethinking Canadian Environmental Law and Policy By David Richard Boyd:
In Canada, over-consumption is the root cause of our environmental woes. As the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation points out, our “prevailing emphasis on consumption – with high levels of waste, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions – jeopardizes the capacity of natural resources and systems to support future generations.” Consumption in this context refers not only to the energy and resources consumed by individual Canadians but encompasses the use of energy and resources by the entire industrial economy. Most Canadians see only the tip of the iceberg of the resources consumed to supply the goods and services required by current lifestyles. We are largely blind to the industrial activities that consume vast amounts of resources and cause extensive environmental damage.

 We'll try to look at the problem of overproduction of food in the developed world and food waste.






We'll try to answer the following:

  1. What are some reasons we have so much food waste in Canada? Take a look at your own food waste at home and explain some of the reasons for the problem. 
  2. Explain how food waste is found all along the production line from seed to table. How can we reduce the amount of food waste in our own homes? 
  3.  Are aesthetics important to you when you buy and eat produce? Do you ever eat fruit or vegetables with blemishes or bruises on them? Would it bother you if a banana had a different curvature or if a zucchini had a slight bulge in the middle of its body? 
  4. Should supermarkets have a separate dumpster for wasted food for people to better access?
  5. Why is it important to know where your food comes from? 
  6. Why do we have expiry dates on our food? Have you ever eaten something past its due date? 
  7. Why isn’t more food donated or used in a more constructive way? What needs to change?







A Block Criminology - Remember I want you to track your consumption of media for one day. Yesterday I asked you to estimate how much time of the day you think you consume and interact with media. So for you...at the end of each chunk of time (6 am to 9 am; 9 am to 3 pm; 3 pm to 6 pm; 6 pm to midnight; and if necessary midnight to sleepy time) that you are awake for one day I'd like you to write down what media format you interacted with for that time and guesstimate how much time you interacted with it. I know that you are a generation of multi-taskers (and that you are interacting with this blog right now) so try to be as honest as you can about what you consume/interact with.

So, today we'll try to understand how media reports crime and try to take a theoretical perspective on what we've viewed so far in the course. What crimes the media choose to cover and how they cover those crimes can influence the public’s perception of crime. Editors and assignment editors make complex decisions about what crime stories they will cover (or not) and what the headline will be. Journalists and reporters, in partnership with their assignment desks and producers decide what information about those crimes they will include or leave out, what experts they may go to for input, what quotes from that expert they will include, and where in the story these facts and quotes appear.


The way in which the news is brought, the frame in which the news is presented, is also a choice made by journalists. So, a frame refers to the way media and media gatekeepers organize and present the events and issues they cover, and the way audiences interpret what they are provided. Frames influence the perception of the news of the audience, this form of agenda-setting not only tells what to think about, but also how to think about it, so the media can't tell us what to think but it can tell us what to think about:



We'll conclude the day by watching the 48 Hours Mystery episode on the Highway of Tears. From CBS:

Since 1969, at least 18 women have gone missing or have been murdered along Canada's infamous Highway 16. Locals call it "The Highway of Tears." The Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Highway of Tears task force, Project E-PANA, consists of 13 homicide investigations and five missing peoples investigations. 
So we'll watch the episode and then and compare it to other forms of coverage (On the blog below...Vice, Al Jazeera, or How Stuff Works or the CBC's Missing and Murdered website). You have some questions you need to work on (Monday's blog):
  1. What main story do you think Investigative Reporters Bob Friel and Peter Van Zant wanted to tell? How can you infer that? How much of the episode focused on the actual missing women from the Highway of Tears?
  2. Why did the show focus on Madison Scott first, Loren Leslie next and then the victims along the Highway of Tears afterwards? 
  3. What audience do reality crime shows appeal to & why do you think so (think demographics - age or gender or social class or occupation - and Psychographics - personal attitudes and values like security or status or caring or exploration/growth) What can Uses and Gratification Theory do to help explain the audience for True Crime stories? What techniques did the editors and storytellers of the 48 Hours Mystery show use to get you invested in the story of the episode?
  4. What "values" does the 48 Hours Mystery on the Highway of Tears communicate to its audience? Why do you think the producers and editors framed the story the way that they did?
Should this have been the documentary?

For some more recent coverage check out the CBC Virtual Reality documentary on Ramona Wilson and the Highway of Tears...
 

or Vice TV's Searchers: The Highway of Tears


or Al Jazeera...


or How Stuff Works on the Highway of Tears


or if you get VICELAND as a television channel there is a great show called WOMAN and there is an episode on murdered and missing Aboriginal women; here's a preview:

Highway of Tears from Natanael Johansson on Vimeo.

And of course don't forget the REDress project

Some websites to help with your questions:
Washington Post (article) "My Favorite Murder’ and the growing acceptance of true-crime entertainment" and the My Favorite Murder Instagram site
Entertainment Weekly (article) "Confessions of a Court TV Addict"
New York Times (article) "Is True Crime as Entertainment Morally Defensible?"
Globe and Mail (article) "Our addiction to true crime has a human cost"
CBS News This morning (article) "Why women are fueling the popularity of true crime podcasts"
The Guardian (article) "Serial thrillers: why true crime is popular culture's most wanted"
Quartz (article) How “true crime” went from guilty pleasure to high culture
The Atlantic (article) The New True Crime
Vulture (article) "The Ethical Dilemma of Highbrow True Crime"...from the article
Network news magazine shows like Dateline and 48 Hours are somber and melodramatic, often literally starting voice-overs on their true-crime episodes with variations of “it was a dark and stormy night.” They trade in archetypes — the perfect father, the sweet girl with big dreams, the divorcee looking for a second chance — and stick to a predetermined narrative of the case they’re focusing on, unconcerned about accusations of bias. They are sentimental and yet utterly graphic, clinical in their depiction of brutal crimes.
Consuming Television Crime Drama: A Uses and Gratifications Approach
 
Posted by Geo Teacher at 9:19 PM

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