D Block Geography 12 - Today we begin watching Twister; one of the greatest yet dumbest disaster movies of the 1990's. Your job is to identify as many errors in meteorology as possible AND you'll need to figure out which character is MOST like Mr. Young.
Some errors are easy - NO! It is not possible to survive an EF5 tornado strike above ground tethered to drainage pipes. Some are more subtle - the Fujita scale was introduced in 1971 and in the 1969 flashback scene (at the beginning of the film) the weather reporter on the television (portrayed by Oklahoma City KWTV 9 meteorologist Gary England) said an F5 tornado was about to strike...two years before the scale was introduced by Dr. Ted Fujita! Remember I'm a weather nerd.
Now as to characters...as I said above there are bits of Mr. Young in most of the characters in the movie your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to figure out who Mr. Young is most like. The mission is not impossible so is it Dr. Jo Harding? Bill Harding? Dustin 'Dusty' Davis? Robert 'Rabbit' Nurick? Jason 'Preacher' Rowe? No, Mr. Young is not like Dr. Melissa Reeves or Dr. Jonas Miller so let's get that over with now :) Let's have some fun with the movie
Alan Ruck is Robert Nurick "Rabbit" (and Ferris Bueller's friend Cameron too!)
Bill Paxton is Bill Harding "the Extreme"
Helen Hunt is Dr. Jo Harding
Philip Seymour Hoffman is Dustin Davis "Dusty"
C Block Crime, Media and Society 12 - 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
primetime 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
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 two questions for you to answer:
- 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?
- 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?
A Block Social Studies 10 - This past week, we've looked at the crazy stupid idea of building a railway from coast to coast (A Mari Usque ad Mare). You looked at Andrew Onderdonk and the railway through BC, John A. Macdonald's "National Policy" and his connection between Sir Hugh Allan's Pacific Railway Company and the Pacific Scandal leading to Macdonald's defeat in 1873. You looked at George Stephen & Donald A. Smith's Pacific Railway Company which hired William Van Horne and Andrew Onderdonk to build the railway. Today I'll have you work on questions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 from page 202 of the Horizons text.
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