Room 611: Thursday, June 20. 2024

Today's schedule is DCBA

Penultimate day of classes for the 2023-2024 school year...tick tick tick (clock's ticking on your assignments)

D Block Physical Geography - Did you know that the City of Vancouver aims to become fully reliant on renewable energy by 2050, coupled with an 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions? Check out the Renewable City Strategy here (check out the City of Courtenay's Climate Action Plan here. We even have a renewable energy company here "Terratek"). Today we'll be back in the learning commons to work on your BC renewable energy activity. Remember you need to examine all five of the most common renewable energy sources (geothermal, wind, biomass, marine hydrokinetic, and solar) specifically identifying:

Give a definition and an explanation of how it is produced (with an example from somewhere in the world)
Detail three advantages and three disadvantages of using the source
Assess the potential for developing that source of energy here in BC
Choose the best option out of the ones they listed to develop here in BC (think cost to make and transmit and return on investment)…

Remember you must look at all five renewables and provide sound reasoning as to why you believe your top choice should be chosen as an energy project here in BC, Look at yesterday's blog post for links, also check out :

The Orkney Islands: The energy revolution starts here: The remote islands of Orkney have become renewable energy pioneers. What can the rest of the world learn from their success?

AND
Canada’s Renewable Power Landscape 2016 – Energy Market Analysis British Columbia

The provincial government’s CleanBC plan calls for a massive program of electrification of homes, industry and transportation with aggressive greenhouse-gas reduction targets set for 2030. By 2040, every car sold in B.C. is to be zero emission, while every home is to be net-zero energy ready by 2032.

More links:
EnergyBC
Exploring Canada’s Energy Future: Student Resources

Clean Energy BC (Click on The Industry tab)

British Columbia Clean and Renewable Energy

British Columbia Clean Electricity Snapshot

Delivering Affordable and Clean Power to Meet BC’s Needs

I'm not trying to drive you to an answer, I did have this posted on April 24th

Also FYI...how does an electricity generation plant utilize the tides to produce electricity? Are there any sites in North America? Where are they?" check out the following...

Marine Renewables Canada Tidal Power

Market Snapshot: Canadian tidal power capacity

US Energy Information Administration Tidal Power

I have also posted this

For help with the geothermal energy check out:
USGS Other Energy Sources (Geothermal)
Canadian Geothermal Energy Association
US Energy Information Agency Energy Kids Geothermal

Now for Biomass/Bioenergy

Wood Based Biomass in British Columbia and its Potential for New Electricity Generation (BC Hydro)

For Solar potential in BC check out Solar Power British Columbia (2023 Guide)

And from BC Hydro

C Block Human Geography - We're off to the Learning Commons so you may work on your your term/semester long Urbanization SimCity Buildit project. Remember, for this project, I needed you to build a city and as you played, keep a track of what you did, why you did it and what the results were. You will need to make a presentation (either video, podcast, prezi, webpage or a straight up written report) with photos and a written a narrative (minimum 500 words) describing your city’s key features and design attributes.

The purpose of the City Narrative is to give me a quick overview of the future city’s infrastructure and its public services. Think of the City Narrative as a marketing piece that answers:

What basic information should people know about your city (such as the name, population, age, and location)?
What unique features does your city offer that make it unique?
Why would someone want to live in your city? Are there any special benefits to living in your city?
How did you lay out your city? Why did you do it in that manner?
What kinds of industrial, commercial, and residential areas did you build? How did you decide where build them?
What services (police, fire, medical, education) does your city provide? Where did you place them and why so?
What is important to know about your city’s physical components (landmarks, parks, and recreation areas) and infrastructure (transportation, energy, waste disposal, pollution control)?
How do you provide power to all areas of your city? Do you have renewable energy sources?
How does your city dispose of waste and recycle?
How do you manage pollution (water and air) in your city?
What types of transportation are available to move citizens and goods throughout your city?

AND most importantly a summation

What did you learn about urban planning and city design (leadership, resource allocation, population satisfaction, trade, taxation and alternative sources of funding, city planning, services, and perception of politicians)?

To help:

"Why Are Urban Areas Expanding"?

According to the peripheral model, an urban area consists of an inner city surrounded by large suburban residential and business areas tied together by a beltway or ring road. Around the beltway are nodes of consumer and business services called edge cities. The edge cities originated as suburban residences for people who worked in the central cities and then shopping malls were built near the residents. Because Census Metropolitan Areas in Canada are composed of many independent suburbs (edge cities) and central cities as well as counties, local governments are fragmented and less able to deal with regional problems. In British Columbia, Metro Vancouver (formerly the Greater Vancouver Regional District) is a partnership of 21 municipalities (Vancouver, New Wesminister, Surrey, Richmond, Maple Ridge, Burnaby, Coquitlam, etc.…) and is a political body and corporate entity operating under provincial legislation as a ‘regional district’ and ‘greater boards’ that deliver regional services, policy and political leadership on behalf of 23 members. North American cities once followed a density gradient where density decreased consistently with increasing distance from the city center. Suburbanization has flattened the density gradient as more and more people have moved out of the city center and suburbs have become uniformly dense. The U.S. and Canadian suburbs are characterized by sprawl, which is a progressive spread of development over the landscape. The U.S. and Canadian suburbs sprawl across the landscape because of a desire for single-family housing surrounded by private land. European cities restrict the availability of land for new development to preserve the greenbelts, which are rings of open green space surrounding cities.

Zoning ordinances in the early decades of the twentieth century encouraged spatial segregation. They prevented the mixing of land uses within the same district. Single-family houses, apartments, industry, and commerce were kept apart because the location of one activity near another was considered unhealthy and inefficient. Legal devices, such as requiring each house to sit on a large lot and the prohibition of apartments, prevent low-income families from living in many suburbs. The suburbs created segregated land uses, with residential areas separate from retail and manufacturing activities, with the consequence of requiring automobile ownership for all trips. Retailing has been increasingly concentrated in planned suburban shopping malls. Suburbanization is made possible by high levels of automobile ownership and now requires most U.S. and Canadian residents to drive daily to work and other trips. Population growth has led to traffic congestion and inefficient use of land for roads and parking. An average city allocates about one-fourth of its land to roads and parking lots.

Try to understand urban areas, census metropolitan areas, annexation, sub-urbanization, sprawl, smart growth and transportation into and out of city cores. From the Conversation Boomburbs: The rapid rise of Toronto’s northern suburbs

B Block Legal Studies - We're off to the Learning Commons/Library to continue working on your civil litigation project. This project involves letters to potential clients. You can find tips on plain language legal writing from the Canadian Bar Association. Plain language legal writing refers to legal writing that is well thought-out, well organized, and understandable to the client without interpretation: the language is clear, the legal concepts are explained and the technical terms are defined. One last resource (for the Big Sound / Concert case) BC Law Society Claims for Lawyer Negligence

A Block Criminology - Your question this week is:

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? Use examples from the Casey Anthony trial to explain your ideas. How does the concept of Schadenfreude and Cancel Culture apply to the Casey Anthony trial? Did the media shame, call out, or try to cancel Casey Anthony? How would low self-esteem make someone more likely to seek out schadenfreude-filled crime media? Is Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat) good or bad for criminal trials and the news/media coverage of them? Use examples from the Casey Anthony trial and from either Monica Lewinsky's story or those in the 15 Minutes of Shame video (Matt Colvin, Emmanuel Cafferty, or Laura Krolczyk) to explain your ideas

You should consider the following when answering your question:

Think about who reports information and how that information is used.
Think about your privacy and how you manage your on-line presence.
Think about how social media can be introduced as evidence at trials.
Think about how social media can be used for reporting during trials.
Do viewer/user comments about media coverage of a trial provide valuable feedback for discussion or not? Why?
Is public shaming protected by the right to free speech or is this a case where our old norms and principles have simply been exposed as unfit for a new era?

From the Vox article Why we’re relitigating the Casey Anthony case now — and why we shouldn’t

Beyond the familial accusations, however, Casey’s behavior, then and now, makes a compelling argument that not every public scandal needs to be relitigated, nor does every headline-grabbing criminal case need to be perpetually thrust again and again into the public eye. Unfortunately, the death of Caylee Anthony is just one of several high-profile true crime cases that have recently been dragged once again into the spotlight, despite being previously considered resolved. And while some of those cases scream injustice and beg for renewed attention, others — like this one — seem to be less about truth-seeking and more about finding new ways to profit and exploit the popularity of older true crime cases.

Remember 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, the hit of dopamin 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 like minded 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.