Tuesday, June 10. 2025

Today's schedule is CDAB

A Block Physical Geography - Today, we'll start with our last unit package...Climate, Climate Change, Overconsumption, Resource Use and Management and we are going to take a look at climatology and climate types on the planet. 

We will make sense of the Koppen climate classification system specifically the following climates: Af, Am, Aw, Cfb, Cfa, Dfb, Dwb, Dfc, Dwc, ET (don't say it!), Bw, and Bs (Many thanks to Michael Ritter for his on line Physical Environment textbook!).  

For help with Köppen - Geiger see:

Blue Planet Biomes - World Climates
Physicalgeography.net - Climate classification

About.com - Koppen chart 

You have three questions to answer:

1. Describe the two ways moisture reaches the humid subtropical climate regions.
2. Describe at least three locations where desert and steppe climates occur on Earth and provide the reasons for their existence in these locations (p. 166-7 Geosystems Core)
3. Describe the five principal components that determine the Earth’s major climate groups (p.154-5 Geosystems Core)

B Block Criminology - Are the voyeurisms of consuming the True Crime genre of media an example of curiosity or exploitation? Does it teach? Does it normalize? Does it Rationalize? Does it Trivialize? Today we'll start the documentary 15 Minutes of Shame, which looks at public shaming in modern day culture. This original documentary film examines social behavior by embedding with individuals from across the U.S. who have been publicly shamed or cyber-harassed – while exploring the bullies, the bystanders, the media, psychologists, politicians and experts in between. Clearly Nancy Grace and her 5 year (still doing it today too) public shaming of Casey Anthony could be seen in a range from free speech/public knowledge to obsessive harassment along with everything in-between. So, we'll watch we'll watch "15 Minutes of Shame"

It’s good to be a conscious media consumer, so to that end, the movie was:

• produced by Six West (a division of A&E Networks with is owned equally by Hearst Communications and Disney General Entertainment Content);
• distributed by HBO Max (owned by Warner Brothers Discovery); 
• produced and directed by Max Joseph. 
• Monica Lewinsky is both the narrator and an executive producer (along with the director Max Joseph and with both Steve Ascher and Kristy Sabat) of the film.

From CNN (which is also owned by Warner Brothers Discovery), "The documentary functions as an unofficial companion to a separate project on which Lewinsky served as a producer, “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” the FX channel (subsidiary of the Disney General Entertainment Content) miniseries that sympathetically looks back at the publicity ordeal she endured during the Clinton impeachment saga". FYI the series is based on Jeffrey Toobin’s book “A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President” and Toobin was a legal commentator on CNN.

So remember from Media Smarts :

1. Media are constructions 

2. Audiences negotiate meaning

3. Media have commercial implications 

4. Media have social and political implications 

5. Each medium has a unique aesthetic form 

We need to think critically about how and why media are made; examining the impact that media have on us and on society; and reflecting on how we use digital and media tools. 

So, what is true crime, in terms of media, why is it produced? How does it get packaged and then what might coverage of true crime media tell us about North American society?

Today's Fit...