ethics – dangermouse.net

Boredom

Today I wrote up my next critical and ethical thinking class, on the topic of Boredom. And this evening ran the first three classes. I think this is a good topic – defined as one where I have plenty of questions and they’re open-ended ones that get the kids talking and discussing reasons rather than just giving short answers. Samples:

Is boredom the same as having nothing to do? Is being busy the same thing as not being bored?
Why do you think some people get bored more easily than others?
Do you think people in the past (before phones, TV, or video games) were more bored or less bored than we are today?
Is boredom the fault of the person being bored? Or is it just something that happens to them?
Can boredom ever be useful?
Do you think animals get bored in the same way as humans?
What if, in the future, robots or AIs get bored?

I also did a science class and an essay writing class with two individual students. And in between I took some time to go for a walk outside, in the warm weather. It’s a nice change from the winter cold, but it feels too early in spring for weather this warm already.

Desert island books

This morning the builder who does jobs around the apartment block came in to inspect our window sills. They’ve been water damaged over the years, being made of wood, and we discovered they can be replaced at the expense of the collective building maintenance fund, rather than us individually, so we’re going to have them replaced. The guy came in to confirm the damage and measure up the windows for new ones. We want the work completed before we get the place repainted at the end of October.

I had two individual classes today, one for the student doing basic science. We did a precipitation experiment, using epsom salts and washing soda, and went over states of matter and how they relate to molecular structure. The second one was essay writing, where the student and I went through a sample essay he wrote on zoo animals.

Then this evening I had three classes on the new critical thinking topic: Stranded on a Desert Island. One question I ask is the classic “What one book would you want with you?” Most of the kids opted for a survival manual, very practically. But I had one class where the answers were as follows:

A survival manual
Little Women
A big book, to use as a raft
Robinson Crusoe

I asked the last kid if he didn’t think Robinson Crusoe would be a bit depressing to read if stranded yourself, and he said no, it would be inspiring. Well, maybe, I guess.

A lesson on post-scarcity economies

Because I was busy with other things yesterday, I put off preparing my new critical thinking topic for the week to today. I had to do it in time for classes this evening, so I worked up a lesson plan on the topic of post-scarcity economy. I set it up by talking about how the prices of technology like TVs and computers has fallen enormously since their introduction. Televisions in particular I was a bit surprised to discover have fallen to about just 1% of their value when they were first invented in the 1930s, taking into account inflation. I ask the kids what if this trend continues and in the future TVs and computers become so cheap you could buy them for less than a dollar? Or even that they might be given away for free.

Then I follow up with getting them to imagine this applies to all products. Anything a person might need or conceivably want is super cheap, either free or effectively free. We discuss what a world like this would be like to live in. What people would do, if they didn’t need jobs to make money? Would there be more or less arts and science? Would it be a better or worse world than we have now?

I ran the first three classes tonight and it was really fascinating. Opinions of the kids ranged from “this will never be possible” to “this could happen within 30 years”. And from “it would be a utopia, everyone happy, doing the things they enjoy” to “it would be a nightmare, everyone lazy and nobody doing anything intellectual”. It’s hard to recall a more polarising topic that I’ve done. So it’s a good one!

It was warmish again today, but we had a heavy black sky roll in over lunch time, and I got caught in some light rain with Scully while out for a walk. It didn’t rain much though, and the sun came out again later in the afternoon.

On the problems I mentioned yesterday: I tried PayPal again today and this time I tried transferring an amount below what I discovered to be a single-transaction limit, and it worked. I only found this limit with a Google search – I couldn’t find any mention of it on PayPal’s user help pages. It’s definitely lower than amounts I’ve transferred successfully in the past, so it seems PayPal has introduced this limit without telling anyone (or me at least). Anyway, one problem solved.

The other one, backing up my wife’s new MacBook, I haven’t solved yet, but I did find this StackExchange post about what sounds like the same problem, with two different possible solutions. I’ll try them later when I have some time.

For relaxation I’ve started watching Project UFO on Netflix. It’s a four-part series which is sort of a Polish X-Files/Chernobyl mash-up set in the 1980s. Very Cold War Soviet-style vibe, with dry humour and UFO hunting. I’m very interested to see where it’s going and how it ends.

Next three weeks class planning

Today I spent most of the day planning out critical/ethical thinking classes. I had to write up a detailed lesson plan for the new week’s topic, which is “Names of Things”. And when I started that I realised I had no topics lined up in advance for the next weeks. I usually have 4 weeks of topics outlined ahead of time so I can have them posted on Outschool to give parents an advance look at the next few weeks. But I’d run them down to zero, so I had to spend time coming up with new lesson ideas and listing some questions, which will later be expanded into full lesson plans at the appropriate week.

I came up with ideas for topics on:

Mistakes — fairly straightforward
The End of Poverty — or post-scarcity economy; what would a world be like where everything was so cheap to make that there was no point charging money for it?
Stranded on a Desert Island — how to survive alone, what would you do, how to organise a stranded group, etc.

I think they should all be interesting. I didn’t have much time for anything else. Except I took Scully for a walk at lunch time, and went to the cafe that I tried for the first time recently. hey had a chipotle chicken burrito on the specials menu so I tried that. It was good, but I should have considered that it might have avocado in it – not my favourite ingredient.

More rain, getting out in between

The rainy weather continued for the sixth straight day, with intermittent heavy showers. But today was a bit warmer than the past few days, so it didn’t feel nearly as bad. And the breaks between showers allowed some activity.

I went for a 5k run, leaving as a shower was tailing off. It picked up and rained heavily again for a couple of minutes as I was doing my warm-up walk to my starting spot. But by the time I began my run the rain had stopped, and it didn’t rain for the entire run, which was good. But when I was back close to home and doing my post-run stretches in the park the rain started up again, and was getting heavy by the time I dashed home a couple of minutes later. But it was good to get the exercise in.

I jumped straight in the shower, and also took the opportunity to clean the shower with disinfectant and scrub the surfaces clean of soap scum. A task which is okay in warmer weather but not fun in the cold.

At lunch time my wife and I took Scully for a walk and to get some lunch at a cafe. We left right after another rain shower and walked to the cafe without getting wet, except for a few drips falling from trees. I haven’t been to this cafe before, and I tried their hot roast chicken sandwich on Turkish bread, which was really good. While we were eating, the rain returned and was really heavy for a few minutes. But it stopped again before we left, and we managed to walk home again dry. Then within 10 minutes after we got home, it was pouring again.

This has been the pattern all day. It’s now late evening and we just had another heavy downpour, that lasted a few minutes. Thankfully the rain should ease up tomorrow and there may be only light falls the next few days.

In one of my critical thinking/ethics classes tonight I had a scenario on sharing:

A park has 3 picnic tables. A family arrives and spreads out across all 3, even though they could fit on 2. Later another family arrives and could fit one 1 table, so they ask the first family to move over onto 2 to free up the other one for them.
Should the first family move over, or do they have precedence on all 3 tables because they got there first?

One kid was sort of looking to one side of his video as I asked for his answer. He said, “My mother wants to know if the families know each other, because you shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

Back into routine, I think

Today was fairly unremarkable. I slept okay and got up at a normal time, so I think I’ve finally conquered the jetlag.

I did ethics classes. Following yesterday’s comment, I switched my “believable” prediction from an eclipse to a sunrise, but still some of the kids expressed doubts that such a thing could reasonably be predicted. I’m at a bit of a loss for coming up with something that I can ask the kids “is this a reasonable prediction” and just have them say yes.

I took Scully on a long walk, down to the harbour shore. On the way I got a sweet treat from the new cafe, which I think is now better than the old Grumpy Baker. They had a hazelnut slice which I got and it was delicious: a thick biscuit base, with a kind of hazelnut cream on top, topped by a thin layer of chocolate with crunchy hazelnut pieces in it.

I spent time this afternoon writing and rewriting a new Darths & Droids strip. I had a complete version before realising something which made me have to scrap the entire thing and start from scratch. That’s how it goes sometimes. And the scrapped version I thought was really good, but alas unusable. I might save it for later behind-the-scenes bonus material.

Two steps forward

I think I’ve broken the jetlag, finally. I had a good sleep last night, and slept in a bit in the morning, which has allowed me to catch up a bit and not feel so tired.

I did a 5k run to keep up with exercise. And after lunch went to pick up Scully from my wife’s work and walk her home. My morning went pretty quickly. I made cauliflower and pumpkin soup for dinner – something that can keep hot on the stove for my wife when she gets home (while I’m in the middle of my evening Zoom classes), and then I can eat after I’ve finished.

One problem I’ve discovered with my current critical thinking topic on Predictions is that I wrote a question about astronomers predicting an eclipse, asking the kids if this sort of prediction could be believed. I expected them to say yes, and then I could follow-up with: Why is it believable? But… so far most of the kids have said that you probably can’t believe a prediction of an eclipse by scientists.

I’m wondering what’s going on. One of my friends suggested that they aren’t old enough to know or understand the steps that go into predicting an eclipse, and have a learnt skepticism for most things as a side effect of their other education (as most of these kids are pretty smart for their age). I may have to replace the question with something more believable. Like astronomers predicting what time the sun will rise tomorrow.

In other news, I kind of want to watch KPop Demon Hunters now, after one of the kids talked about it.

One step back

My recovery from jetlag took a slight backwards step after the previous night’s good sleep. I did sleep more than I have been for the past week, but woke up a few times and tossed and turned a bit, but did eventually drift back off. But I felt much better during the day today; I didn’t get a strong tired spell mid-afternoon. So hopefully things are rejigging into place.

I worked on my new week’s ethics lesson plan. This week we’re going to discuss predictions, ranging from fortune tellers, to weather forecasts, to eclipses. Thinking about how reliable different sorts of predictions are and why, and how you can tell the difference. And the importance of predictions in everyday life, for example: Will that car hit me if I cross the road now? Where is the ball going and where should I run to kick it? How long is my homework going to take to finish? What is my chess opponent going to do? Should I take an umbrella today?

In other teaching news, I got contacted by CSIRO about hooking up with a new partner school for their STEM Professionals in Schools programme. The teacher at the school I visited a few times last year lost contact and apparently left the programme, so I was waiting for them to find me another nearby school to go to. They’ve partnered me up with Wenona, a girls’ high school not far from home, a little closer than Loreto actually. I’ve reached out to the contact teacher there by email, and hopefully will get a response soon and set up a meeting.

Scully and I went on a couple of walks. Returning from the second one, we bumped int our new neighbours in the hallway. They’ve had workers in today installing new timber flooring. They asked me about the locations of the gas meters, since they have a natural gas company rep coming tomorrow to read the meters prior to initiating a new account for them. And they said the renovation work should be completed by Friday, and they are moving in on Saturday. It’s a youngish couple, maybe late 20s or early 30s. They also said hi to Scully, though they weren’t super enthusiastic dog-lover racing over to skritch her. Though it might have been the fact they were both holding large boxes of renovation material.

For dinner I made cauliflower steaks, which are all the rage in vegetarian circles at the moment. Simple sliced a cauliflower into thick slabs, roasted it in olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper until it was going crispy, and served it with a tahini and lemon sauce and a side salad. Very delicious.

European sketches scanned

Today I worked on my new ethics class for the new week, on the topic of Junk Food. I have some interesting questions to get the kids to think about what junk food is, such as whether a single small piece of chocolate counts as junk food, or only if you have a lot of it. How much junk food is okay to eat and how much is too much? Why do companies sell food they know is unhealthy, and should there be rules or laws to restrict junk food sales or advertising? Who should be responsible for getting people to eat healthily?

I also worked on a new Darths & Droids strip. I need to get ahead and build up a buffer again, after exhausting the one I’d built up for my trip.

And I completed touching up the scans I did of all my sketches from Europe. I filled my book of 60 pages, so there are quite a few. Here are some that I like:

Bonvivant Cocktail Bistro in Berlin, where we had that marvellous vegetarian 5-course meal:

The Astronomical Clock Tower and Old Town Square in Prague:

The Graben square in Vienna:

Buda Castle, in Budapest:

The steps we had to climb to reach Bratislava Castle, in Bratislava:

The view over Salzburg from Salzburg Castle:

And the Karsltor gate in Munich:

If you want to see all 60 sketches, I’ve put them in this album on Flickr.

This evening I did my first class on the Junk Food topic, which went okay. I had a scratchy throat at the beginning and for a while I thought I might have to stop the class because I couldn’t talk any more, but it seemed to get better as I went on. I’ve been sneezing a lot and having a stuffy nose the past few days, which I’m not sure if it’s a cold or just being run down from the jet lag and lack of sleep. Hopefully I’ll sleep better tonight and recover quickly.

After the class I made a couscous salad with beetroot, cucumber, feta, and walnuts for dinner. Very quick and easy, after I chopped and boiled the beetroot earlier in the afternoon.

The time zone shuffle

One thing I’ve had to deal with a lot more than I expected on Outschool is parents signing up for classes in the wrong time zones. I do most of my classes in the evenings, which corresponds to the period between about midnight and 6am in American time zones. I also do a few classes in the mornings, which are good for American time zones, as they correspond to late afternoon or early evening over there.

So my morning classes are mostly enrolled with American students (with a couple in Canada and currently one in Colombia). The evening classes are good for East Asian time zones (corresponding to afternoon or early evening there) or Europe (mid-morning there), but obviously terrible for America.

However, many times I’ve had parents in the USA enrol students into my evening classes. I keep having to communicate with them and point out that they’ve enrolled their kid in a class that begins at 2am or 3am in their time zone, explaining that I’m in Australia and so most of my classes are in the middle of the night for them. The usual response is that they just assumed it was 2 or 3pm. Outschool does time zone calculations and displays quite clearly when classes start in the parents’ local time (they have to set their time zone when opening an account). I have to assume that either they’re not paying attention to the obvious am/pm indicator, or that they are seeing the “am” and then assuming it must be wrong and must actually be pm.

As I said, I’ve had to deal with several cases of this, but I felt compelled to write about it today because I had one last week, and then this morning I had someone else (in the Arizona time zone) enrol their kid in a class with a suitable time (4pm), but then write to me, having changed their mind, and request a transfer into a class beginning at midnight.

This is a good example of a situation where using a 24-hour clock would be immensely useful, to avoid people making the 12-hour mistake. (I myself was guilty of this once many years ago, showing up at San Francisco Airport for a flight home 12 hours early. Thankfully it wasn’t 12 hours late!)

In other activity today, I did a run, for the first time since tripping and injuring myself on Sunday. I was aiming for 5k, but stopped at the halfway mark as I was feeling a bit sore and didn’t want to cause any additional issues.

I also worked on Darths & Droids a bit, starting to get a buffer ahead for after I get back from my Europe trip. I looked up the weather in Berlin, and it looks like being 32°C on Monday, when my meetings start. And my immediate thought was how lovely that will be compared to the cold weather we’re having here at the moment.