ethics – dangermouse.net

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.

Contemplating old-fashioned things

Today I worked on my next critical/ethical thinking topic: Old-Fashioned. I’m going to be talking to the kids about the way we did things back when I was their age, and how things have changed in various ways. And get them to think about the advantages and disadvantages of old-fashioned ways of doing things. Such as buying your music on physical media. Watching broadcast TV and seeing the same shows as your friends at the same time. Kids playing outdoors unsupervised for hours as long as they were home before sunset. Taking photos on film. Stuff like that. Hopefully the topic should be fun!

I took Scully for a couple of walks today. I had to go up to a pharmacy to get some things for my impending trip to Europe, and also some more bandages to use on my hands and knees after my fall on Sunday. I’m changing them daily and going through a fair few. But the wounds look to be healing.

I worked on comics today, writing enough Irregular Webcomic! rerun annotations to buffer over my entire trip. I also did some other trip preparation stuff related to my Photography Standards work, downloading a bunch of documents for the meeting in Berlin next week.

For dinner my wife made pizza dough, since I couldn’t really knead the dough with my bandaged hands, then I finished it off with the toppings and put it in the oven.

Designing a government

Tuesday means working on a new lesson plan for my ethics classes. This week I’m going to be teaching kids how to design a government!

The premise at the start of the class will be: Imagine we’re setting up a new country. We have land and a few million people, but we don’t have a government yet. It’s our job to decide what the government will be like.

We’ll go through various stages of selecting what sort of leader we want, how we’ll decide who the leader is, what powers should they have. And then think about how to make laws. Figure out what jobs the government should or should not do – should it provide health care, for example, or education, or food and water, Internet, should it regulate business, support the arts, etc. And then we’ll think about how we can ensure that the people in the government don’t become corrupt or authoritarian. This should be plenty for kids to chew on and debate about in class!

I took Scully for a walk at lunch, and again with my wife after she got home from work. It was very cold again today.

And I’m starting to plan for Friday night’s upcoming Dungeons & Dragons session. I’m adding a new rule, co-opted from Dungeon Crawl Classics (with some modifications), which is highly regarded by many gaming groups: Mighty Deeds of Arms.

When fighters or dwarves attack, they may declare a Mighty Deed of Arms, an additional effect of their attack. e.g. disarming opponent, pushing opponent back, tripping opponent over, grappling, headbutting, blinding attack (picking up and throwing sand, or aiming weapon at eyes), etc., or whatever cool manoeuvre you can think of, like swinging on a chandelier and kicking opponent in the face. You have a Deed Die (d4 at 1st level, increasing in size with levels). Roll your Deed Die with your attack die. If your attack hits and the Deed Die is 4 or more, your mighty deed succeeds! Score normal damage, plus a bonus effect depending on your declaration and the Deed Die result (better results for scores above 4).

The idea is to give fighter types something cool and interesting to do that scales up with level. (We’re playing 1981 Basic/Expert rules, not 5th edition, so we don’t have all the ridiculous bells and whistles of that edition.) Hopefully it’ll be fun!

Coldest day of the year so far

It was all about the weather today. A cold front with rain came in overnight, blowing cold air from the south. Sydney’s maximum temperature today was 14.5°C at 1:30am, but really that barely counts, as it never rose above 13.4°C during daylight, and for most of the day it was more like 12°C or less. This was accompanied by intermittent cold rain, and steady winds putting the “feels like” temperature more like 7°C. But even the middle of the night 14.5°C made this easily the coldest day of the year, by a good two degrees.

I only went outside very briefly to pick Scully up (in the car) from my wife’s work at lunchtime, and to take her out for a toilet around 5pm. It was freezing and awful outside. Even Scully wanted to get back inside as quickly as possible.

This morning I wrote my critical thinking/ethics class for this week. I normally do it on Tuesday, but I did my university marking yesterday because my Tuesday evening class currently has no kids enrolled, giving me an extra day to write my lesson plan. The topic is “Science Fiction”, and I thought this would be very interesting and have some cool questions. But in my first class tonight I realised that a lot of the questions are very yes/no type, with not much opportunity for interesting reasoning or discussion. So I modified them a bit in the subsequent lessons, which went better.

The apartment next door to ours has been listed for sale since February, and they finally had an auction on Saturday, where it sold. When the real estate agency had moved display furniture into the place for photography and in-person inspections, they ignored the sign in the lift that says “don’t block the doors with furniture”, and broke the lift. After the sale on the weekend, today they moved the furniture back out… and broke the lift again. So I had to go up and down the fire stairs with Scully several times, instead of using the lift.

Final word for today: Brrrr!! 🌬️🌧️🥶