Tag: ethics

More busy, but stuff achieved

I think this is just generally a busy week. I’m squeezing in some of my usual activities, and today managed to bake bread, go for a 2.5k run, make some comics, cook vegetable soup for dinner, do some planning for my upcoming trip to Europe, walk Scully a bit, run three online ethics classes, and do my face-to-face Primary Ethics class at the local school.

The face-to-face class this morning was the final one in the topic on Challenging Authority, and it concentrated on the story of Rosa Parks, which some of the children were familiar with. (I should point out that American history is not really taught in Australian schools – they get Australian history instead, naturally. So I didn’t really expect any of the kids to have heard of Rosa Parks.) It was a very interesting discussion, and most of the kids were clearly very engaged with the topic. I continue to be impressed (and amazed) at how well behaved my class is this year. In my 6 years of teaching this, I’d say this is probably the best behaved class I’ve ever had.

The apple pie I made the other is mostly eaten, and is very nice both cold, and also reheated.

Oh, if you weren’t aware, there’s a federal election coming up here in Australia on Saturday. We’re being bombarded with campaign advertising and it’s starting to get annoying, but it’ll all be over soon.

New content today:

Super incredibly busy day

So busy I don’t really have time to post much. I spent a lot of time looking for hotels and train trips and making bookings, for our trip to Europe at the end of June. That meant a squeeze on my time for everything else I wanted to get done today, which also included writing my new ethics class for this week, and teaching the first three classes. We’re doing “Buying & Selling part 2” this week – a follow-up to a class I did last year, which had so much material that a second class could be done with all new material. I in fact wrote close to two lesson’s worth of new stuff, so I’ve split some out into a part 3 which I can do later in a few weeks time.

And there was a bunch of necessary housecleaning and dog walking and stuff. And I’m tired and need to relax this evening…

New content today:

Thinking about conspiracy theories

The class I run on Outschool is actually “Critical and Ethical Thinking”, so it’s not always about purely ethics. This weeks topic is more of a critical thinking exercise, as we discuss conspiracy theories. I wrote the lesson today, ready for the first few classes this evening. We talk about Flat Earthers, moon landing denial, and anti-vaxxers. That gave me enough material for plenty of questions to ask the kids, exploring things like:

  • How likely is it that all of the scientists who study the Earth accidentally got the shape wrong?
  • Does it make any sense at all that scientists and governments would deliberately lie to everyone about the shape of the Earth?
  • What do you think would make some people believe NASA didn’t really land on the moon?
  • If someone believes the Earth is flat, does that cause any harm?
  • Should we try to show conspiracy theorists they are wrong, or is it a waste of time?

Apart from writing the lesson and running 3 classes, I spent time working on comics, and walking up to the shops with Scully to get some lunch and buy some things.

And now I’m going to get an earlier night after staying up last night for that meeting that never happened.

New content today:

Ethics off the rails!

I did an online ethics class today that went completely off the rails. There was a new kid, from England, who was super talkative and kept bringing up extra points to every answer – often stuff that I’d planned to ask everyone later in the lesson. Rather than talk about farming, we ended up in a huge digression about whether we should force everyone to become vegetarians or not. Given the others were also keen to butt in on the topic and offer their own opinions, I just let it meander of its own accord for most of the lesson. It felt totally out of control and my lesson script went out the window, but it was fun, and we were still talking about interesting and ethical questions, so it was good in the end.

My sore back stiffened up again overnight, and it was painful turning over during the night. But again, it’s improved a lot during today. I got a better sleep, but hopefully tonight it won’t be as painful during the night.

I didn’t have my face-to-face ethics class at the school today, because New South Wales teachers held a strike today, seeking better pay and working conditions. They fully deserve it.

New content today:

And going to the physio

I had my physiotherapist appointment this morning for my sore back. It stiffened up again overnight, but wasn’t nearly as bad as the night before. I got a much better sleep and managed to get myself out of bed in the morning without too much pain.

The physio worked on my back for about 45 minutes and I felt significantly better after he’d loosened up the muscles and released tensions and whatever it is he actually does. I’ve been to this guy a few times over many years, and found him to be really good. Usually one visit is enough to make the movement freer and less painful, and then it improves rapidly over the next day or two. He also gave me a bunch of exercises to do some years ago, which I now do regularly to maintain my core strength and recover myself from minor strains.

Back home, I wrote my next week’s ethics lesson, on farming this time. I have a series of questions for the kids on the ethics of various types of crop agriculture, then we move on to farming animals, either for meat, or other products such as milk and eggs. In one of the classes there was a wide range of opinions from the kids, including “it’s fine to farm animals, because we need the meat”, “farming animals is cruel and we shouldn’t do it; we should hunt wild animals instead”, and “people should eat less meat so we don’t have to farm so many animals”. I suggested to the second kid we could eat less meat, but he said no, no, keep eating the same amount of meat, just hunt it all rather than farm it. I guess he hadn’t thought through the logistics of having to hunt for the amount of meat that we currently consume.

At lunch I took Scully for a walk up to the local shops and I had some Vietnamese fried rice from a “new” restaurant. I say “new” because I haven’t tried eating there before – it actually opened about 3 years ago, replacing a previous Cuban place that we quite liked.

New content today:

Ethics of gambling

I began the ethics of gambling lessons today. It was interesting. One class had pretty much all of the four students agreed on the premise that gambling is inherently bad, while another class mostly agreed that gambling is just a thing that people do, and it’s only a problem if people do it too much or take advantage of people by gambling unfairly.

One student told an amusing anecdote about his father, who used to work in a casino. I shouldn’t say more for privacy reasons, but it had the other students giggling.

New content today:

Anzac long weekend Monday

Today was the Anzac Day public holiday, although it didn’t make much difference to my day, as I had ethics classes online as usual. We finished up the topic on contact with extraterrestrial life. I started writing the lesson for tomorrow’s new topic, which is gambling. I mentioned during a class this morning that next week’s topic is gambling, and we’ll be talking about betting on sports—

At which point a student interrupted and said, “That’s not gambling! Gambling is like blackjack and stuff!”

So… maybe it’ll be an interesting topic for some of the kids. I guess they don’t have a lot of experience with actual gambling at their age.

There was a bit of housecleaning work and cooking and baking bread today, and some work on the secret project, and walking Scully, and that was about it.

New content today:

More ethics than ever before

I had a special request from a parent for an introductory 1-on-1 ethics class for her daughter today before putting her into a group class, so I scheduled a new class, meaning I had 4 classes today. Previously I’ve never had more than 3 on one day. So it was a bit exhausting, and ate up much of the day, as they were scattered around with not much of a gap between any of them in which to do other things.

I did manage time at lunch to go for a walk with my wife and Scully, down to the waterside park and back. It looked fine when we set out, but we got a heavy shower while out. it was pretty heavy rain, and strong wind so it came in at a steep angle, but it didn’t last too long, and was fine again with the sun coming out by the time we got back.

I cooked up another batch of bunya nuts and made pesto, which I’m saving for dinner with pasta on the weekend, but I used part of it as a sauce on burgers for tonight’s dinner. They were beetroot and black bean burger patties from the supermarket.

Tonight is virtual board games night. We’re currently in the middle of a game of El Grande. I’m winning, but I’m not sure it’ll last.

Edit: And I won the game of El Grande! Wow, I hardly ever win in games against my friends…

New content today:

New ethics topic: Emotions

It’s Tuesday, which means the start of a new topic for the week of online ethics classes. This week we’re discussing emotions. I wrote the lesson this afternoon, and this evening I taught the first three classes. It seems this one is more of a critical thinking exercise than an ethical one, as there was barely any disagreement or alternative opinions among the students to most of the questions. Instead of exploring diverse opinions, we’re instead teasing out an understanding of various emotions and why we feel them, using critical thinking skills. Which is part of the class scope and description, so that’s all good.

I got up early this morning and went for my run first thing. This was after doing yesterday’s run in the evening after dark. It was the first time I’d done a run at night time, and it was a little disconcerting going at pace along streets and footpaths, with dark shadows everywhere and not having a clear view of the footing. So yesterday’s run was slow compared to times I’ve been doing recently. (Although still good compared to what I was doing a couple of months ago!)

I forgot to mention it here, but on Saturday Strava informed me that during that day’s 2.5k run I clocked my fastest 1k split ever. I ran the first kilometre in 3:53, which Strava told me was my fastest 1k ever. (At least, since I’ve been using Strava – although given I’ve never really been much for running, it may well be the fastest 1k I’ve ever run in my life.) I was pretty pleased with that, since I’ve been aiming at breaking 4 minutes for 1k for a while.

At lunch today I took Scully for a walk up to the shops and got some sushi rolls for lunch. I chose to walk a little further to another small park to eat, rather than the small square in the middle of the shops. The latter is convenient and a nice place to sit and watch people go by, but the grass there has all died, and it’s also haunted by posses of magpies who have become increasingly aggressive over the past few years. They will literally steal food from your hands while you’re trying to eat. This other park we went to is also very small, but nicely grassy, and blissfully empty of magpies, because it’s more out of the way and less trafficked. So I enjoyed my sushi rolls in peace, and then we walked home in the lovely warm sunshine.

This sunny weather won’t last. It’s supposed to close in tomorrow, and Thursday is going to be extremely wet, with 100 mm of rain and flash flood warnings. It remains to be seen how possible it will be to travel into the university for my lecture class on that night…

New content today:

Double writing day

It was a very busy day today. I had to write the ethics lesson for this week, on trial by media. Then I had to write a report on the ISO Photography standards meeting I attended back in February, to send to Standards Australia in time for our follow-up national meeting on this Friday. I should have done it a bit earlier, but I’ve been so busy that I put it off to this week. Those two tasks took a good chunk of the day. And then tonight I had three classes to teach, the last ending at 10pm! Thankfully from next week all the classes will be an hour earlier, since we go off daylight saving this weekend. (And I’m leaving the classes unchanged for most of the students who live outside Australia, so they’ll be an hour earlier by my clock.)

I also took Scully out for a drive at lunch time, because it was raining and I didn’t fancy a long walk in the rain. We went to the Italian bakery and I got some treats for me and my wife for dessert tonight, as well as lunch.

We had close to 60 mm of rain overnight, but it eased off during the day, being light for most of the day. Although this evening as I type it’s pouring down again. I added up the rainfall so far since the beginning of the year, and we’re not over the average annual rainfall for Sydney yet, but we’re getting very close.

New content today: