Tag: ethics

5k, storms, and ethics of time travel

This morning it was time to do another 5k run. I missed the 5k last week, so wanted to make sure I did one this week. I did it at the oval, running laps on flat ground, because last time I did it on the streets and the hills nearly killed me. I recorded a surprisingly good time of 27:49, which was a big improvement on my previous oval run of 29:42. I guess the daily 2.5k runs are really building up my stamina.

I wrote the new ethics class topic for the week. This week we’re doing a fun one before I take a break for Christmas, on the ethics of time travel. And I had the first three classes of kids this evening. The last one was really fun, with the kids laughing at the various hypothetical situations I proposed and their various answers. I proposed the following:

A future version of you appears. They show you a tattoo, and insist that you go out and get it done now. You don’t want a tattoo. But your future self apparently does, and thinks it’s important enough that they have to convince you to do it today. What should you do?

One girl said, “Yeah, that sounds like fun, I always wanted a tattoo!” Another girl said, “If I got a tattoo, I’ve probably turned evil or something, so I’d avoid doing it at all costs.”

And, yes, there was more stormy weather today. We had some moderate rain with a little thunder around 4pm, which cleared up enough for me to take Scully out for a walk without getting too wet. But then after 5pm a bigger and heavier storm rolled in, with some really loud thunder and heavy rain. We may be in for more of the same again tomorrow.

New content today:

Will this rain ever end?

Five days into summer, and the weather today was very wintry. The maximum temperature was only 19.2°C, which would be perfectly normal for the middle of winter. And it was rainy and gloomy. It was similar yesterday, but colder today. And… we have rain forecast every day for the next week too, up to about 75 mm in total. This is a really weird weather pattern for this time of year, certainly under the influence of La Niña. I keep waiting for the day when suddenly the clouds and rain will vanish and the temperatures will soar into the 30s for the remainder of summer, but it shows no signs of happening yet.

My wife had a video thing on today, so I took Scully out for a long walk over lunch time so she could do it without interruptions. We walked out to the new bakery at Naremburn, where I grabbed some lunch – a vegetarian mushroom pie and a custard tart. It rained intermittently and I had to put my umbrella up and down about a dozen times before we got back home again.

This afternoon I worked on writing a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips. I need to get those photographed on Tuesday morning when I have some spare time, so I need to get all the scripts written by then.

Oh, I also took Scully for a short drive over to the hardware store to get some craft supplies for my wife. She’s going to try using some of the leftover scrap material from her dog bandana sewing to make decoupage bangles.

For dinner I was going to make Thai red curry vegetables with rice, but I discovered that we’re almost out of red curry paste, so I switched at the last minute to green curry instead. I wonder if I should add some yellow curry paste to the shopping list as well…

And this evening I had two ethics classes. The topic this week is organ donation, and it’s been a really good topic. There are lots of tricky questions that are obviously getting the kids thinking, and their answers span the range of possibilities, which is always more interesting than when they all agree with one another. There’s a strong divide on the following question:

Imagine someone is in a hospital and desperately needs a heart transplant. A car accident victim is brought in. Doctors try to save them, but unfortunately they die. Their heart could save the person who needs a transplant. If the dead person’s driver’s licence says they do not consent to be an organ donor, should the doctors respect that wish, even if it means letting the heart patient die?

I’m getting roughly half the kids saying that you have to save the heart patient’s life, even if it means disrespecting the dead person’s wishes – because saving a life is imperative and the dead person isn’t going to know anyway. And roughly half the kids saying that you must respect the dead person’s wishes – because it may be really important to them what happens to their body, and why even bother recording a donor status if doctors are going to ignore it anyway? And there are a few other questions that are just as divisive. The good thing is this is exposing the kids to different opinions, as well as the reasons why people hold those opinions (as I get each of them to explain why they answer the way they do). I also get the kids to try to provide reasons supporting the other side of the argument.

New content today:

The sun come out today!

It didn’t rain today, and the sun actually peeked through the heavy cloud for a few minutes. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen sunlight for about a week and a half, at least. I went for a 2.5k run, and took it a bit easier today. Yesterday I really pushed hard to make a good time, so I thought I could ease off a bit today.

I had the last two lessons of the ethics class on introduced species. One of the last questions I’ve been asking in each class is about domestic cats, which are of course introduced species in much of the world. They cause particular problems here in Australia, where cats kill an average of 75 native animals each, every year. Yes, that means for every cat that’s kept indoors and doesn’t kill any, there’s a cat out there killing 150 animals a year. Domestic cats have caused the extinction of at least 22 species of native Australian animals. It’s even worse in New Zealand, where they’ve caused the extinction of over 70 native species. Some councils in New Zealand have considered banning the owning of pet cats. They haven’t enacted this, because there’d be a lot of upset cat owners.

I put the question to my students: should pet cats be banned, if it can save native species from extinction? The response was pretty uniform: no. The all thought that was going too far, that it’s not fair to ask people to give up owning a cat. I reminded them that it would save entire species from extinction. They said it would be nice to do that, but there’s no way a government could ever enforce a ban on owning cats – too many people would just ignore it. I hadn’t really expected the answers to be so uniform to this question.

Because I’ll be busy tomorrow, I worked on the next class for the coming week, with lessons starting on Wednesday. This week the topic is organ donation.

I also took the opportunity today with the lack of rain to take Scully to the dog park this afternoon. In a couple of weeks they’re going to have the traditional dog park Christmas party. I’ve gone to the past few, since we got Scully, and it’s always a fun event, with everyone bringing some food or drink and sharing everything. We get about 20 dogs and their owners.

Oh, and one of our neighbours has decorated the lift and the ground floor entry foyer with Christmas decorations already. I’m not sure which neighbour it is, but we have our suspicions. There’s an entire tree on the ground floor. Fortunately Scully ignores it!

New content today:

Introducing species

The weather today was forecast to be rainy again but the morning seemed dry, so I went out for a run while I could do so without getting wet. It was time for another 5k, and I agonised over whether to do laps of the oval, which is nice and flat, but incredibly boring, or do my street route, which is much more interesting, but also much more hilly. I decided I’d go for interesting, and grit out the hills. Given the humidity (91%), maybe it wasn’t the best choice, because I was struggling by the end.

And then it wasn’t helped by the fact that the footbridge I usually run across to cross the creek in the last few hundred metres was closed for construction work when I got there! I had to take the alternative route which goes down into the gully via a series of steps—about 30 or 40 steps—followed by climbing back up the other side. That slowed me down a lot, but I managed to finish the 5k in 30:15. Phew!

Today I worked on the new ethics class material for the week, on introduced species. Then I ran the class this evening with the first three groups of kids. The kids never fail to surprise, and really keep me on my toes. I’d written a sequence of questions beginning with the idea of culling to control introduced species that have become invasive and are serious pests, destroying native species and costing billions of dollars in crop damage (specifically starlings in North America). I’d kind of assumed that the kids would be okay with controlling the species in this way, and staged my follow-up questions based on that. But I was surprised when two of the kids in the first class said that culling should not be done, because it’s cruel, regardless of the fact that the birds cause immense damage. So I had to think on my feet and restructure the follow-up questions, to avoid it descending into a series of “Same as my previous answer” responses.

The next two classes went a bit more according to plan, but now I have some alternate pathways through the material depending on what responses the kids give to the early questions. I do this a lot with the classes. Usually by the end of the week the sequence of questions is quite different to what I started with, as it evolves every class.

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Chilly and a bit wet

The cool wet week continued on this Monday, but it wasn’t as rainy as yesterday. I had to bake a sourdough loaf this morning so that we had bread, so I didn’t have time to go for a run before my two ethics classes.

That finished off the week of the topic on cancel culture. It was an interesting topic to discuss with the kids, because there was a wide range of opinions about it. Some of them thought it was fine to cancel celebrities who do something offensive, because they’re in the public and eye and need to behave themselves, and if they suffer the consequences then it’s their own fault. While others thought that the public acting as judge, jury, and executioner, potentially ruining someone’s career and life because they said something online, was going way too far. And there were a range of kids in between, thinking it was fair enough for really offensive things, repeated, but not for mildly offensive things, or things that might be one-offs or accidents.

After my classes I had some lunch and then picked up Scully from my wife’s work. I used the afternoon to write annotations for a new week’s worth of Irregular Webcomic! When my wife got home I went for my daily 2.5k run, then came home and made pizza for dinner (I’d made the dough just before my wife got home).

New content today:

Getting stuck into assignment marking

I spent most of Sunday (today) going through the end of course assignments for the university image processing course that I need to mark. I’ve read through four of the reports and watched three of the videos, making notes on them so I can compare then and assign marks uniformly across all the groups. I’m a bit burnt out on image processing and machine learning, but I’ll try to finish them off tomorrow, if I have enough time.

This evening I had two more ethics classes on the topic of extraterrestrial intelligence. Over the week of teaching this topic I’ve added some material about how far away stars are and how it would take any aliens thousands of years to travel to Earth, if they could even do it at all. Because nearly all of the kids’ answers to the various questions are coloured by their intense belief that if aliens knew we were here, they’d immediately come over and destroy us. I mention that it’s kind of illogical to do that, and many people say that advanced civilisations will probably be friendly, and repeat that it’d take them thousands of years to get here… but most of the kids basically respond with, “Yeah… but no, it’s still a terrible idea to let them know we’re here.”

They’re also strongly of the opinion that if/when news of receiving an alien radio signal is made public, the overwhelming reaction of humanity will be panic. I’m guessing their thoughts on this topic are strongly affected by exposure to TV and movies, and that they haven’t matured enough in this area to form more thoughtful opinions yet, because it’s not a topic that’s as commonly discussed in serious conversation as a lot of the other topics we cover.

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Raining, running, and ruminating

It’s been raining most of the day, and heavily at times, with thunder and lightning. But there was a break in the morning, perfectly timed for me to go out on a run. I decided it was time to do another 5k effort, and I also decided that the oval track is so boring that I preferred to do my street route, even though it is quite hilly. I managed to complete the distance just a few seconds slower than last week’s 5k on the oval, so that was pleasing, if exhausting. And I just got home as it started to rain again, so the timing was ideal.

For lunch I drove over to a friend’s place, where he made us some food, and we played a couple of board games: 7 Wonders Duel, and Wingspan. I managed to win both games, which was pleasing. I really wasn’t sure about Wingspan until the final points tally.

At home I wrote the class plan for this week’s new ethics topic, on extraterrestrial intelligence. It’s basically exploring the questions arising out of the prospect of receiving a radio message from an alien civilisation. There’s plenty in just that to last for a full class. I’ll probably do another class later on about different scenarios such as physical contact. I ran the first three classes tonight, and it was very interesting because I got a very wide range of responses from the students. That’s always a lot more fun that everyone agreeing.

New content today:

Considering online product reviews

Last week, the day after my 3.2k run I was very stiff and sore, with my legs protesting at the exercise after so long without doing any. Today, after yesterday’s 5k run, I felt pretty good. Good enough to go for another run! I didn’t go as far this time though, just doing 2.4k along the first and last part of my street route, cutting out the middle section where the nastiest hills are. In previous bouts of running, I really only did one run a week, but I figure this time I’m going to try to at least a little bit on most days if I can. Maybe that will get me into a habit that sticks better.

The work part of the day was writing the new week’s online ethics class. This week the topic is online product reviews. I want to get the kids thinking about whether they are good things or not, how reliable and trustworthy they might or might not be, and how people should evaluate them. I’m also raising the whole question of whether a company like Google should be allowed to host reviews of unaffiliated businesses, and whether they should be held liable for false negative reviews that might adversely affect another business.

This evening I taught the class with my first three sessions of students. And… I don’t think it went down as well as I’d hoped. Maybe the topic is not that exciting or interesting for the kids. Ah well… I guess they can’t all be hits. Hopefully it will improve – it usually does as I adapt dynamically to what the students say during the classes as the week progresses.

In the afternoon I made a couple of Darths & Droids strips. I’m way behind on buffers for both this and Irregular Webcomic! due to how busy I’ve been recently, and need to spend time rebuilding completed work into the future. However my plan for tomorrow is to work on the curriculum planning for the revised Data Engineering course that I’m working on for next semester at the university. I really need to get cracking on that!

New content today:

A long haul day

It was a busy day today. After the last week of ISO meetings and having deadlines for other things, I had two things I needed to get done today.

Firstly I started by making some Irregular Webcomic! strips, since without new ones the buffer would have run out today. I didn’t have time to write and photograph my usual batch of over 20 strips in one go, so I had to just write three strips to last until the end of this week, photograph them, assemble them, and write annotations for them. Fortunately I didn’t suffer any writers block and managed to get the whole lot done within a couple of hours. But that will only last until the weekend, and I’ll need to get another batch going in time for Monday.

After picking up Scully from my wife’s work at lunchtime, I brought her home via the slopey park again, where we did some ball fetching and lying in the grass for a bit. She was very good for me this afternoon when we finally got home, just sleeping in her dog bed until my wife arrived home from work.

This gave me time to work on the next thing – my ethics lesson for the new week of classes this evening. This week we’re talking about enhancing sports performance, in particular the ethics of performance enhancing drugs. We get there via a route starting with high altitude training – in which athletes live in mountains for several weeks while training, to increase their red blood cell count, which gives them an advantage when they return to lower altitudes. It’s a common (and legal) method that athletes have been using for many years. Then we go to low-oxygen tents, which simulate altitude training by let the athlete sleep in a low oxygen environment – it’s cheaper and easier and produces the same effect: higher red blood cell count. And it’s also legal in sports training.

Then we go onto blood doping – removing blood from an athlete, then a few weeks later transfusing the red cells back into the same athlete. This produces the same effect—increased blood cell count—just without the low-oxygen training. The result is exactly the same, but I ask the kids if it’s still acceptable.

And then we hit erythropoietin, or EPO. An artificial copy of a protein secreted by human kidneys, that regulates red blood cell production. If you inject it, you end up with more red blood cells. Again, the same result as altitude training, but by a different method. And the kids need to decide if this is okay or not. All the way along this path they need to justify their answers with explanations.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, where I don’t have any hard deadlines for things I need to get done. I might even relax a little…

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Back to the office!

My wife that is, not me. Her office is opening up again after the long COVID lockdown here in Sydney, and she went in to work this morning for a full day (she did a single afternoon last week in preparation). And she took Scully back into the office for the first time in months. So I had the entire morning to myself!

I had the last class of the week on the ethics topic of Democracy. It was a bit tough because three of the students in this class are a bit slow to collect their thoughts and express them, while one of the kids is a fast thinker, so he gets a bit impatient. Fortunately though, the USA goes off daylight saving in a couple of weeks, which will split this class into two, with the US students moving an hour later, while the ones in Asia stay at the same time.

At lunch time I went to my wife’s office (a short walk away, which is good because she doesn’t need to use public transport while COVID is still going around) to pick up Scully and take her home for the afternoon. Scully likes being in the office with my wife, but she gets a bit stir crazy being in there all day, so I took her for a long walk before heading home.

We walked past Naremburn, a suburb about 2.5 km away that I walk to sometimes. There used to be a small bakery here, which made some okay meat pies and some good sweet treats, but it closed down maybe a year or so ago, leaving nothing much of interest in the small cluster of shops for me. (There’s a couple of cafes, but I don’t drink coffee. There’s a brewpub, but it’s not exactly the sort of place you can grab a bite to eat while walking home – though it is nice to sit in for a long lunch. And there’s a hairdresser and a dog groomer and a clothing shop.) Well, I was pleasantly surprised to discover today that a brand new bakery has opened in the same place as the old bakery! I peeked through the door and it looks like they have some nice things, so maybe later this week I’ll walk over here again before I eat lunch and I’ll have the chance to try some things.

This afternoon I tried to write some comics, but had a bad case of writer’s block, so didn’t get much done. And tonight was the second last tutorial session for the UTS image processing course. I had to help a few groups of students with their project work – several of them are discovering that the grand ambitions they had with their project specification reports are not so easy to turn into practice. I reassured them that the important thing was to adapt and learn, and report on the fact that they had to try something else because their initial plans didn’t work out. I think all the students I’m working with are pretty competent and doing decent work, so I hope that’s reflected in their final reports.

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