ethics – Page 5 – dangermouse.net

Fajitas Tuesday

Today I worked on my lesson plan for this week’s new ethics topic: Noise. With questions like:

What should you do if neighbours are being noisy when you need to study or sleep?
Is it okay to have an occasional loud party, as long as you don’t do it too often?
Can even soft sounds be annoying sometimes?
How important do you think it is to get away from noise and have some peace and quiet?
Should there be more quiet places in busy areas?
Should concerts be softer to protect people’s hearing?
Should electric cars make sound so people can hear them coming? Or is it better that we use the new technology to reduce traffic noise?

That done, I took Scully yup to the shops and got some sushi rolls for lunch. It had rained—again—overnight, but was clearing up as we went out and the sun came out in the afternoon. I noticed a lot of the footpaths are green with moss again, like they were a year ago when we were having ridiculous amounts of rain. There are also an awful lot of mushrooms sprouting from the bases of trees and garden mulch areas around the street trees.

This afternoon I spent some time sorting through Magic: the Gathering cards, trying to collect loose cards and the remains of decks into piles of specific sets so that I can offer them for sale on eBay as coherent lots. I discovered a couple of preconstructed Commander 2013 decks, which I barely ever played with. My friends and I preferred booster drafts and didn’t really get into playing Commander. So I confirmed that these decks still had all of the cards present and stuck them on eBay (Power Hungry deck, Eternal Bargain deck). These items join three lots of old sealed booster packs that I listed yesterday (Throne of Eldraine, Core Set 2020, and 6 mixed boosters going back to Ravnica block). In the next week I’ll start listing lots of loose cards from specific expansion sets, starting with the more modern ones.

In other gaming news, I got an email saying that backer surveys are ready for Goodman Games’s Original Adventures Reincarnated #8: Grimtooth’s Old School Traps. When I backed this, I chose the D&D 5E version of the book, but I’ve since re-evaluated and would prefer the Dungeon Crawl Classics version now. So I sent Goodman an email and asked if my pledge could be changed. Hopefully I’ll hear back in the positive.

For dinner tonight I made vegetable fajitas. Fried up some onions, garlic, julienned carrots, sliced broccolini, cauliflower, and mushroom, seasoned with paprika, oregano, cumin, cloves, cinnamon, chilli, salt, and lemon juice. Served with warm tortillas.

New content today:

A make-up class, a make-up sale

This morning at 10am I had a make-up ethics class, replacing one that is normally scheduled on Fridays, but which I had to postpone this week due to the clash with the Standards Australia meeting I had then. The class normally had three kids in it, but two of them couldn’t make the shifted time today, so it was just me and one student. Thankfully it’s a good student who gives in-depth answers, so we didn’t run out of material to talk about.

And also this morning I sold an eBay item. This was a sealed booster box of Magic: the Gathering cards that I put up for auction a few weeks ago. It originally went for a final bid of $150, but the winning bidder never paid for it. I offered it to the second highest bidder, but they never replied to my offer. So last weekend I reposted it as a new auction. And this morning it sold for $180! So I ended up making an extra $30 due to the non-payment shenanigans.

The good thing this time was the buyer contacted me straight away and asked to do a local pickup as he also lives in Sydney. When I confirmed that we could meet tonight to hand over the cards, he paid via eBay immediately. And after my last class tonight I walked over to the meeting spot I’d designated, at the nearest train station, and he was waiting there. So the transaction is finalised and overall I’m happy how it turned out.

Before lunch I did another 5k run. I was convinced during the run that I was going faster than yesterday, and I pushed hard to sprint the last 100 metres or so in an attempt to beat yesterday’s time by as much as I could. When I checked my time… it was 1 second slower than yesterday!! I have no idea how that happened. Do people really have no accurate idea how fast they’re running while doing it?

Finally, Stage 23 of the Lego D&D set. This adds walls, windows, and roofy bits around part of the wizard’s workshop.

New content today:

Tradition, innovation, and standards

This morning I wrote up my lesson plan for the new week’s ethics class on the topic of “Tradition vs Innovation”. I decided to include the story about how Kodak in the 1970s and 80s suppressed digital camera technology by buying up patents and not developing the tech themselves, in order to keep their photographic film business profitable. Of course eventually other companies developed alternative digital technology and the genie got let out of the bottle, resulting in a rapid uptake of digital cameras and the collapse of the film market, and ultimately the bankruptcy of Kodak. I use this to frame several questions about the conflict between old methods and new innovations.

In one of my classes tonight on this topic, I had a new student, from Saudi Arabia, my first from that country. That brings my total list of students’ countries to 54. Unfortunately he was a bit too young for the class, and I think overwhelmed by the discussion. I had to advise his parent to remove him from the class afterwards, and maybe try again in a year or so.

I also worked today on writing up a form to propose a new revision of an ISO photography standard to be adopted as an Australian standard. I was supposed to do this asap after the last meeting we had, but hadn’t got around to it. Since our next Australian committee meeting is on Friday, I thought I better do it!

Today was again very cold, but the rain held off for the most part during daylight. Scully and I did cop a light sprinkle while out for a long lunchtime walk. But the clouds opened up around sunset and now as I type this it’s pouring down out there. Not looking forward to taking Scully out for her pre-bedtime toilet.

New content today:

The cold and wet continues

Sometimes I think the weather is all I talk about here. I suppose it’s something that can be different every day, whereas some days what I actually do is just routine, without anything especially unusual or interesting. Anyway, yeah, the predicted cold and wet spell has well and truly begun. it wasn’t actually raining all day and we had a few bursts of sunshine, but it was pretty cold.

I walked Scully up to the pie shop for lunch. Normally I sit in the nearby park and eat Scully roam around a bit while I eat, but today she headed off towards the path home and wouldn’t come back. Clearly she’d had enough of the cold weather! So we walked back and I ate while we walked.

I have 6 ethics classes today, but several of them were low in numbers, because a lot of the kids are taking summer breaks in the northern hemisphere. And the morning classes are mostly US kids, and several of those have things going on this week with the 4th of July coming up. So some classes where I normally have 3 or 4 kids were down to one student.

Stage 20 of the Lego D&D set! his adds a rear wall to the first floor, and a rustic staircase that leads up to another floor above.

Hidden under the stairs is a spider!

And a rear view, showing an upper level door. I’m not sure yet why it makes sense to have a door here. Maybe it connects with the upper level of the castle section previously built.

New content today:

Prep and Prejudice

This morning I worked on a lesson plan for the coming week of ethics classes. This week’s topic will be “Prejudice”. I did this topic back in 2021, when I had almost entirely different students. I still have one student who was doing my class back then, so he’s done this topic before. But I figured I could reuse a bit of the material and revamp it with some new stuff to keep it fresh. So I mashed together the old lesson and some new scenarios and questions.

Then I did forward planning for future topics, adding one on “Psychic Policing”. This is inspired by Minority Report and similar ideas. If precognition was real and proven, should we arrest people before they commit crimes? I did a brief outline of some sample questions to post on my class’s upcoming topics list. I’ll write up the lesson in detail in a few weeks when it cycles to the top of the list.

This afternoon I struggled with writer’s block on some Darths & Droids scripts. I’m trying hard to get ahead, but sometimes a single joke takes 3 or 4 hours to write, and there’s just nothing you can do about it but knock your head against a wall.

For Scully’s lunchtime walk we went up the hill to the shops, because I needed to restock some medicinal products from the pharmacy. And we went on another walk with my wife when she got home from work. I considered going for a run, but by the time I could set out the sun was already going down and it would have been dark by the time I finished. Not to mention really cold. I guess I’ll have to leave running again until the weekend.

New content today:

An uncategorisable movie?

A while back I heard about a new Korean movie called Parasite, which was described as a horror movie, and was extremely well received and getting excellent reviews. I like horror movies, so this sounded good, and I made a mental note to check it out if I got the opportunity.

It arrived on Netflix a while back, and I had a look at the information page. Which described it as a comedy, and a story about a family who scam their way into living in the home of a wealthy family. This didn’t sound like a horror movie at all! So I ignored it for a bit.

But recently some other things pushed the film back into my consciousness, including a passing mention somewhere that described it as a thriller. Now my curiosity was up. I Googled “Parasite movie” and tried to avoid anything that would spoil too much of the plot. One of the top suggested searches was “Is Parasite a horror movie?” I clicked that, and some of the summarised hits on the search page were even more curious. It seems that some people do describe Parasite as a horror movie, while others don’t, and there is some confusion among people asking as to whether it is a horror movie or not.

Well, this was all intriguing enough that I decided to start watching the movie last night. I got a bit over half way through before it got too late, and plan to watch the second half tonight. So far…. well, it’s entertaining enough and in fact I would describe it as a comedy more than anything else. There’s certainly no horror or even thriller aspect at all yet. Now I am wondering if there’s some bizarre twist in the second half that will come out of left field that turns the whole movie so far into some sort of psychological horror.

I’m avoiding any spoilers now, but I’ll be watching the second half right after writing this, so I’ll soon know what the story is. I just find it really bizarre how all over the place are the attempts at genre classification for this film.

In other news, today was, again, cold and rainy. There was a break in the rain after lunch and I took Scully for a walk, but luckily took an umbrella because the heavens opened again while we were out. I now have two pairs of shoes and socks that are so wet that I don’t want to put them on again. And they’re taking forever to dry because of the humidity.

My wife was out for most of the day at a felt-making class. She came home with a felt scarf with interesting patterns all over it. I used the time to work on some more Darths & Droids, trying to get ahead on the writing.

And then had three more ethics classes this evening, on the topic of “The Countryside”. I was asking the kids about the differences between life in the countryside, compared to the city. Usual answers were things about less shops, less people, less pollution, more nature, etc. Tonight one kid was from Korea and he said in the city, after school you have to go to Math Camp, or if you’re an adult you have to go to your second or third job. But in the countryside there won’t be any after-school tutoring, and you might just have one job as a farmer!

New content today:

Packing eBay sales

All of the Magic: the Gathering and Netrunner sealed packs I listed on eBay last week sold today. So I spent a fair bit of time dealing with buyer queries, sending invoices, recalculating combined postage costs for multiple lots that single buyers won, and then after a few of them paid for their purchases I had to package them up and take them to the post office for mailing. I sent off three packages today, and I have five more to go either tomorrow or whenever the buyer pays for them. Three have already paid, but after my last trip to the post office (I went twice), so they’ll have to be mailed tomorrow. Hopefully the other two buyers will pay overnight too.

On my lunchtime trip I stopped off at Moon Phase to try another one of their baked treats. It was after lunchtime by the time I got there, and they’d sold out of a lot of their selection. I chose a coconut brioche, which was very nice.

In between all the packing and posting, I worked on my new critical thinking/ethics class for tomorrow. The topic is “The Countryside”, as in rural areas. With questions for the kids to think about on topics such as: What different opportunities are there for people in cities versus rural areas? What are the benefits and difficulties of living in rural areas, compared to cities? Why do young rural people tend to move to cities, is this a problem, and can anything be done about it?

Tomorrow morning I also have my next visit to Loreto school for mentoring with my students. Last week’s session was cancelled because of a school event, and this was the earliest we could reschedule it.

Another photo, taken yesterday. There’s a lot of roadworks and construction in the neighbourhood at the moment, and I saw this wonderfully helpful sign for pedestrians to avoid the work in progress.

I can only guess that you’re meant to walk under the sign.

New content today:

More record rainfall?

It’s pouring down outside as I type this tonight. There are flash flood warnings in place for parts of the state and regular flood warnings for some of the rivers around Sydney. I’ve heard some pretty loud thunder too, as I was teaching my ethics classes a little earlier. With this current rain system, we have a good chance of passing Sydney’s annual average rainfall figure, less than 6 months into the year. This is already the second wettest year on record up to today’s date, beaten only by 2022, which was the overall wettest year on record.

In the classes tonight, talking about dilemmas, I asked the kids who they could ask for help to make a tough decision. I was expecting answers like friends and family, maybe teachers, and hoping for broader answers including professionals (e.g. doctors, scientists, lawyers), or even potentially asking people on the Internet (e.g. StackExchange or even reddit). I was surprised though when one kid answered: ChatGPT. And then in the next class another kid suggested ChatGPT as well!

I did manage to get to the post office this morning before the rain closed in around lunchtime. I found a new place to get croissants, not too far away, and bought a plain butter croissant for a snack, and a chocolate hazelnut one for dessert tonight. I never would have found this place without accidentally stumbling on a recommendation online, and it was well worth the visit. I’ll have to take my wife there one day soon to show her my discovery.

New content today:

Talking about dilemmas

This morning I worked on my lesson plan for the new week’s ethics classes. The new topic is “Dilemmas”. I start by giving the kids some interesting dilemmas to think about and try to decide what they would do, and then go into questions such as:

What are some reasons why a decision might be difficult to make?
How do you feel when you have to make a difficult choice?
What are some ways you can make it easier to decide when you’re faced with a tough dilemma?
Who can you ask when you’re having trouble making a decision? How can they help you?
Is it okay to ask strangers on the Internet for advice on making a difficult decision that is really about your own life?
If you have to make a difficult decision, should you feel guilty about it?

I took Scully for a walk to the post office again, to mail some more Magic cards to buyers. And then this afternoon I planned ahead for a future ethics class, scheduling in a week for a discussion on the topic of “Tradition versus Innovation”, which will be in the first week of July.

The weather is cold and grey and miserable this week, but at least it isn’t raining.

For dinner tonight we just made our own things, since I had classes from 5-8pm. I made myself some grilled cheese toasties, with cheddar and mozzarella, and sweet zucchini pickles which my wife got from the local farmer’s market. I topped one with some mango chutney, and the second with sriracha sauce for extra flavours. With home made sourdough bread they were pretty good.

New content today:

Games class and marking

This morning I wrote my class for this week’s critical and ethical thinking topic on games. I have all new questions from the games topic I ran last year, asking the kids what actually is a game, and what aspects of games can make them fun for people to play. And what can be good or bad about games.

I also started marking the university Data Engineering course final reports and videos. I need to get this finished by Friday. Hopefully I’ll have it done tomorrow.

New content today: