Category: Doco

Thursday 30th
by Kimliatach

F had another day care cold to start the week, cleared now. But we were all in sleep debt for a few days.

I’ve been fidgeting with the printer at school and pottering about trying to get the class aquaponics system up and running.

I’ve been holding off on delivering a lesson on cyclones as part of our natural disasters topic, Tuesday provided the perfect opportunity. I hope things ae calming down for everyone up north now. ABC had a shot of a street close to our previous residence in Brisbane deep under water so while we are grateful to not personally be going through that again.

Holidays are still a week away for us here in NSW and there is as always much to be done. We will be taking a trip to Canberra to rendezvous with my mother and step father for the long weekend. Hot tips for attractions are appreciated.

It is hard to muster energy for a good rant on school nights, but my goodness our pollies deserve more than a tongue lashing at the moment. I’ll leave off with Chomsky instead.

and a piece on the the noble Bin Chicken to lift you spirits

Chomsky day:

Cursed images
by Kimliatach

Daily

Kindergarten is hard. I am honestly not sure I could take a whole year with a kindergarten class. They are such exhaustingly high maintenance. Give me upper primary any day. For now I have two days of freedom; creativity to unleash and garden work aplenty.

I was simply too shattered to post by the time the boys went down last night. watched some TV and hit the hay early.

Media

‘Before the Flood‘ is well timed and pertinent. There are some really very good interviews and some excellent visual storytelling. Good but not great as it is a bit too americocentric for broader international appeal. In trying very hard to not be alarmist it waters down its impact some too.

Watched Ep2 of season 3 ‘Black Mirror‘. I would be happy to slam the season over a couple of nights but N finds them all so deeply uncomfortable that we have to pace them out. Also gave an episode of ‘Billions‘ ago as N had watched some on a plane and liked it.

Episode 1 of S3 Black Mirror is still repeating on me. All in all it was a better episode than the second. One of the best to date in fact, rare insofar as it left the viewer with some catharsis. A deeply challenging look at reviewing culture. Rating people has been tried and fortunately roundly rejected a number of times so far. But, well ebay, AirBnB, Uber and a thousand other apps all encourage the daily ranking of both participants in every transaction. Will it ever get as bad as depicted in Black Mirror?

Hopefully never.

 

Found this collection of fantastically weird disquieting and disturbing images. Some I have seen before, some that will haunt my subconscious for years to come.

Enjoy, I love it.

 

 

Before The Flood
by Kimliatach

Daily

For a blessing today a day without a call out, spent productively at home with family. Mostly cleaning and fighting back the tide of disorder and filth that threatens to overrun our house in a tornado of play every day.

Tonight I am watching ‘Before The Flood‘ The Di Caprio climate film.

So far so good. Painting on my primary screen.

 

Found a lovely toy in this thread.

digitaldoily

https://codymoose.github.io/web-applications/DigitalDoily/index.html

Racing Extinction
by Kimliatach

Watched ‘Racing Extinction‘ this evening.

It is a confronting and heart wrenching film. It is good for all that. Watch it.

Stylistically I had some issues with it, but I honestly don’t think I am the target audience. I’ve studied ecology and I know just how far up the proverbial creek we are if the Phytoplankton food chain collapses. That this threat is a real profound and present danger is something I and millions upon millions of others around the world have been doing our best to ignore for decades. I can’t ignore it anymore.

The pressure is on I am feeling a serious need to alter parts of my lifestyle and even more seriously parts of my pedagogy. I know about meat and methane and I am only now trying to cut our household consumption significantly. I know about flights and transport and as I have mentioned previously I plan to physically offset our adventures by planting and caring for the appropriate quantity of trees. I don’t think I can continue to sugar coat, brush off or play down the seriousness of climate change to school children. I am not saying here that I have in any way ever really sugar coated it. I’ve shown whole grades of year six students significant portions of  ‘There is no tomorrow‘ for goodness sake. Just that I have always been acutely aware that I don’t want to be sending little zealous climate nazis home to hassle their parents saying ‘Mr Lang says climate change is going to end the world’. What I am going to say instead I am putting some thought into because it can’t just be an impassioned rant. I want to communicate some of the urgency just how dangerous the game we have been playing is. But I do not want to give children nightmares or foster powerlessness, apathy and indifference.

 

The election is called and the prime minister didn’t even mention climate in his announcement speech.

Vote Compass is up.

I maintain that Vote compass should be as much a part of the Australian democratic tradition as the sausage sizzle. The latter of which I will miss by voting postal this year. This also marks only 7 days left to register to vote.

 Vote Compass 2016No surprises in my results.