A Cup of Tea

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

It's a bad idea to spend $200 on a Satchel Paige jersey, right?

Someone talk me out of this.

[darrelljs]

I just spent $200 on a bottle of scotch. A Satchel Paige jersey is forever.

Darrell

[suboptimal]

I just spent $200 on a bottle of scotch.  A Satchel Paige jersey is forever.

Darrell

Oooh....which scotch did you get?

[Brian Shanahan]

They're following the advice that the HSE(Ireland's health service) is giving them. And the reasoning makes sense too, we don't have the capacity to test the number of people that were coming forward with the looser case definition(despite apparently doing quite well in tests per capita), and a lot of tests were coming back negative. They need to be more efficient with their testing. They still advise everyone with milder symptoms to isolate for 2 weeks. My understanding is this moves us more in line with the WHO's position and if you're going to label something as a mistake it was going with the looser definition in the first place.

I would be quite worried about a politician who didn't find it difficult to shut so much of the country down.

Full disclosure, I'm a bit too left to vote for FF or FG, but I have a lot of respect for them(FG a bit more than FF) and strongly believe that most of them do what they think is best for the majority of people in the country.

My difficulty is that a politician, and a trained doctor, was voicing his difficulty at doing what was clearly the best option for the country. Looks as if there would have only been a slight shift for him to go al Trump or Alexander de Pfeffle (before the English "herd immunity* plan" met contact with the opponent).

When there are a number of choices with at least apparently similar utility, then I expect difficulty in choosing. But when it's a choice between temporarily closing down a chunck of the country (which we did slowly and piecemeal) and "keeping the economy going" by sitting on our hand and making the problems worse, there should be no difficulty at all.

*In reality a let the poor and old die plan.

Why the respect for Fine Gale? They spent the last ten years throwing the nation under a bus just so they wouldn't have to mildly inconvenience a handful of rich people.

[darrelljs]

I just spent $200 on a bottle of scotch.  A Satchel Paige jersey is forever.

Darrell

Oooh....which scotch did you get?

It was a Dalmore cigar blend.  It was okay, a bit bland.  Going to go back to Ardbeg Corryvreckan...I LOVE the smoky peatiness of that bad boy.

Darrell

[The Black Sword]

Why the respect for Fine Gale? They spent the last ten years throwing the nation under a bus just so they wouldn't have to mildly inconvenience a handful of rich people.

Well, just in general my default is to respect most people unless they give me reasons otherwise. I don't think they've given me a reason. I also think being a politician(particularly in government) is a very thankless job, that I wouldn't want to have, you get no credit when things go right and you get all the blame when things go wrong. For sure they get paid a good amount of money for it, but it's still not something I would want to do.

I wouldn't describe their period in government as you do. They took over when the country was in a very bad place. I think they had to make a bunch of tough decisions to help get us out of that. They get a few more respect points from me for that. They have certainly made some mistakes along the way, but I think that's inevitable and I haven't seen any evidence that it was due to some sort of institutional malice. I generally feel they're realistic about what they can achieve and honest with me. 

I would prefer if their policies(particularly lately, where I feel they've had more leeway) focused a bit more on increasing spending over tax cuts. But I think that is just a difference in philosophy and I don't hold it against them. I do think they're trying to do the best thing for the country, they just don't fully agree with me on what it is.

On a semi-related side point about our tax policies. The way the international rules are set up, countries are encouraged to compete against each other with lower tax rates to attract both individuals and companies. As a small country this effects us even more. I think there is a very decent argument that some of our tax policies benefit the country, even though they might seem unfair. I'd love to see these things change, but I think it requires a lot of international co-operation. I don't know whether you subscribe to this view or not. I'm mentioning it because I feel our politicians who advocate most loudly for these changes paint them as very black and white when I think there is a lot nuance to it.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Word finally came from on high, and Korea is moving to online education this semester! We have to start by April 9 in order to meet our mandated amount of school days, and many teachers are now scrambling to put together online classes - myself among them. I'm a bit younger than many of my colleagues, only 30, and I have a bit of experience with online education, having taken some classes myself, but even so, this is a challenge. I've taught lessons here and there, but never a whole class before, and now I have - checks - 8 days. Well, we'll make it work. Other people have way worse experiences right now than I do from the coronavirus - I have to work a bit harder in an unfamiliar field, but others are healthcare workers and scientists working around the clock, others have lost their jobs entirely, and of course some people are fighting for their lives (or have lost, or have family members who have lost that battle).

Always count your blessings, friends. It could always be worse.

[superdeath]

Word finally came from on high, and Korea is moving to online education this semester! We have to start by April 9 in order to meet our mandated amount of school days, and many teachers are now scrambling to put together online classes - myself among them. I'm a bit younger than many of my colleagues, only 30, and I have a bit of experience with online education, having taken some classes myself, but even so, this is a challenge. I've taught lessons here and there, but never a whole class before, and now I have - checks - 8 days. Well, we'll make it work. Other people have way worse experiences right now than I do from the coronavirus - I have to work a bit harder in an unfamiliar field, but others are healthcare workers and scientists working around the clock, others have lost their jobs entirely, and of course some people are fighting for their lives (or have lost, or have family members who have lost that battle).

Always count your blessings, friends. It could always be worse.

"only 30" old fart.


Anyway, Got the news from the post office on whether i get my job back or not/backpay ect. Im going to keep it a surprise unless you want to be emailed a copy of the result. :P

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Round 2 of my interview for returning to America is tomorrow. I got the email today.

Unfortunately, the email was sent last Tuesday, and they told me to prepare a lesson to be turned in at 5:00 pm today. So I've got to scramble to throw that together, WHILE ALSO throwing together lessons for my online classes that I'm actually teaching for real here, which are also due today. And instead here I am - but this helps me focus and think. Writing helps me think.

So here's my plan: The lesson I need to teach is "How did decisions following WWII lead to the Cold War?" Now, the best way to learn something is by teaching it. The second best way is by doing it. So I need to find a way to get the kids to USE the information I give them. Best way to do that...let's see if we can get them to make the same decisions our beloved leaders did in 1945 that let to the Cold War. So let's simulate Yalta and Potsdam.

I shall split the students into 4 groups (average class size at my old MS is 24 students. Splitting 3 ways gives 8 students per group, which is unwieldy. Splitting 4 ways gives a more manageable 6). Each group will get a brief precis on a)what's at stake in the Cold War, b)their nation's goals, c)their nation's fears, and d)their resources. We'll have an American group, a Soviet group, a British group (including the French concerns), and a "neutral nations" group, basically meaning referring to Eastern European nations, Asian countries, and Latin American countries who weren't actually represented at either conference but mostly wanted freedom from the Soviets/British&French/Americans respectively. The kids will study with their group, then send representatives to the central table to hammer out an agreement on what the postwar world will look like, supporting their representative with tag-teaming or passed notes as they will. I'll moderate and facilitate. They have to come to a consensus on key questions like, what do we do with Germany? What happens to Poland and other Soviet-occupied countries? What about Japan's Asian empire? Should we form a United Nations? At the end of the conference, we hold a vote to see who best achieved their goals (I've got procedures to handle this, no worries), and then I debrief on what actually happened.

Wrap up by having the students write what they think is the most important decision made, AND if they agree with it, with reasoning. Use those paragraphs to evaluate how well the lesson went and shape future teaching.

Okay. Let's go do this.

[El Grillo]

Sounds fascinating, what age/grade would this lesson plan be suitable for? I participated in Model United Nations for a couple years in high school, which held similar exercises. I recall that some people were really competitive about drafting their desired resolution but I mostly just liked roleplaying :D Best of luck with the interview!