Greetings from Cincinnati, OH, home of the 2016 AP Human Geography reading. Over 600 professionals are here to score over 187,000 exams. I’ve been delighted in the past to share the Professional Development activities and newsletters and will continue to do so. This post will be updated throughout the reading (June 2-8).
On occasion, we are reminded of how utterly captivating and gorgeous nature is, its visual poetry surrounds us. It just takes a step back, a shift in perspective, to realize how amazing the constructs of this planet are; it’s a beautiful constant balance between order and entropy. Case in point, what appears to be well-crafted, intricate abstract paintings, or works of art, are in reality, mindblowing aerial images of Iceland.”
Andre Ermolaev, through his photography has captured the beauty of Iceland’s geomorphology. Being on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland has abundant volcanic ash which adds rich color to the fluvial systems.
http://www.fao.org/sofa/gender “The world cannot eliminate hunger without closing the gap between men and women in agriculture. With equal access to productive resources and services, such as land, water and credit, women farmers can produce 20 to 30 percent more food, enough to lift 150 million people out of hunger.”
Gender inequality, especially in rural, less developed part of the world, would lead to some of the fastest developmental improvements for the lives of women, men, children, and families. Women are the backbone of the rural economy, and this single change would lead to countless benefits.
“For generations we vultures, armed with our senses, have fought in silence. We’ve waged a battle against garbage, but now we’re losing that battle. We want to help humans, so we’ve launched a movement to help you detect piles of garbage so that you can take action to eliminate them. Join us in this fight. Vultures Warn, you take action!”
This video is an introduction to a fascinating (Spanish language) website and project that uses GPS-tagged vultures to map out the urban trash hot-spots in Lima, Peru. We look at vultures as the dregs of the food chain and ascribe moral filthiness to the species (just think of any number of movie, literary, and cultural references), but they are simply filling an ecological niche. This mapping project is a way to use vultures nature in a way that allows for humanity to fix our trash production/disposal problems.
The global refugee crisis, political strife and economic dislocation all contributed to a worldwide deterioration of religious freedom in 2015 and an increase in societal intolerance, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.”
This is one of the sad results of the many global conflicts today and increase in reactionary political movements that scapegoat religious minorities. The image above is a map/wordle of the 18th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
An American city stranded at the tip of a Canadian peninsula where strict adherence to the “49th parallel rule” became problematic.
Parag Khanna argues that these five maps are critical to understand the world we live in.
Maps shape how we see the world. But most of the maps hanging on our walls are dangerously incomplete because they emphasize political borders rather than functional connections.
These 5 maps in this article are a sneak peek preview from the new book Connectography by Parag Khanna. These maps all highlight interactions across political borders which is Khanna’s big thesis. For example, the map above emphasizes political, economic, and environmental linkages of NAFTA and minimizes the national divisions.
“If Clinton wins the 19 states (and D.C.) that every Democratic nominee has won from 1992 to 2012, she has 242 electoral votes. Add Florida’s 29 and you get 271. Game over.
The Republican map [is more difficult] — There are 13 states that have gone for the GOP presidential nominee in each of the last six elections. But they only total 102 electorate votes.That means the eventual nominee has to find, at least, 168 more electoral votes to get to 270.
This isn’t just the about the presidential election of 2016, but the demographic configuration of the United States and potential voter base of parties in the future. As American demographics have shifted, the appeal of particular parties as well as their platforms will eventually shift in response. Future party realignments will center on maps and demographics as much as they do policies and platforms.
- Permanent housing
- Sufficient space
- Clean water
- Personal safety
What is a slum? Why do so many people around the world live in slums? What are the largest slums in the world? These are the questions that this video seeks to answer as the TestTube team tackles one of the more pressing issues of confronting urban areas in the developing world.