9/30/13 - CIA Answers

Today in human geo class we went over our CIA world book answers. That took up all class because our class likes to discuss things a lot. We also talked about why Mr. Schick included some of the questions that he did. Mostly it was because they all had some relation to the United States. We were told to do the scavenger hunt only using the CIA world fact book website. So then we will get used to navigating our way around the CIA website for further research in the future. We also learned that our next class, which is tomorrow, we will learn about the video called “God Grew Tired of Us”. And honestly, I have no idea what to expect. Only that it will something to do with the world and everything that consists in it. Tomorrow’s class will be interesting considering we will watch a video and I don’t know what to expect.

9/25/13; CIA Scavenger Hunt

1. What is the population of the United States? 316,668,567

2. What are the five largest countries in the world, by population? China, India, U.S, Indonesia, Brazil

3. What is the population of Pakistan? 193,238,868

4. What kind of government does the United States have?Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition

5. What is the unemployment rate in Zimbabwe? 95%

6. What is the largest country in the world by area? Russia

7. What country has the third greatest number of airports? Mexico

8. What country has the greatest number of exports? China

9. What country exports more oil than any other? Saudi Arabia

10. What country imports more oil than any other? U.S

11. What country has the second largest proved reserves of crude oil in the world? Venezuela  

12. Can women serve in combat roles in China’s military? Yes

13. What is GDP? Gross Domestic Product - The value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in a given year.

14. What country has the highest GDP per capita in the world, and how much is it? Qatar 103,900

15. Is the US in the top ten for GDP per capita? no

16. Most of the countries with the highest birth rates can be found in what continent? Africa

17. 11 of the top 12 countries with the highest number of deaths from HIV/AIDS can be found

in which continent? Africa

18. What other country is in the top ten? India

19. Where does the US rank in HIV/AIDS deaths? 18

20. Is the US #1 in number of cellular phones? no

21. What percentage of the US is Roman Catholic? 23.9%

22. What percentage of Mexico is Roman Catholic? 82.7%

23. What is Net Migration Rate? the difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a country during a year per 1000 persons

24. Does the US have the highest Net Migration Rate in the world? no

25. According to the Factbook, what is the current population of the entire planet? 7,095,217,980

9/24/13; Migration

Today in human geo class, we continued our discussion about population and migration. For about half the class we talked about the story of Mr. Schicks wife that worked for a landscaping company and how the Mexicans that were hired did a way better job than the college Americans. We also talked about emigration and immigration. And we learned that the number that determines if the population of a country is growing or declining is 2.1, the USA’s number is above so their population is increasing. Along with immigration, we talked about how immigration can happen in any country. Also how Canada has a very high number with immigration. I think that immigration isn’t as big of a deal as other people make it, but I think illegal immigration is the real problem that were facing. Because we are still just getting into the new section, we will most likely still be talking about population and migration tomorrow.

9/23/13; Population and Migration

Today in class, it was half test day and half new chapter day. The new chapter is about population and migration. Today we mostly talked about how the population of the world is at seven billion, and how the population has been growing a lot more faster as the 1960’s came. At first, it took 33 years to reach a population of 2 billion, but now it only took 12 year to reach a population of 7 billion. Then someone made a good point about China’s one child law, so then you would have to figure how many more people would be on this Earth if the Chinese were allowed to have more than one child. Another surprising fact was that 90 percent of the population growth takes place in developing countries. We also talked about life expectancy, USA being number 50 of the list of highest life expectancy. The first is Monaco, a city with a lot of rich people, the life expectancy for men are 80 years and 93 years for women. The lowest is Chad, were the average age to live is 48. A huge difference. We will finish talking about this tomorrow.

9/20/13; Test Day with a Fire Drill

Today in Human Geo class was test day. But that got pushed back because of a fire drill, but it wasn’t actually a drill at all. The sprinklers we on, on the football field, and I thought we were going to be out there for the whole class. But we were only outside for about twenty minutes. I didn’t finish my test, because of the fire drill, but we have about twenty extra minutes to finish the test on Monday. I found the test pretty easy, I studied and everything that I studied was on the test. The multiple choice questions were very easy and not the main point of the test. The true point was the three essays that we had to write about in the end. The three questions each talked about globalization, infrastructure and Socrates’ famous quote. Overall to me, the test was easy but I just didn’t have enough time. We will finish the test on Monday.

9/18/13; Review for Test

Today in class, we presented our globalization power points and went over the things that are going to be on the test Friday. The test will consist of ten multiple choice questions and three explanation questions covering everything we have talked about in class so far. Including; globalization, Socrates, Socrates’ method, the Greek words and phrases, developed countries, and developing countries. For the developed and developing countries topic, we should talk about the qualities that distinguish the developed countries from the developing countries. Those qualities include; cell phone use, cell towers, living conditions, job rate, and any other living needs. The USA is by far a developed county, part of that example was that today in class, Mr. Schick said that we have all the qualities that a developed country needs, right in our classroom. An example of a developing country is Indonesia, as we saw from the video, Behind the Swoosh, the living conditions were worse than imaginable. No class Thursday and the test Friday.

9/17/13; Little Change is Good... Right?

Again in class today was a continuation of yesterday’s topic, Behind the Swoosh. But today was talking more about if anything was done to change the conditions and pay in Indonesia. The video was created in 1999, and there was a website made for it. But ironically a “hacker” hacked the website and said that if you continued to the site your computer would get a virus. But after a few minutes of research, I found that the supporters of helping Indonesia, created a new and up running site! Also today in class, it was brought up that their pay was increased, from 1.25$ to 4$! Which is a start to everything that needs to be changed! But because Nike has the military on their side, the force the Nike workers in Indonesia to work for 3.75$ or possibly less. So yes it is extremely good that their pay was raised 2.50$ but it still is nearly not enough change for the workers to have a stable and fair living condition.

9/16/13; Behind the Swoosh

Watching the Behind the Swoosh video today in class was an eye opener for me. Not only did it make me feel lucky to have minimum wage laws here in America but it also made me think about how wrong manual labor is. The people that work for Nike in Indonesia still only make a dollar twenty-five an hour, and then would get paid a dollar forty for their fourth over time hour. Their living conditions are barley even considered conditions. When Jim and Leslie went to Indonesia and lived under their conditions, with only a dollar twenty-five to spend, they both soon realized that they needed to do something about it. When they both got back to the US, they tried to get in contact with Nike but were turned down each time. They made a website to try and help the people back in Indonesia, but it got hacked and now there is a possible virus if you go through to it. But on a semi-brighter note, they created a new website that is safe to open and you can learn more about the true process of Nike.

9/13/13; Pros & Cons of Globalization

I know what you’re thinking, globalization... again. But each day we talk about the subject is different! Today the topic within globalization: the pros and cons. Also how Mr. Schick is ok with everyone using Wikipedia. We learned that you can get very useful links threw Wikipedia. After Mr. Schick’s rant on how good and effective Wikipedia is, we went onto the pros and cons of globalization. With every topic there is in the world, everyone has their entitled opinion to it, some good, and some bad. We were introduced to another project to work on, specifically with the pros and cons. With such a globalized topic such as globalization, there will be good things and bad things about it no matter what your opinion of the topic is. For the cons, it mostly consists of the little countries not being able to keep up. But at the same time for the pros, it can help little countries. We will continue the project on Monday, and we have our first test Friday.

9/11/13; Interconnections

Today in Human Geo class, we continued to talk about globalization. Especially about interconnections and the United Nations and how because of globalization we are all interconnected. Then we went into more detail about how if we take out all our military of the Middle East then they would all go and attack each other. Then the oil supply would be even harder to get, which would then incredibly increase the price of gas overnight. But it would not only effect the gas prices, it would then effect all the buildings with oil and anything that involved oil would come to a standstill. Which would then make anything that involved oil shut down and have oil extremely hard to get, so we would have to get oil from another place. And that would be a long time until that happened. During that time, the people whose jobs involved with oil, they would end up getting fired, which wouldn’t help the economy. So, interconnections and globalization are a very important.

9/10/13; Goblization

Today's class was a little different from other classes. Normally we talk about a few topics that have the same theme, but today we specifically talked about globalization. But globalization has a lot of themes along with itself. Globalization is in the world around us and we don’t even know it. Most of globalization is because of American products and designs, and our expansion of them. Our main example in class was the effects McDonalds has on Japan. Now normally you would think, “Oh nothing will change, it’s just fast food.” But after discussing it in class, a lot more than you would think, changed in Japan. Because globalization has to do with American’s more than any other country, some people call it “Americanization”. The main example was the fact that every country in the world, besides North Korea, has something that generated in America. The top three food chains around the world are McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and Burger King. The main and only topic today was globalization.

9/9/13; Google Documents

Today in human geo class we learned how to set up our google document. And we also learned that we will have a test on everything that we learned a week from Friday. Also we got assigned a project, that why we needed to learn how to set up a google document. What makes a google document different from a regular document is that with a normal document, only one person on that computer can make changes and access the document. But with a google document, you have the option to make your document public, or two types of private. With public, anyone can see the document. For the first type of private, only you can see and change the document, while in the other type of private you can invite people and then you and the people you invited can see and change the document. Our project is to think of and write down possible test questions, it’s for studying. So I figure that’s what we are going to be doing for a while.

9/6/13; Did You Know?

Today in human geography we watched the video Did you know? and at first it was very confusing. Then as the movie continued, the words were moving so fast that I couldn't finish reading them. Personally, I think it was to show the viewers that technology changes so fast, to the point where you can’t catch up. And before I wrote this blog, I watched the video again, and noticed that the creator updated the video to a 2013 edition. I watched that and some of it was the same thing, with the number changed to keep the information up to date. But the main focus on that video was that technology is changing drastically fast. Which is another topic we were talking about in class, the fast moving pace of technology. We talked about how people now think how crazy it was to have the huge corded phones back then. And how our children will be thinking that about the IPhone when it is outdated. So the main topic in class, was technology moving at an increasingly fast rate.

9/4/13; Socrates

Today in class, while we thought we were moving on from the topic of Socrates, we were just getting started. Right in the beginning we all talked about the Socrates death painting more then one person could imagine. Then we learned that we are no where near done talking about Socrates' death. Today's topic was about the painting though. In our class, we started talking about how the painting is making Socrates looking better then he would have. Which was weird considering that he was sixty years old and he supposedly has a six pack. So we all figured that after he was done thoroughly explaining his deep thoughts to the youth of Athens, he would go and do crunches. Another topic we talked about was the drink of hemlock. The fact that it took forty-five slow, painful, minutes and you felt like you were drowning, makes me sick. That, in my opinion, is one of the worst ways to die. Slow and painful death, and drowning are both huge fears of mine. So combining the two together, I cringe. Yes so that was class today and I now realize how terrified I am with slow, painful deaths, and drowning.

9/3/13; Greek Words & Phrases

Today in class, we went over the Greek words and phrases and talked slightly about our blogs/grades. I'm passing, thankfully. We didn't finish going over all of the Greek words and phrases, we stopped at the death of Socrates. So I figure we will finish discussing them tomorrow. It's very interesting to learn about a culture that we based a lot of democracy on. And how important Socrates was, not only to the future of philosophy but also at his current time. Every person thought he was crazy, but he actually just thought in more detail then other people in his time. The fact that he got the death penalty for speaking his mind is crazy in today’s world. But back then it would be ok to give someone the cruelty for disrespecting someone very powerful. Time changes very much, especially over about twenty thousand years or so. But today the topic was that our American democracy is highly relatable to the Greek democracy.  

Greek Words & Phrases

Agora - gathering place or assembly, the central place of the city.

Arete - to do good in anything.

Polis - city.

the year 508 BC - The city of Athens was established.

Socrates - A Greek philosopher, one of the founders of Western philosophy. And created the "Socrates Method"

the death of Socrates - After Socrates criticized Critias, he was given the choice to either drink poison hemlock or face exile. But Socrates chooses death as his choice.

the Socratic method - The method of which to solve a main problem you would use a series of questions, which would then lead you to gradually solve the main problem.

what the ancient Greeks meant when they called you an idiot - It meant that you were a private person or you weren't interested in politics.