I recently did a project on the topic of megacities in the past, present, and future and how the natural risks they posed.  In past decades there was Tokyo, New York City, or even Mexico City.  I also covered present cities such as Shangai and Los Angeles to name a few.  The city that basically topped the growth charts in my statistics was Dhaka.  The city literally is growing like a chia pet, but with no direct plan or proper use of land.  According to future calculations, the city of Dhaka can reach roughly 23 million by 2025, that's about 600,000 new people coming in every year up until that point.  This video is just an example of how poorly planned this megacity is, and what the future holds for all of the people living there.  It's simply chaos.  There are already squatter settlements and unorganized living conditions for the current residents, picturing the population to grow even more is outrageous!

Dhaka is the fastest growing city in the world, as rich and poor people move to the city everyday. So many poor people are moving here due to the fact there is no other place worth living in Bangladesh. The city is facing many problems, such as lack of traffic signals, minimal clean drinking water for residents and horrible housing for many people. However, some feel the city’s slums offer the best chance for an improved life.   

There is a lot of poverty and pollution in Dhaka. The demands for energy and water are high in Dhaka as well. I personally don't see how these people and migrants can live in such a polluted and dirty place and the reason why I can't imagine living in such a place is because I never have. I'm lucky enough to not experience poverty and I greatly appreciate  my life and home. Hopefully things improve in Dhaka and places like Dhaka. Hopefully there will be less pollution and poverty in the future any where in the world.

Geography and current events

Many interesting tools to practice and to discover

Amazing resources about places and topics in Geography

On Ball's Pyramid the stick insect is different than any other insect I have seen. The size of it is terrifying, as it as big as a human hand. There are many different kinds of animals or insects someone can find on remote islands, islands such as Madagascar, Australia and even on this small island, which is located off of Australia's coast in the Pacific.    

Isolation can lead to some remarkable examples of evolution. This "tree lobster" is an example of that. On an island cut off from many predators and hold little resources, the tree lobster has found a way to survive.

A truly remarkable story.  A prehistoric 'stick' insect that lived on an island off the coast of Australia was obliterated by rats that came to the island on English ships.  Everyone thought they were extinct until one day some researchers found 24 of them living on a remote piece of land not too far from the insect's homeland.  This was an uninhabited piece of rock, essentially, with very little to offer any life form but the stick insects found just enough to survive.  How they got here is unknown but after the find and a sleepless zoo worker, this insect is flourishing in captivity.  The move to release them back into the wild is ongoing.

Re-scooped from Professor Dixon, this article is about Aborigines in Australia protesting "racist" government policies. It sounds like the Australian version of what would happen if America's Native Americans teamed up with a racial oppression organization. They are apparently threatening to shut down the most famous landmark in Australia to visitors if the government doesn't change it's position. I don't blame them, fight the power!!

the government punishing a whole culture for crimes is outrageous. Not all are guilty but all are punished. it is proven fact that more minorities in this country are incarcerated for drug usage than whites but that doesn't mean you jail all black people. The government is being racist because the aboriginal are poverty stricken group who do not contribute to society, they only have a population of 300,000 people. In the governments eyes they just exist on the land and do nothing for the economy. Well it must have some influence because they are protesting by not allowing tourists climb Uluru or Ayers rock. I guess the government will not be collecting permit fees or other fees associated with the climbing of the rock. Tourism should take a hit from hotel accomendations  to hiking tour guides to purchasing gear etc...

Australia has always had troubles dealing with their past actions against the native population of their island, and this will hopefully be a wake up call on the policies they have taken.

With China also starting to reopen the silk road they are stepping into the Middle East and a key US and NATO ally.  The Chinese state this is just a commerical deal, with I think it really is trying to lay future groundwork.  The system that Turkey is getting will not be compatible with NATO's weapon systems, which has always been a big part and a requirement of the alliance.  Could this move be the first in Turkey leaving NATO, or even looking away to Europe and looking to China.  With Turkey still not being admitted int the EU they might be feeling they have to look elsewhere to help themselves grow...hmmm maybe the EU should look at their application again??

The article points out various cases in which cartography has been used not to show geographical data and the boundaries of different countries, but had rather been used to show political ambitions. Some examples are the map of Guatemala that included Belize as part of it, which dates from a decades-old territorial dispute between the two countries; the recent approved Chinese passport, which includes a map of the country that contains territory claimed by India, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan; and the different maps published by Peru and Chile that included different sea borders, an issue that dates back from more than 100 years.

Reflection- as the article says, "maps, just as statistics, can lie". It is crucial for people not only to know how to interpret maps, but also to be aware of their source and the history behind a map drawn in a different way. I think maps, in order not to be misleading, should show updated information of the boundaries between countries, and should not, by any means, show the territorial desires of a particular country.

Colonialism rears its ugly head again, this time not in Africa but in India/Pakistan..but with the same result.  Borders drawn arbitrarily did not work in Africa, nor did it work in India.  It just casues the people there to try and work out and fix problems that the former colonial rulers casued.  They tried here to do it so that there was a land for the Muslim population to have a nation on the subcontinent and not subject to Hindu majority rule.  However Britain never looked at what would happen with a area that had a Hindu leader with a Muslim population.  He wanted to be independant, but the Muslim population wanted to go to Pakistan, so he went to India for help...sound confusing..it is..much like the Northern Ireland/UK/Republic of Ireland debate..there is no easy answer and it looks like we have to try to fix colonialism's problems again.

The flood impact in Pakistan has already been a devastating one, and it is only going to continue as time passes.  The flood has not been a center story for media coverage which has made the problem even worse.  Many people do not know that Pakistan is battling a flood, so aid has not increased.  Pakistanis are still recovering from a 2010 flood, which makes the current situation even more difficult.  Why is the international response so small?

I liked this article simply because I could relate it to my own personal experiences speaking with someone at a call center.  I guess it is kind of interesting that the Phillippines has overtaken India in terms of number of call centers.  What was reallly interesting though was how familiar those at the call centers were of Americans. 

The fact that so many Filipinos speak English is an important one to understand. This brings jobs to the Philippines, but at the expense of local culture. High income and social standing in the Philippines is often correlated with English, as many of the high-ranking citizens attend universities in the United States and return with degrees, and in turn teach their children English. This marginalizes their own language in a way, and is something to keep aware of, as it's one thing that the United States does not face in many areas, that most other countries around the world do.  

I was most shocked by how Americanized these individual were. I understand that the Philippines were under American control for a fair period of time, but the country obtained its sovereign independence of the US sometime in the mid-40s. They have had close to 80 years to develop their own history, yet the author mentioned the citizens were still watching shows like “Friends” and speaking American English better than other foreign English speakers. It just goes to show how a colony is permanently marked by their past. I am not entirely sure this is a good thing, but at least one positive that came out of the US’s impact is that in speaking more American English there are more call center jobs. As the article mentioned, the jobs helped their sluggish economy. Still, the only reason these jobs are being offered is due to the amount companies save. Not only do the companies avoid paying American workers, whose salary is much higher, the companies are also in an area with better infrastructure. So even though the article claims the companies paid more because the Philippine workers cost $50 more than those from India, they save money on overhead and have better satisfied customers! Looking at call centers from the company’s perspective shows that this former colony is just a pawn once again. Therefore, when we look at intent, globalization just becomes negative again.   

It's easy to forget that for most of history, even the greatest of empires were subject to the whims of the climate. The ability to survive in places where humans really shouldn't thrive is only a recent development thanks to technology, but a drought is something the mightiest army can't fight, and all the wealth in the world will not stop, without the right technology.

(Southeast Asia topic 10 [independent topic 2])

Naturally, that which fails to adapt to its environment will not survive. Such was the likely fate of Angkor. But was this early industrial area the cause of its own drought demise? I'll answer this question with another modern one: Are booming metropolises of today having an impact on their environment? Look at the American Southwest, where the booming populations of Las Vegas and Phoenix, and the water use that goes along with it, are slowly sucking dry Lake Mead. Though in both cases the climate is becoming drier itself, adaptations could be the remedy. Just as the inhabitants of Easter Island caused their own demise as well, it truly pays to learn from the past and take proactive precautions to prevent such worse-case scenarios. Luckily today there is knowledge to do such that, and now the issue goes to getting that message acknowledged and acted upon.

This reminds me of the theories as to why Easter Island fell. Although what many people know of Easter Island is the giant heads, there was once a flourishing civilization in the area but many scholars theorize that they deforested the island to a point that they ran out of resources and had to flee to survive.

Just something to show how the world is responding and how times have changed.  The last time the Japanese military came to the Philippines was as invaders in 1941and left with MacArthur's return in 1944.  Ironic that the Typhoon hit the area close by Red Beach where MacArthur came ashore to fullfill his "I shall return" promise.  This just shows how times have changed and former enemies can come together in a time of need.

In the beginning of the semester we talked about how geography is always changing. Our understanding of geography does as well. This new technology helps people have a clearer picture of the wildlife that exists on Antarctica. Because of its harsh environment the amount we know about this barren continent has been limited. As technology improves we will be able to gain more accurate information about Antarctica.

Using this new technology, animal can be monitored and helped by the satellites. Having a way to accurately know the population of a species is incredible,  because now we can know which species are in danger of extinction and we can take steps to help them. Before the use of the satellite,  the population of Emperor penguins was found to be 595, 000 and the colonies of penguins was found to be 46 instead of the previous 38, so without this technology there have been penguins that may have needed help, but now they will get proper attention.

Technology never ceases to amaze me. As the article described, the use of satellite imagining recently showed that the “population count” of the emperor penguin is “found nearly twice as many...as did previous studies.” Prior to the use of satellite imaging, the method to obtain this type of data was done by people actually being around the area. As the new numbers showed this was inaccurate because so much of the artic can’t be reached by the human population. I think this brings up an interesting notion. We define our landscape based on what we see. Yet, what we see doesn’t always capture what is actually on earth. As such, I wonder if more penguin colonies have disappeared then the one the British intuition noticed. We won’t know, but at least now thanks to technology a better grasp of the situation can happen. Maybe with more concrete data about the effects of global warming on Antarctic more non-believers could be swayed. All in all, I think the technology is beneficial. The only down side about this technology is the possibility for misuse. If we can now figure out the penguin population down to which ones are adults, imagine just what else this technology can due in the name of “geographic research.”      

The pink lake, Lake Hillier,  located in Western Australia is stunning. The aerial view of the lake makes the lake seem unreal that is was is fascinating. What gives the lake its pink color is a mystery, but it may be from bacteria, but it shows how some places in the world are affected differently than others and it produces remarkable results.

Now this is bizarre.  A pink lake and no one is really sure as to why it is pink.  It is not on the top of my list of places to go swimming, that is for sure.  Although scientists don't seem too concerned about the safety of the lake for people but are curious as to what is causing the lake to be pink.  Thoughts on algea and bacteria levels or the amount of salt are included in the potential reasoning for the pink color.  Even on google earth you can see that the lake is in fact pink.  Even when scientists come to a conclusion as to what is causing the pink colored lake, as far as it isn't causing any environmental issues, I think that the lake should be left pink as a type of wonder of the world attraction for people to see.

This article caught my eye because I have never seen a pink lake before. This lake is on Middle Island in Western Australia. The lake is 600 meters wide but the reasoning behind the color of it is still yet to be determined. White salt rims the lake and the color may be caused from a low nutrient concentration and even just bacteria. The pictures of this lake are beautiful and there is not anything like it. 

While we sit here on Facebook and Twitter for a way to connect with friends, share photos of our vacations or follow our favorite celebrities every move places in North Africa and some of the Middle East are using social media to change their country.  In countries like Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt people have used these social media sites to disperse information to the general public.  Where a rally will be held, a map of where police forces will be located, and what to do in the event teargas is used are all topics for discussion on social media.  With the use of these websites a larger group of people are able to take part in the overthrow of the government.  With leaders restricting the access to the web even more people were intrigued to join the protests.  When people can't follow along on the internet the events they decided to go take part in the events themselves.  With the use of these social media websites the Arab Spring in these areas was able to be as successful as it was.

I think it is important that technology plays a role in these revolutions. Before, if a revolution happened, the dictator could just silence its population. Now the population has things like Facebook and Twitter to mobilize their plans of attack for meeting places and advice about how to confront the government. As such, the power of the citizens has grown and according to the article some argue it was this power that made the government officials in Egypt and Tunisia stand down. I tend to agree since the coverage of the event helped increase the size of the demonstrations.  

I love that these protests for democracy are being led by the citizens. Since the citizens actually want this type of government, there is actually a chance that this might  be what the country needs. As you mentioned during the Solar Diem video, what works for one society may not translate to another. The author of this piece is more than likely from a western democracy given how the author thinks "democratic change offers the only solution"  to issues like poverty and internal strife within "Arab" countries. Yet, that isn't the case in the Middle East. By forcing a democratic revolution on Iraq,  the region is more destabilized than it was under the harsh command of Saddam Hussein. As you mentioned in class, Iraq needed a dictator like Hussein to keep peace though. So as helpful as technology might be  for democratic revolutions, democratic revolution might not be the answer to every countries problems.

The Arab Spring owes its origins to the mass use of social media websites to get organized and launch the protests that ultimately overthrew several dictators in the region. Social media was crucial for the movement to spread like wild fire, as young people all over North Africa and the Middle East banded together against the tyranny of their governments. Protests broke out in every capital of the region, noticeably in Cairo, where the protests briefly transcended ethnic and religious disputes in the name of freedom for all. Although the movement has long since fizzled out in the face of increased violence, instability, and the lack of a consensus among protesters as to what their next move should be, the Arab Spring served as a powerful example as to extent of which the Internet will now play in global affairs. It is a powerful tool that has completely revolutionized the way we live our everyday lives, and it has completely changed the game for much of North Africa and the Middle East.

It is interesting to find out that in this specific article there is controversy over the looting of tombs over 5,000 years ago as soon as the deceased were buried there were many more looting acts taken place. The Arab spring is an important landmark to think of when relating this to the reading.

This describes human characteristics that defined this region because it shows how ancient artifacts are being unearthed through new-age technology.

Space archaeology only makes sense.  If we have the capability for satellites to take pictures of earth from above why shouldn't it be used for archaeological analysis?  I am sure that this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as what we will see in the future from this specific field. This article/video just lends more credibility to the fact that Archaeology should function as an interdisciplinary field.

On the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11th in the United States, anti-U.S. protestors attacked Benghazi due to their anger toward an American-made YouTube video that denounced Islam.  It is amazing to see the impact that one single Internet creation can have.  It shows the power that particular media and social outlets such as YouTube and Facebook have.

I remember reading about this, and I had hoped at the time that tensions between the US and much of the Islamic world might have improved by now. However, that has sadly not been the case; violence in Iraq and Syria have continued to breed bad blood between the West and North Africa. The attack in Benghazi helped to give conservative groups the necessary ammunition to continue their attacks on Islam and certainly did not help public perception of the faith, breeding further hatred within our own country. Although many Libyans congregated to apologize for the violence, the region has not stabilized and anti-US sentiments are still rampant in pockets, much like they are throughout the region. The legacy of this attack has had serious ramifications for US-Muslim relations, and I can only hope that the situation does indeed change in the next 3 years, much like I had hoped they would within the previous 3.

A meeting of different worlds at a border. I can't imagine the things one would see or hear living or growing up on a border of conflict such as this. Refugees are a common site, and no authority can dominate the others, making the area effectively lawless.

This note talk about the place in the desert where three hostile countries confront each other on the infinite war.

Re-scooped from Professor Dixon, primarily for how ridiculous it is. Most of us figured there was some decent reason (like the neighboring 'Stan's) for why  and how Pakistan got its name. Nope, there really wasn't any good reason to name it Pakistan, it is an acronym. One that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Kashmir is still a hot spot in the world especially when thw two powers involved but have nuclear weapons and both seem willing to at least say they are still on the table in any conflict.  A long problem starting back when lines were drawn on the map by Imperial Britain.  Much like in Africa, however, nukes, at least as far as we know, are not on the table in Africa....yet.

This article touches on something I've always thought about when considering tourism and development. Many of the cities and places I like to visit I go to because of there charm and lack of robust tourism culture. This is a bit of a dual edged sword. Cities and countries stand to gain considerable wealth from the expansion of their tourism industry. But, part of me wonders if something else is also lost. 

(Southeast Asia topic 9 [independent topic 1])

Myanmar (aka Burma) might end up being the next 'hidden gem' that ends up being scratched by over-visitation and over-westernization. However, this is by no means set in stone (no pun intended...).  Just as locals don't want to spread word about their favorite swimming hole, many past visitors and some locals hope that they can maintain that which keeps Myanmar unique. On the other hand, the welcoming of change offers the lure of increased tourism revenue and further globalization to an area recovering from isolationism. In my opinion a balance should be reached, in which local culture is properly maintained while modest introduction of foreign culturals is done in an as-necessary, beneficial-majority-proven basis.