Geography Article of the Day! 12/10/11

This article is one that i wrote for Hubpages, which is a online writing website where you can earn money from ads placed on your articles.  I just finished putting together an article of the Top Ten weather events of 2011!  This includes blizzards, flooding, droughts, tornadoes, and hurricanes.  The articles include information and a bunch of videos i collected on YouTube of each event!  As I researched each storm I found that the Tornadoes that made the list deserved more space, especially since they were widely covered and so many people died. 

So checkout my own articles here:
Top Ten Weather Events of 2011

Top Weather Events of 2011: Tornadoes

Geography Article of the Day 12/6/11

The geography article of the day is actually one i read yesterday.  This article and many others that came out yesterday discuss the discovery of the possibility of the most habitable planet besides Earth so far in the Universe!  The planet is named Kepler 22B and has a average surface temperature around 70 degrees!  Sounds nice right? This discovery has many implications, is there other life in the universe? is this planet habitable by us? and of course the geography questions!  This discovery would give the discipline a whole other planet to discover, explore, and study!  Like the geographic explorers of the past, new explorers will be needed to discover and record the new world!  but then again lets not get ahead of ourselves the planet is pretty far away!

NASA Telescope Confirms Alien Planet in Habitable Zone

Isn't Europe a Country?

This video below of the country singer kellie Pickler on the show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader is funny but also sad that like so many Americans, Kellie has no recollection of the world outside the United States.  Yes Budapest is probably a little harder capital to find then others but Pickler proves her geographic idiocy by stating she thought Europe was a country and stating that she is pretty sure France is not a country.  This video reminds me of the South Carolina beauty queen question featured in this blog under Infamous Geography Flubs!    So enjoy the video but also realize why geography is important! 

World Population Video

Below is a cool video that i saw in a geography course years ago and now discovered it on YouTube.  I like this video because it shows the growth of population from the year 1 A.D. to projected growth in 2030. There are many interesting things about this video but one that caught my eye was the actual population decrease in Europe during the Black Plague.  It also illustrates how fast our population is growing, especially in the last 100 years and how population is a main contributor to many environmental issues.  So this video discusses population geography, world geography, human geography, mentions environmental issues and finally is a neat illustration of how maps can be interactive and not just a piece of paper with one image.

Geography Article of the Day 12/2/11

This is an interesting solution to energy issues!  The following article discusses how one creamatorium in the UK plan on implementing turbines to produce electricity from the excess heat used in creamating dead bodies. The geography aspect of this article touches on population concerns and how we dispose dead bodies while also addressing energy production concerns. Is it morbid or an environmentally friendly solution to the death process?  You decide! 

Burning Deceased Baby Boomers Could Generate Electricity 
            the article was found on yahoo news but is from Livescience.

Geography Article of the Day 12/1/11

Largest Earthquakes in the US

This article is from the online writing website Hubpages. It is a list of the top 28 strongest earthquakes in the United States. Geology is a huge part of Geography, although it has split to its own discipline. The article also illustrates where these earthquakes occur, the strongest all happened in Alaska. This delineation of space is geography.

Geography Article of the Day! 11/30/11

As we all know, we are coming into the Holiday Season and with all the fun and gift giving comes a lot of waste!  From wrapping paper to delivery boxes and extra treats your garbage pail might be filling up faster then usual this time of year.  Sustainability is a growing branch of geography.  Using sustainable materials/resources is important to how we use and impact space around us.  The more garbage we create the more pollution and the less space for that garbage we have.  So today's geography article of the day is some tips on how to be more sustainable this holiday season.  The article is from Huffington Post and is called "Eco Etiquette: How To Have A Zero Waste Holiday Season"

Do You know how the States got their Names?

The names we assign to locations are a very important factor in geography that influences the division of space, the perception of space, history of the space and even can tell us a little about the people naming that space.  I came across this interesting article on Hubpages, where i also write, about how the states of America got their names.  The author is greensleeves and is actually from the UK!  His article is entitled "Origin of the Names of the United States of America- A Greensleeves Page"

Remote Sensing presents Hurricane Season 2011

Here's a cool video of this year's Hurricane Season which includes Hurricane Irene, which impacted the Eastern United States and Tropical Storm Lee that flooded most of the Eastern United States just after Irene.  This video shows how far we have come in remote sensing, a section of geography.  We are able to observe and record images from above so easily now, we've come a long way from sending hot air balloons up with cameras.  Geography is also apart of recognizing what you are watching in the video, your exposure to maps have provided you with knowledge of what North America looks like, allowing you to orient yourself when viewing this video.  Finally weather and its impact on location is apart of geography, yes Atmospheric sciences and meteorology have they're own disciplines now but geography is still a huge aspect, not to mention the mother of weather disciplines.

Geography Article of the Day 11/29/2011

Survey Says the best place to Live... 

This article illustrates the results of a survey conducted worldwide to find the best metropolitian areas to live.  Comparing space and defining what makes an urban area great are all apart of geography. Did your city make the list?  I know nothing near me did!

Another Geography Flub in the Media!

Another mistake on a map distributed by the media.  This time it's in relation to baseball.  The map released by Fox sports illustrates where the player Colby Lewis has played from Detroit to Washington D.C. Kansas City, Oakland, Arlington, and even Japan.  Along with the labeled cities from which the team were from, the states that they were in also were highlighted.  This is where the problem comes in. Kansas City is in Missouri, however this map shades Kansas as its associated state.  Once again a simple mistake can be confusing millions and subjecting them to false perceptions of geography!

Notice the Kansas City mistake? See the article here: http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Ha-ha-Fox-8217-s-Colby-Lewis-graphic-moves-K-C?urn=mlb-wp25008

Another Geography Flub...

Came across this tv still on Twitter, posted by @TheTruthLibya of an map error on CNN!  This particular error labels Tripoli in what seems to be Lebanon when in fact Tripoli is on a whole other continent.  Tripoli is in the country of  Libya, along the Northern shore of the African Continent.  I still cannot believe that in this day an age major news outlets still make mistakse like these! 
 
via http://twitter.com/#!/TheTruthLibya/status/106084704905728000/photo/1

Now the nations of the world...

Another clip from the cartoon Animaniacs that share some geographic knowledge, although some areas might be out of date now! 

Wako's 50 State Capitols

A fun video from the cartoon Animaniacs, great introduction to the states and the capitols!  entertaining as well!

Infamous Geography Flops

Geography gets ignored by many and on occasion it shows! Here are some funny, yet sad moments that really shows the lack of geographic knowledge in this country!
1. The first flop has to be one of the funnier ones! I remember seeing this on the news, in my geography class, and every where online as it went viral.  You probably remember Miss Teen USA 2007 pageant, more specifically a blond from South Carolina.  Well not only was the question being asked of this beauty queen about the lack of geographic awareness in the United States, she demonstrated that she's not that aware as well.  Its ok to laugh at this one! watch the video below

2. On to the next geographic flub, one that took place in politics during the 2008 Presidential Election.  If you don't know where I'm going with this I have one name for you Sarah Palin.  Yes the republican vice presidential candidate, new to the national scene, fresh out of Alaska seemed to have many flubs that year with the "lame stream media" as she calls it.  However one comment that seems to have stuck with her even after losing the election is one that she didn't say! In an interview with Charles Gibson, she was asked about Russia and respond that you can actually see Russia from land in Alaska.  Although this comment has no implications on foreign policy, which is why the comedy of queen of SNL and 30 Rock turned it into a joke that has stuck to Palin's character.  The infamous quote "I can see Russia from my house"!  The issue with what Palin said and what Fey joked about is that proximity doesn't always mean interaction and knowledge is great, due to political geography and physical geography, you may be able to see it but knowledge of it might as well be on the moon!
 Original Palin interview:

Tina Fey, playing Sarah Palin on SNL (follow the link)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psyo4JDbJJ4&feature=related
3. Fox News Map mistakes: Every once and a while Fox news shows a map that although at quick glance looks good, its completely off!  For example the map below has Iraq labeled as Egypt, its not bad enough that many in this country don't know where Iraq is, even while we fight a war there, they go and mislabel it.  Not sure Fox News should be supporting privatization, defunding, and reorganization of the education system...

This image is from http://hypervocal.com/news/2011/fox-news-map-room-where-egypt-lies-between-iran-syria-and-saudi-arabia/  a story about the geography mistake of Fox News

Geography in the Oceans

Here’s a video of a group of researchers and photographers who document Humpback whales.  Just by taking pictures and labeling where they are these men are practicing geography! The data collection allows for the number of whales to be estimated as well as any patterns of movement in the ocean, effectively mapping a variable in the ocean.  This means they are tracking space, one of the important issues in Geography.  Also as you can see in the video, it’s quite touching and amazing to experience the human/environmental interaction.  Human/environmental interaction is one of the main branches of Geography.  This video shows a few different interactions, including the fact that the whale is caught in a net, made and fished with by humans, but then the whale is also freed by these men.  There is no denying the unique relationship man has with nature in this video.  That relationship can be explained through geography!

Geography article of the day

I was going to start this blog off with a different topic and save 'Geography article of the day' for later but something caught my eye on yahoo's homepage.  It was an article titled "Only 25 percent of American Students passed their Geography Test" by Liz Goodwin at The Lookout.  It is pretty self explanatory from the title of the article but the scary part is that its not just one age group, it encompasses samples from 4th grade, 8th grade and 12th grade!  Having a B.S. in Geography and working on my Masters I find this news, although disturbing, not that surprising.  Its sad to see such a multi faceted discipline that can support and interact with any other discipline just lose so much ground in the United States.  It is amazing what students don't know about geography, even the ones who falsely believe its just about states and capitals because many don't even know those!  I remember a few years ago sitting in a World Regional Geography class, one that was required for my major but also open to students for university credit.  When studying the United States, we had quizzes on the states and capitals, to my surprise there were some students who didn't even know what state they were in, or which states surround ours.  Maybe it was all the maps i looked at as a child watching the weather channel or paying attention in history class but i couldn't believe the lack of knowledge about these students own surroundings!  This is just one of many reasons why Geography needs to be given the respect it deserves and instituted back into our education programs!

http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/g/geography_test_gifts.asp