The Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations has been tracking news reports since 2008 to produce an interactive map that plots global outbreaks of diseases that are easily prevented by inexpensive and effective vaccines.
See on www.cfr.org
“The Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond has created an enhanced version of the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, which was published in 1932. The atlas, which took dozens of researchers to assemble, used maps to illustrate a variety of political, demographic and economic concepts.”
I’m sure many of you have already seen it but this is a gem. This is something that you must explore on your own, but I will say that there should be something for everyone in this digital treasure trove. Read a New York Times review on the digital atlas here.
See on dsl.richmond.edu
Colliding continents and cracks in the Earth’s crust make for some remarkable scenery in western China.
Just south of the Tien Shan mountains, in northwestern Xinjiang province, a remarkable series of ridges dominate the landscape. The highest hills rise up to 1,200 meters (3,900 feet) above the adjacent basins, and they are decorated with distinctive red, green, and cream-colored sedimentary rock layers. The colors reflect rocks that formed at different times and in different environments. When land masses collide, the pressure can create what geologists call “fold and thrust belts.” Slabs of sedimentary rock that were laid down horizontally can be squeezed into wavy anticlines and synclines.
The ridge is noticeably offset by a strike-slip or “tear” fault in the image showing the Piqiang Fault, a northwest trending strike-slip fault that runs roughly perpendicular to the thrust faults for more than 70 kilometers (40 miles). The colored sedimentary rock layers are offset by about 3 kilometers (2 miles) in this area.
See on earthobservatory.nasa.gov
“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once stated,”A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.” Arrested over twenty times, stabbed in the chest, his house firebombed and, ultimately shot and killed, King embodied the idea that equality and the African American Civil Rights Movement were worth dying for.He was a husband and father to four children as persecution and death threats filled his days, yet his example was one of nonviolent, civil disobedience.Had he not been assassinated, King would have celebrated his 85th birthday on January 15th.”
Dr. Martin Luther King fought racial segregation (which, if you think about it, is a geographic system of oppression that uses space and place to control populations). Dr. King has been described as a critical geographer for some of his insights. In 1967, MLK stated, “The expansion of suburbia and migration from the South has worsened big-city segregation. The suburbs are a white noose around the black necks of cities… suburbs expand with little regard for what happens to the rest of America.” If you are a Maps 101 subscriber, please read the rest of this article that I co-authored with Julie Dixon. You can also sign up for a free trial subscription.
See on www.maps101.com
I’ve searched wide and far for maps that can reveal and surprise and inform in ways that the daily headlines might not.
See on www.washingtonpost.com
“The Great Circle Mapper displays maps and computes distances along a geodesic path. It includes an extensive, searchable database of airports and other locations.”
The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line…well, that depends on your map projection. A flat map always distorts something when representing our three-dimensional Earth—whether it is distance, direction, shape or area—something gets distorted on our maps. A great circle is the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere, so that’s going to be the quickest travel route between points (which is why so many airline route seem to arc). This website Great Circle Mapper generates great circles that show the shortest distance between two points on many map projects will be an arc. Why does this particular route arc ‘bend’ north for a while and then south? Get out a globe for added perspective.
See on www.gcmap.com
“Muslims around the world celebrate the birth of the Islamic Prophet Muhammed, who was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 570 AD. His birthday is marked in way ways is different Muslim countries.”
This is a great photo gallery, but I wanted to make a special note of this image. The caption for this picture says, “Egyptians watch as Muslims march on the street to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammed in Cairo, Jan 13, 2014.” Is this a representative group of Egyptians? What demographic group would we expect to see in the second story balcony? What does the architecture tell us about the cultural norms of the society?
See on www.boston.com
“A 50-year-old export industry that provides millions of jobs has to reinvent itself quickly to stay competitive.”
A maquiladora is a term that often used to describe a factory in Northern Mexico that enjoys special tax breaks for eport-driven production. Northern Mexico is an ideal location for this type of industry because 1) access to American markets is high and 2) labor costs are relatively low. The Mexican Maquiladoras can no longer compete in a ‘race to the bottom’ for the lowest skill jobs, but they can produce higher-end goods and compete with China to supply more innovative consumer goods. Labor costs in China are on the rise, making Mexico able to compete more effectively with them on the open market. The total value of Mexican maquiladoras exports has grown by more than 50% in the last 5 years; more foreign corporations are investing money into Mexico. Some of the more innovative and aggressive maquiladoras are attempting to become more involved in the research and development end of production; essentially they want to start competing with European and American companies on the lucrative high-end of the commodity chain instead of fighting for the scraps at the bottom.
Tags: Mexico, manufacturing, industry, economic, globalization, technology.
See on www.economist.com
Even as publics in many of the surveyed Muslim-majority countries express a clear preference for women to dress conservatively, many also say women should be able to decide for themselves what to wear.
In my world regional geography class I have 15 weeks to teach about everything in the whole world…no pressure. Clearly, this course is designed to be a mile wide and an inch deep and I can’t teach the nuanced details each country. However, one thing that I try to reinforce every semester is that their is a tremendous about of diversity within regions. No country, region, ethnic or religious group is perfectly homogenous.
Tags: Middle East, regions, gender, culture, Islam, perspective, culture, religion.
See on www.pewresearch.org
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 