“The incredible fractal pattern rivers (now dried out) were made as they spread into the salt flats of the arid Baja California Desert in Mexico.”
Who says teaching about geomorphology has to be boring? This image of a dendritic drainage pattern beautifully shows the most common spatial pattern.
The supercheap and palatable noodles help low-wage workers around the world get by, anthropologists argue in a new book. And rather than lament the ascendance of this highly processed food, they argue we should try to make it more nutritious.
Ramen is the most successful industrial food ever (100 billion serving yearly). This NPR article acts as a book review for The Noodle Narratives which explores the global impacts of this massively important food source. In developed countries, most food experts bemoan ramen’s lack of nutritional value and see it as a symptom/cause of larger issues of unhealthy diets and obesity. At the global scale however, some anthropologists are seeing ramen as the ‘proletariat hunger killer’ as it becomes staple of the undernourished in megacities and less developed countries, and the poor in .
Questions to Ponder: If the United States is only the 6th highest consumer of ramen, what does that say about the geogaphy of ramen? Why and how did a post-World War II Japanese food come to be so crucial to the diets of those in Papua New Guinea and Nigeria?
Tags: food, agriculture, unit 5 agriculture, agribusiness.
See on www.npr.org
“Flooding caused by some of the Philippines’ heaviest rains on record submerged more than half the capital Tuesday, turning roads into rivers and trapping tens of thousands of people in homes and shelters. The government suspended all work except rescues and disaster response for a second day.”
Tags: physical, water, disasters, geomorphology, Philippines.
See on news.yahoo.com
Today we take it for granted that through GPS technology we can instantaneously determine our latitude and longitude. This video documents how for centuries it was fairly easy to determine latitude at sea by measuring the height of the sun in the sky, but longitude (determined by the difference in time between local noon and the noon of a fixed point) could only be estimated. The British Empire saw solving the “longitude problem” as the key to solidifying their economic dominance at sea and they established the Board of Longitude in this 18th century “race to the moon.” Today the University of Cambridge has digitized the Board of Longitude’s archives with a series of five shorter video clips.
Tags: mapping, GPS, historical, cartography, geospatial.
See on www.bbc.co.uk
“This is a compilation of videos that can be used to at the beginning of the school year to show the importance of geography, spatial thinking and geo-literacy.”
I searched the tags below to find some of my favorite clips that show why taking geography courses is so important, useful and interesting. DO you know of a great video that I should put on the list? Send me a tweet.
Tags: geo-inspiration, geography education, APHG.
See on geographyeducation.org
“The world divided into 5 regions, each with the population of China.”
This map from Amazing Maps (a great follow on Twitter) is a clever way to divide the world into 5 equal population regions. In many world regional courses, discussion of Asia might be 1/4 of the course content, while the “NATO and the Americas region” might be about half of the class. Also, think about “the World News” that you see on TV: how much coverage do each of these 5 regions receive? Why is our news coverage unevenly distributed?
This map would go together nicely with this one to show the demographic important of South and East Asia.
Tags: media, population.
See on twitter.com
The region’s emerging majority is progressive. Its capitols are more conservative than ever. Something’s got to give.
Political affiliation differs tremendously from region to region. This article is a great reminder that there is plenty of intraregional diversity in the South as well. Imagining that all of the South will vote in one particular way is now an antiquated way of thinking about Southern politics.
See on prospect.org
More than 1.4 billion airline passengers departed, landed, or connected through these massive facilities in 2012. Viewing them from above gives a sense of their gargantuan scale and global significance.
This ESRI storymap of the 25 busiest airports compliments nicely the storymap of the 50 busiest ports around the world. The busiest ports interactive clearly shows how East Asian manufacturing is impacting global economics (almost 90% of everything we buy arrives via ship). European and North American ports are few and far between on the busiest ports list but much more prominent on the busiest airport list.
Questions to Ponder: How do places of economic flows reshape the global economics? What do the rankings on these two lists suggest about regions of the world? What would strengthen in a particular mode of transportation indicate?
Tags: transportation, globalization, diffusion, industry, economic.
See on storymaps.esri.com
The future of Iran will be determined by the first post-Revolution generation. Here’s what they’re like.
Iran’s “Baby Boomer” generation was born in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution took power in the country. This young generation now is reaching the prime of their lives and has a great deal of power to control the destiny of their country.
See on www.buzzfeed.com
