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Stats that reshape your world-view

With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling uses an amazing new presentation tool, Gapminder, to present data that debunks several myths about world development. Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a nonprofit that brings vital global data to life.

Source: www.youtube.com

It is never a bad time to hear from Hans Rosling.  In this TED talk he shares data that shows how popular myths about the less developed world (especially fertility rates and life expectancy) have radically changed in the last 40 years.

Tags: gapminder, development, TED.

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Expanding the Panama Canal

“In 2006, Panamanians approved a referendum to expand the Panama Canal, doubling its capacity and allowing far larger ships to transit the 100-year-old waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific. Work began in 2007 to raise the capacity of Gatun Lake and build two new sets of locks, which would accommodate ships carrying up to 14,000 containers of freight, tripling the size limit. Sixteen massive steel gates, weighing an average of 3,100 tons each, were built in Italy and shipped to Panama to be installed in the new locks. Eight years and $5.2 billion later, the expansion project is nearing completion. The initial stages of flooding the canals have begun and the projected opening date has been set for April of 2016.”

 

Tag: Panama, images, transportation, globalization, diffusion, industry, economic.

Source: www.theatlantic.com

This gallery of 29 images is filled with great teaching images.

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Why India and Bangladesh have the world’s craziest border

On July 31st India and Bangladesh will exchange 162 parcels of land, each of which happens to lie on the wrong side of the Indo-Bangladesh border. The end of these enclaves follows an agreement made between India and Bangladesh on June 6th. The territories along the world’s craziest border include the pièce de résistance of strange geography: the world’s only “counter-counter-enclave”: a patch of India surrounded by Bangladeshi territory, inside an Indian enclave within Bangladesh. How did the enclaves come into existence?The enclaves are invisible on most maps; most are invisible on the ground too. But they became an evident problem for their 50,000-odd inhabitants with the emergence of passport and visa controls. Independent India and Bangladesh—part of Pakistan until 1971—each refused to let the other administer its exclaves, leaving their people effectively stateless.According to Reece Jones, a political geographer, the plots were cut from larger territories by treaties signed in 1711 and 1713 between the maharaja of Cooch Behar and the Mughal emperor in Delhi, bringing to an end a series of minor wars.It was partition, the division of India and Pakistan, that turned the enclaves into a no-man’s-land. The Hindu maharaja of Cooch Behar chose to join India in 1949 and he brought with him the ex-Mughal, ex-British possessions he inherited. Enclaves on the other side of the new border were swallowed (but not digested) by East Pakistan, which later became Bangladesh.

 

Tags: borders, geopolitics, political, India, South Asia, Bangladesh.

Source: www.economist.com

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Placeness

I understand placeness to mean everything that has to do with place, so this website is intended to be a sort of place encyclopedia. I hope that it will in due course provide an overview of the myriad ideas and experiences of place and places. Places are directly experienced aspects of the world and are full with diverse meanings, objects, and ongoing activities.

Tags: neighborhood, landscape, place. 

Source: www.placeness.com

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10 Poverty in Africa Facts – The Borgen Project

Here are 10 facts about poverty in Africa that demonstrate the widespread consequences of poverty that affect education, health, food consumption and more.

Source: borgenproject.org

Poverty happens all over the world, in the United States, in Africa, South America, you name a region and there is poverty in that area.  There are many myths about poverty though, and myths about regions where poverty defines the region in many people’s eyes.   African economies are on the rise, but there is still many struggles ahead.  

Tags: Africa, development, statistics, economic, globalization, poverty.

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4 Maps Crucial to Understanding Europe’s Population Shift

Despite economic growth in Central and Eastern Europe, the continent is still migrating to the Northwest.

Source: www.citylab.com

The four maps in this article highlight many of the demographic issues that are currently impacting Europe.  See also this article showing where in Europe populations are declining and where they are growing.  

Tags: Europe, map, declining populations, population, demographic transition model, map archives. 

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Gender equity in sports

“Yesterday the United States Women’s Soccer Team defeated Japan 5-2 in the FIFA Women’s World Cup Final in Vancouver, claiming their third world title. The event was watched by soccer fans around the country, and was called a “ratings knockout” but couldn’t come close to those drawn by men’s soccer in Brazil last summer…while some states have made great strides in reducing this gender gap, others still have great inequity that needs to be addressed to effectively celebrate and give potential American female athletes the opportunities they deserve to succeed.”

Tags: sport, gender, popular culture, mapping, regions, the South, culture.

Source: americangeo.org

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Natural GMO? Sweet Potato Genetically Modified 8,000 Years Ago

People have been farming — and eating — a GMO for thousands of years without knowing it. Scientists have found genes from bacteria in sweet potatoes around the world. So who made the GMO?

Source: www.npr.org

Yes, the title is somewhat misleading (isn’t that almost expected these days?), since humanity has been selectively breeding crops since the first agricultural revolution and genetic alteration can occur independent of human intervention.  Humanity has always been using the best technologies available to improve agricultural practices.  The term GMO though, is usually reserved for scientific, technological modifications that were unimaginable 100 years ago.  

Tags: GMOs, technology, agriculture.

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Eye in the Sky

“Ross McNutt has a superpower — he can zoom in on everyday life, then rewind and fast-forward to solve crimes in a shutter-flash. But should he?

In 2004, when casualties in Iraq were rising due to roadside bombs, Ross McNutt and his team came up with an idea. With a small plane and a 44 mega-pixel camera, they figured out how to watch an entire city all at once, all day long. Whenever a bomb detonated, they could zoom onto that spot and then, because this eye in the sky had been there all along, they could scroll back in time and see – literally see – who planted it. After the war, Ross McNutt retired from the airforce, and brought this technology back home with him. Manoush Zomorodi and Alex Goldmark from the podcast ‘Note to Self’ give us the low-down on Ross’s unique brand of persistent surveillance, from Juarez, Mexico to Dayton, Ohio. Then, once we realize what we can do, we wonder whether we should.”

Tags: governance, remote sensing, geospatial.

Source: www.radiolab.org

This is a great podcast to show the ethical ramifications of using advanced geospatial technologies.  This shows the amazing potential as well as some of the privacy issues that wide-scale surveillance can raise.

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