Discussion: Thinking Geographically

Think about global events that have occurred in the past several years. Global events are any events that make an impact worldwide. Describe one such event and in what ways did geography play a role in its importance?

Last year, there was a large earthquake off the coast of Japan. The resulting tsunami was catastrophic for those living in Japan. The waves even reached the coast of Oregon and California where one man was killed as he was trying to photograph the oncoming waves. Beyond the first physical ripple across the Pacific, there was a cultural response as countries from all over the world offered their support. Every part of the world is connected, and an event in one area affects all of the others eventually. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, there is a giant floating island of trash. The tsunami has broken off a chunk of this island and sent it careening away to crash into the coast of California. Another global effect, is one of awareness. The Japanese nuclear power plant that was affected became a warning to other countries in earthquake-prone areas.

Using your atlas or a map found on the Internet, find the city of Montreal, Canada. How would you describe the site of Montreal and also the city's situation? Be very specific and thorough and refer to page 12 and 13 in your text for complete definitions of these two terms. It is imperative that you thoroughly understand these two basic Geographic concepts. Remember that when describing an area's situation, it also includes what makes the area significant.

Montreal spans the Saint Lawrence River, with the main portion of the river flowing to the southeast. Because of this, the land is quite flat and the streets correspondingly regular (inside of the irregular framework of larger roads that follow the contours of the river). Near the center of the main island, there is a bit of a hill which is largely covered by a park. Besides the main channel, there are a few smaller pieces of the Saint Lawrence River that cut through the city, and which are spanned by bridges.
The situation of the city of Montreal is that of southeastern Canada near the Canada / United States border. The major river of the region cuts through the city, and I imagine it was an early source of trade (both informational and economical).

Now let's try something a little closer to home. Using any source you wish, find your city's latitude and longitude. How would you describe your city's site and situation. Again, be very thorough in your explanation of site and situation.

Roseburg, Oregon: 43.23°N 123.35°W

Site: Roseburg is defined by the Umpqua River and the hills that surround it. The city is divided into two by I-5, which runs north and south. On the right side of the freeway, the oldest part of town is in the south, and is comprised of older homes and businesses. To the north is a small neighborhood which used to be the *really nice* neighborhood many years ago, the streets are wide with greenways between them. To the east are hills and a few businesses that line the highway heading towards Crater Lake. The rest of the town on the right side of the freeway is fairly flat, nestled between the hills to the east. To the left of the freeway is a long arm that reaches out to the west and the area known as Garden Valley. This area is comprised of newer homes and businesses.

Situation: Roseburg is in one of the larger river valleys of the area. The surrounding areas are covered in mountains or hills, and unfit for farming. When people ask me where Roseburg is, I tell them: one hundred miles from everything. 100 miles to the west is the coast with the coastal range in between, 100 miles to the east is Crater Lake after travelling through the Umpqua National Forest. 100 miles to the north is the first major city of the Willamette Valley, Eugene. And, 100 miles to the south is the city of Medford, the first major town to the south (almost on the Oregon / California border).

Now to add another dimension to perspective: Please view this very short video, The Sacred Balance. Before going into space, astronauts take extensive geography lessons to learn their Earth from a different perspective. How would you describe the city in which you live from an astronaut's perspective?

If I were an astronaut, looking down at the earth, I don't think I would care that much about looking at my city, it's such a small spot on the globe, and there are so many other places that I could focus on. I've looked at my town on a satellite image though, and it makes me sad, it is a grey blemish on a green backdrop. There, that dead spot, that's what we have created.

Lastly, chapter one discusses several historical theorists and their contribution to geography. Give an example (not discussed in your text) of environmental determinism and possibilism.

An example of these concepts can be seen in our clothing. (Practically) Every culture has a history and traditions surrounding clothing .. everyone wears something. Possibilism describes the adaptations each culture has adopted in their clothing choices. Even though it can be very hot in the Amazon Basin, native tribe members still wear tiny loin cloths in order to preserve modesty. The same thing can be seen on the beaches of our own county. Environmental determinism, on the other hand, describes the ways in which geography (site and situation!) modify the ways in which each culture adapts to their location. I belong to the same culture as those living in Southern California, but I do not wear the same clothes, as I would probably get sick if I went out in the rain wearing shorts, a bikini top and sandals.

SPAR #1: Using Notes

The use of a note card on quizzes would adversely affect learning in our class.

If you accept the premise that the goal of this class is to gain knowledge and skills that we, as students, will be able to utilize for the rest of our lives, it becomes important to look at the long term effect note-taking has on memory recall. Humans have developed a technique for memory management called ‘transactive memory.’ If we realize that a friend of ours knows something, we are less likely to remember it ourselves. This also applies to the ability to look something up online or where we have it written down. In an experiment created by Columbia University, participants were given random trivia to memorize. All of the participants typed the trivia into a computer, but half of them were told that their work would be erased. Recall of the typed material was 40% better in the group who believed that they could not rely on their typed notes to remember the information. Humans are very good at utilizing the knowledge repositories that they have created, whether it is a friend, a search engine, an encyclopedia or notes carefully crammed onto a 5x7 card. But, when it comes down to it, in the real world no one is going to wait while we flip through our notebook looking for the information that we can’t quite remember.

Keim, Brandon. “Search Engines Change How Memory Works.” Wired 14 Jul. 2011. Wired Science. Web. 15 Jan. 2012. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/search-engine-memory/

The use of a note card on quizzes would positively affect learning in our class.

Learning is a complex process, and we cannot just press a button to memorize all of our course material. Each of us learn in a slightly different way. For some students, repetition is needed, for others hands on is the only way to go. If note-taking helps a good number of students to remember and retain the lessons in this course, then denying them that opportunity would be detrimental to their learning experience. To test this question, a group of students were presented with a lecture on psychology. Half of these students were allowed to take notes, and the other half were not. After quizzing the students, it was discovered that each group remembered about 40% of the information that was covered. However, when the quality (rather than quantity) of the answers were examined, it was discovered that the students who had taken notes recalled pertinent points, where the non note-taking half recalled information seemingly at random. By taking notes, the students were able to point their brains at the correct information to remember. In this class we are given Power Point slides containing the lectures. Without the incentive to write notes for the quiz, many students will skip taking their own notes for studying, thereby reducing their chances of actually learning the material in this class.

Wax, Dustin. “Writing and Remembering: Why We Remember What We Write.” Lifehack 28 Sep. 2011. Lifehack. Web. 15 Jan. 2012. http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/writing-and-remembering-why-we-remember-what-we-write.html

Map Excersice: The United States

Rivers

Columbia River: Headwaters are in Canada (BC), then flows through Washington and then along the border between Oregon and Washington and finally into the Pacific Ocean.

South Platte River: Headwaters are in the Colorado Rockies. It flows through north-eastern Colorado, merging with the North Platte in Nebraska and continues until it hits the Missouri River in Omaha Nebraska.

Potomac River: Headwaters are in Virginia and West Virginia (South and North Branches, respectively). The river itself starts where these two branches meet in West Virginia and then form the border between Maryland and West Virginia as well as Virginia. It then flows through Washington D. C. and into the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

Rio Grande: The Headwaters are in southern Colorado, after which it flows south into New Mexico. The river neatly divides the state in half until it hits the New Mexico/Texas/Mexico border. At this point, it follows the Texas/Mexico border (the other way around, really, of course :-) ) until it reaches the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

Mountains

Ouachita Mountains: situated across the border between Oklahoma and Arkansas. The Eastern edge is at about Little Rock, Arkansas.

Sacramento Mountains: situated in south-central New Mexico, they lie north to south between the Pecos River and the Rio Grande.

Brooks Range: This range lies east to west across the north edge of Alaska, and includes many smaller mountain ranges (De Long, Endicott, and Baird).

Site and Situation

The situation of the USA: The majority of the country is contiguous, but also includes a small chain of tropical islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean as well as a northern state which partially lies in the arctic circle. Canada lies to the north, and Mexico to the south, otherwise the country is bordered by ocean. On a global scale, the country is partially isolated from other powerful nations because of the oceans lying between it and the rest of the world. It has also acted as a barrier between the East and West, and have also taken advantage of this arrangement through trade.

The site of the United States is varied in its topology, climate and other characteristics. It consists of almost 4 million square miles in area. The eastern side of the country (bordered on the east by the Atlantic Ocean) consists of hardwood forests as well as high population density. In the north, the climate is humid and cold, to the south, humid and hot. There is a mountain range (the Appalachians) that runs from the north to the south parallel to the coastline. On the other side of these mountains lies forests and farmland, gradually merging with the Great Plains, an extensive, high altitude prairie that covers the entirety of the central area of the country north and south. These plains eventually reach the Rocky Mountains which extend from the northern to the southern border. On the western side of the Rockies lies various desert areas until another set of mountains are reached (the Sierra Nevada Range and the Cascade Range). These mountains parallel the western coast, and the land between the coast and the mountains are again covered in forests and greenery. To the north lies a separated portion of the country, which consists of mountainous areas of ice and cold. Far out in the ocean lies another portion of the county in the form of a small volcanic chain of tropical islands. The continental divide lies in the Rocky mountains, and many important rivers stem from these mountains.

Discussion: Question #1

What current example of public persuasion might illustrate the tension between freedom of communication and ethical responsibility? How?

The international organization, WikiLeaks, publishes “submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers” to the public through their website (Wikipedia). WikiLeaks is attempting to persuade the public that they really ought to pay more attention to the goals (and the methods used to achieve those goals) that their governments and other institutions actually support. WikiLeaks was partially responsible for the recent uprisings in Tunisia through the publication of US Diplomatic cables (The Daily Mail). Freedom of speech demands that WikiLeaks be allowed to share what they are given, but there are times when the information given out can be dangerous (such as a list of our undercover spies). Although the media has moved on to other stories, WikiLeaks continues to publish the information that they receive, choosing the dissemination of information over keeping potentially explosive revelations under wraps.

I was personally interested in the response that commentators in the media gave to these publications as well as their editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. Many called for Assange to be executed or assassinated, while some suggested that he be given the Nobel Peace Prize (Siddique). Even under the guise of patriotism, it was clear that those with the most to lose were also the most vocal about their ethical condemnation of the tactics used by the WikiLeaks staff.

The Daily Mail. “'First Wikileaks Revolution': Tunisia descends into anarchy as president flees after cables reveal country's corruption.” The Daily Mail 12 Jan. 2011. Mail Online. Web. 12 Jan. 2012. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1347336/First-Wikileaks-Revolution-Tunisia-descends-anarchy-president-flees.html

Siddique, Haroon, and Mathew Weaver. “US embassy cables culprit should be executed, says Mike Huckabee.” The Guardian 1 Dec. 2010. The Guardian. Web. 12 Jan. 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/us-embassy-cables-executed-mike-huckabee

Wikipedia. “WikiLeaks.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 11 Jan. 2011. Web. 12 Jan. 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks

Discussion: Geographical Mental Mapping

Thinking like a Geographer means that you are aware of your environment. Geographers often participate in an exercise called "mental mapping" which helps a person describe their surroundings. What is your mental map of your neighborhood and the immediate area you refer to as home? Please describe it with enough detail that we can form our own mental images of it.

I just moved to a new apartment, so my mental map of my neighborhood is still sketchy. To the south are the main two roads through downtown (logging trucks use this road). Each of these roads are one-way, so the businesses in between form a sort of super strip of commerce that the rest of my neighborhood sits next to. To the north a couple blocks is the train yard, the river and an almost mountain which forms a very real barrier to the rest of the town. There is only one bridge (to the east) to get around this natural barrier. If you go west, you get to the edge of town and then to the fairgrounds, and no way to get back to the north side of the river.

In the business section of my neighborhood, we have a number of thrift stores, a strip club, a few bars and a sushi joint (that serves arm sized sushi rolls). between the strip of houses and apartments that I live in and the train tracks is a number of warehouses, auction yards and the dairy distribution center.

I usually think of my neighborhood as a group of layers starting from the river and covering the town until they hit the hills on the other side of downtown. The streets are set up to facilitate this idea, as well as the economic and social layers (I live on the poor side of downtown, and there are nice houses on the other side).

I want you to find a current event and explain how the topic of your current event relates to geography.

Airships touted as supply vessels for remote northern communities.

Because of the warming climate, it has become difficult to build the ice roads that are used to deliver supplies to isolated northern Canadian communities. This article discusses an interesting alternative: airships. These ships would carry about 20 tons of supplies and would be more economical than using planes or helicopters. They will be testing models this coming spring, and hopefully have a solution before next winter hits. This news article has to do with geography in a couple different ways. One is the spacial interaction between these remote areas and the more developed areas of Canada. Another is the question of global warming. And still another is the diffusion of ideas and airship solutions described in the article (the conference in Seattle, for example).

Final Project

I'll have to upload the file somewhere ... but I made a power point presentation for my final project.

My First Term of College

This is the end of my first term of college. I took two classes, both online, as I did not have a job when I registered, but hoped to find one and did not want my school and work schedule to overlap. By the time I finished my first week of school, I had a job working night shift at a local care home for dementia patients. This has been an experience! Something interesting happens almost every day I go to work. I haven't been to a regular school since 6th grade, as I was homeschooled (self taught, mostly) after that. I was nervous about taking a class with deadlines and assignments, but I think I did pretty okay in the end. I've been practicing my writing by blogging off and on over the years, and it doesn't hurt that I like it!

I feel like I learned a lot this term. It wasn't the ideas or techniques that I read in the book that I appreciated the most (I know how to read, and I could have done that on my own), but the feedback and pushing I got from my teachers. I'm always happy to be shown (whether directly with a note or indirectly through an activity or assignment) how I am doing things wrong. I realized that I had been being lazy, as well as my over use of it and is. I've been catching myself doing the same thing while writing my sociology assignments, and I can re-write my sentences to be more complete. I can really tell the difference between a sentence with a bunch of 'it's and one with actual words instead.