Jared Diamond/Guns, Germs, and Steel

Jared Diamond has written two books one of which called Guns, Germs, and Steel. He said Asia and Europe are doing better than other places because of their economy. He has also made multiple trips to Papa New Guinea. He is very environmentally friendly. He speaks some of their languages and has conversed with their people. He is a professor at UCLA. He is a scientist, author, and has gotten many awards, such as the National Science Award. A big part of his visits to Papa New Guinea is to study the vast variety of birds there. He is also very respected by his peers.

Guns, Germs, and Steel was written by Jared Diamond and was originally subtitled “The Fates of Human Societies.” The book has also been translated into 25 different languages. It is a great summary of Human History and serves as a foundation of understanding for it. Generally, superior weapons lead to military superiority. It talks about how some societies have been able to progress and advance and others don’t. This book relates to our class because earlier in the year we learned about Christopher Columbus who were able to conquer the Native Americans even they were severely outnumbered. The explanation for this is stated in the book, they had superior weapons.

Exams

On Friday, in Human Geography class, Mr. Schick reverted back to teaching us again. On top of that he also finished the exam review with us. Since we don’t have class again before exams, I think that it is appropriate to devise a prayer for exams. How does “Lord next week we have exams, help us pass without a peek,” sound. Mr. Schick was also, dong his best to make sure that we were ready for his exam, by telling us exactly how many questions are on the exam for each concept as well as what the short answers would be. For today’s review, we picked up right where Ben left off and started with Religion. We also covered World leaders and Economic Geography as well. Although we might not of gone over each individual piece of material, Mr. Schick still effectively helped us figure out exactly what we would need to study to prepare for his exam properly. Also, since this will be our last BLOG before Christmas, and possibly our last BLOG for the year depending on our teacher next semester, I would like to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I would also like to add that I am lucky enough to be in your Western Civilization class next semester.

Exam Review part 1

Mr. Schick officially quit teaching us today!! His reasoning behind this is because he believes that Ben Does a much better job of teaching class than Mr. Schick does. I however, disagree with this statement. I say this because honestly, Mr. Schick is way more knowledgeable on this topic than Ben could ever probably dream to be. Well in any case, let’s get to the more important occurrences in today’s class. For starters we finished the presentation’s today; in fact we heard the last presentation TWICE!! That’s right we heard the fifth and final presentation a second time because Mr. Schick/the class requested that Ben presents the last group’s advertisement again after they went.  Then, Mr. Schick started our exam review at the end of class and some people probably found that they need to do some studying for Human Geography. For example, when we were reviewing the vocab from Socrates and the CIA World Fact Book, some people were unable to come up with a sufficient answer or an answer at all.

economic geography project presentation

PRESENTATION TIME!!!!!! Today in Human Geography class, we began presenting our advertisements to the class. Only this time there’s a twist, before the first group went, he passed out a sheet for us to grade the other groups’ performance. So far, I gave most of the groups an A because they had fairly decent, professional-looking advertisements. However, I took off points because they made feel-like I could not read and just read the slides to their audience, one person even turned their back to my side of the room, GASP!!! I feel I am authorized enough to point these things out because I have successfully earned my communications merit badge and we were even required to prepare a five minute speech and deliver it to the rest of class. For this requirement, we were judged on time and number of umm’s. Honestly, I think we should just have a class centered around public speaking and how to properly get up in front of your peers and effectively deliver a speech or other presentation.

Japanese shadows day 1

Monday’s Human Geography class brought us more project time, and Japanese students. That’s right Japanese students La Salle high school. The reason for this visit is because they wanted to come to OUR school and shadow here for a few days. Therefore I would like to say Konichiwa to our Japanese students. Honestly the visitors we had were probably the most exciting thing that relates to Monday’s Human Geography class. I mean this would probably be labeled as opinion since all we did in class was work on our advertisements with our groups. Though my group’s presentation is definitely coming along we got our bibliography (some facts to go with it), a slogan (two actually: “We love cheap,” and fast, cheap, good), a product, and a way to sell foreign labor. With that, I would like to give Mr. Schick the impression that my group actually has a decent presentation.

Economic Geography project time

Guess what! There are no more “The People’s Republic of Capitalism” videos. Which only means one thing, it’s PROJECT TIME!!!! That’s right Mr. Schick assigned us a project to do which we will present on Wednesday of next week. For this project, Mr. Schick would like our groups to advertise either all-American products or products that were made over-seas in some foreign country. In addition to the advertisement, we have to find a product to use in our advertisement. For example my group is advertising over-seas products, so we decided to use Mc Donald’s Happy Meal toys. Part of the objective of using our product is to talk about how the prices of foreign made products compare’s to American made products of the same category. On plus, side to this project, in addition to it being somewhat fun, it means that we will not be having a test on this unit! However, we still want to do well on the assignment since Mr. Schick is yet to decide, whether it will be worth 100 or 200 points.

Look at that Chinese car...ouch!

Today in Human Geography class we finished “The People’s Republic of Capitalism: part 3.” One of facts that we were told about was that some American automobile brands like Ford and Buick are plummeting in America but are doing really well in China. On top of that, but jobs in the automobile industry are starting to go to China. Another point brought up is that China wants to start selling Chinese cars in the United States. Unfortunately, for the Chinese, people in America want stylish, luxurious, safe, and cheap cars. The problem is that many Chinese cars may cover stylish and cheap, though to sell a car for only $2,000; it would not be able to be the least bit luxurious nor would be anywhere near safe! In fact the cars spectacularly fail our safety testing!!! On the plus side, for us anyway, OUR JOBS ARE COMING BACK!!!! Which can only mean one thing, our economy might just make a turn upward, thus our unemployment rate will go downJ!!