9/19/12

Today in Human Geography, Mr. Schick gave us our first project, yay. For this project, we were assigned a group to work with, and then our group was assigned a country. Once we got our country, each group had to talk about various statistics such as life expectancy and the rate of natural increase. My group consisted of Alice, Darian, and Austin and the country we were assigned was the U.S.A.  

9/17/12

Today’s Human Geography class was not as exciting as previous classes where we talked about nukes and Mr. Schick being the Messiah. One of the primary reasons for this was because Mr. Schick tried to make today’s class as boring as possible. Another reason for this was we actually took notes on something for a test. Mr. Schick told us that this test, our first test of the year, will probably be on Thursday. A majority of these notes were terms, though we did take notes on other things as well. Some of the terms that we learned today were crude birth rate, which is the number of births per year per thousand, and the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), which is the average number of births per woman. We also learned that the world’s population increases by 77,000,000 per year, 208,000 per day, 14,000 per hour, 145 per minute, and about 2 per second.

Did You Know? discussion

Yesterday, in another exciting edition of Mr. Schick’s Human Geography class, we discussed the previous night’s BLOG and also we added comments to these ideas so we could understand exactly what the fact meant. For example, with the facts talking about twitter, texting, Facebook, and other forms of today’s technology, we discussed how much technology has spread to become a large part of our lives in just a handful of years. We also talked about how the fact that says that India has more honors kids than America has kids gives a vivid description of just how large their population is. Also while we were on the topic of technology, we told Mr. Schick about “A Day Made of Glass.” We told him how students would go to a state park and hold up a glass panel like a transparent I-Pad and it would show a live image of a dinosaur in the forest through the glass. After telling Mr. Schick about it, he asked us to send him the URL for it so he could watch it. Therefore, here you go Mr. Schick, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=a+day+made+of+glass&oq=a+day+made&gs_l=youtube.1.0.0l10.3575.7492.0.9451.10.7.0.3.3.0.79.404.7.7.0...0.0...1ac.1.gouxU-0M9No

Did You Know?

I enjoyed the entire video since I enjoy learning useless information, like the information in this video. However, if I had to pick the most fascinating facts, it would be the one that tells you the number of word in the English language and the one about texting and Social Networking sites. I found these to be most fascinating because, it seems cool to know how many English words exist and this shows you just how much this country, or planet for that matter, depends upon technology. Honestly, if it weren’t for school, I think that it would be completely possible for the world to forget how to write. I mean come on, how often is it that you see a hand-written invitation for a birthday party? Next to never!  Most people just send an e-mail or text message. Plus, in some schools, students take notes on their computers. Then when a research paper comes up, the teacher expects it to be typed. Just think where the human race could be in another century or so? Computers that take voice commands? Robot servants, like in movies?

U.S. threatened by Iranian Nukes

Is the U.S. threatened by Iranian nuclear weapons? Absolutely Not! Even if the Iranians wanted to nuke us they couldn’t. The reason for this is because the Iranian air force is not developed enough to make it all the way to the other side of the globe across the ocean carrying a nuclear weapon undetected, especially when there are satellites monitoring every inch of our nation. On the other hand, If we were to land a nuclear hit on Iran we would not only arouse Iran but there are probably a lot of Middle Eastern countries that would side with Iran. Thus, neither of us is likely to even contemplate launching a nuclear attack. Moving to a cheerier topic, we learned that Russia is one of the lower ranking in population. This is because most of its citizens live in the more southern and European parts since the rest is tundra, therefore rendering it inhabitable.

CIA Factbook Questions

 

1. What is the population of the United States?

The United States has 313,847,465 people as of July 2012.

2.            What are the five largest countries in the world, by population?

China, India, United States, Indonesia, Brazil

3.            What is the population of Pakistan?

190, 291, 129

4.            What kind of government does the United States have?

Constitution-based federal republic, strong Democratic tradition

5.            What is the unemployment rate in Zimbabwe?

Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate is 95%

6.            What is the largest country in the world by area?

The largest country in the world is Russia.

7.            What country has the third greatest number of airports?

               Mexico

8.            What country has the greatest number of exports? China

9. What country exports more oil than any other? Saudi Arabia

10. What country imports more oil than any other? United States

11. What country consumes more oil than any other? United States

12. Can women serve in combat roles in China’s military? Yes

13. What is GDP? Gross Domestic Product

14. What country has the highest GDP per capita in the world, and how much is it? Liechtenstein, $141,100

15. Is the US in the top ten for GDP per capita? No

16. Most of the countries with the highest birth rates can be found in what continent? Africa

17. 11 of the top 12 countries with the highest number of deaths from HIV/AIDS can be found in which continent? Africa

18. What other country is in the top ten? India

19. Where does the US rank in HIV/AIDS deaths? 18^th

20. Is the US #1 in number of cellular phones? No

21. What percentage of the US is Roman Catholic? 23.9%

22. What percentage of Mexico is Roman Catholic? 76.5%

23. What is Net Migration Rate? The total rate of immigration

24. Does the US have the highest Net Migration Rate in the world? No

25. What is the current population of the entire planet? 7,038,545,610

The two most important questions to me as an American are the one that asks about the Roman Catholic percentage in the nation since I follow this religion and the one that asks if we are in the top 10 for GDP because it gives you a rough estimate of where we are economically compared to other nations.

Mr. Schick, Human Geo teacher and...Messiah?

Today in Human Geography, we took notes on perhaps the most ironic thing ever… taking notes. When taking notes it’s a good idea to not write with complete sentences or even use correct spelling or grammar. We also heard a paragraph about the state of Illinois. The passage told us that Illinois (the prairie state) is the fifth most populated city in nation and the most populated city in the Mid-West. Illinois is also one of the leading industrial cities in the nation. On top of this, Mr. Schick recounted his illusions of being the messiah. He has these illusions because he was born in Chicago in December with sub-zero temperatures, there doctor was unavailable and there was no other hospital with room in it since everybody was being treated with frostbite. As a result of this factor Mr. Schick’s mother had to give birth without a doctor in a hospital that was not one of the major commercial hospitals that everyone knew about.