Human Geography

Today in Human Geography we took more notes and we learned about push and pull factors and how they affect immigration to different places like the United States and Canada. We also talked about how Canada has higher taxes than America because they have health care for the entire country and they need the higher taxes to pay for them and in the United States we do not have that and everybody is on their own unless the government caused it in some way. We also talked about push and pull factors and some push factors are Civil War, environmental degradation, unemployment or underemployment, and religious or ethnic persecution. Some pull factors are better economic opportunity, better health services, religious freedom, and political freedom.

Today in Human Geography we talked about life expectancy and I learned that in Monaco, where only the richest people can live, they have a life expectancy average of 89.52 years with men at 85.63 years and 93.58 years for women. The United States is in 42nd with an average of 79.68 years with men at 77.32 years and women at 81.97 years. The lowest is the country of Chad with an average of 49.81 years with men at 48.64 years 51.03 years. We also talked about Net Migration Rate and how Canada has 5.65 migrants per 1000 people and the United States has 2.45 migrants per 1000 people but the United States is higher because we have a lot more people than Canada does so it is not as easy to measure how close or how far it is. Mexico has -1.68 migrants per 1000 people because a lot of people are leaving the country to seek a better place for themselves and their families if they have one.

Today in Human Geography we took a lot of notes and we looked at how the world's population is changing all the time and some of the statistics were that there are 7.5 billion people in the world right now and every 12 years it goes up another billion and in 2011 there were 7 billion people in the world. In 1804 there were 1 billion people in the world and it took over 10,000 years to get to that point. Mr. Schick told us that from the time that he was born the world's population has doubled and 90% of the population growth from the world comes from developing countries. We also learned that because India does not have a limit on how many children people can have, their population is skyrocketing and it will soon take China's spot as the country with the highest population in the world.

Today in Human Geography we took our test and I was surprised at the questions that I found because one of the questions that I suggested for the test was actually on it as were other students' questions and so it was like we had made our own test like at Build-A-Bear workshop. I feel good about it but there were two questions that I was confused on and one of the was where we had to figure out what place was at the points 0 degrees North or South and 78 degrees West. It was hard to figure this out because I do not remember learning it in class and I hope that I got the question correct but I am not sure that I did.

Today in Human Geography we talked about our blogs from last night with the questions that we wanted to see on the test and one of the questions that I picked was "What is the biggest country according to land mass," and the answer is Russia. One that a lot of people shared was about what three countries are the biggest with population whit China in first, India in second, and the United States is in third. A third question was "What is a cartographer," and the answer is that a cartographer is a person who makes maps. A question I had is What are N to S lines called and that is Meridians. Another is what are E to W lines called and they are parallels.

Today for my blog my three questions are: 1. What are the top three countries in the world in order? China, India, and U.S.A 2. What is the smallest country in the world? the Pitcairn Islands 3. How many countries are in the whole world and which one is the biggest? there are 237 countries in the world and Russia is the biggest. I would hope to see these and it would be good to see them because I know the answer to each one of them.

Today in Human Geography we talked about why Mr. Schick was not in class yesterday and we learned that it was because he had to put his dog Fredrick Doglass down and he showed us a picture and then we started sharing stories about our own dogs and a kid named Ryan shared a really sad story. He said that one day he was playing with his dog and that when he threw a ball his dog ran and then slowed down before slowing down and collapsing. Mr. Schick then was talking about how they got Fredrick Doglass and told us that he had very messed teeth because he had been chewing on a chain he was attached to.

Today in Human Geography Mr. Schick was not present so we took notes on our own on the rest of his blog and there were a lot of things that we would have read and went deeper into if Mr. Schick had been in school. One of the things we would have gone deeper into is that when geographers look at the world in a global scale, they tend to see broad patterns. Two definitions of globalization I found on the web were 1.  globalization is the process of interote integration arising from the interchange ideas and other aspects of culture 2.  globalize develop on be developed so as to make possible intenation influences or operation I have my shirt made by Land's End in Cambodia My pants made by American Eagle in Bangladesh My planner made by Order Out Of Chaos in America

Today in Human Geography we talked about how we went over the maps from a long time ago with how each place in the world voted and that Texas and many other states voted for Trump and in Maryland, Harford  county voted for Trump but Maryland still was won by Hillary and so was Illinois because Chicago voted for her but Trump still won the election. Not many states changed the way they voted from Kerry to Obama but the ones that did, it was not a very significant amount because the states that voted democratic were very large and worth a lot of electoral votes because the electoral votes are the ones that matter because you need at least 270 when running for President to win the election.

Today in Human Geography we explored the CIA website more and had to look at different places or countries around the world and we then had to pick one and share what we thought was an interesting fact about it. I chose Bermuda and my fact was that  Bermuda was first settled in 1609 by shipwrecked English colonists heading for Virginia. Self-governing since 1620, Bermuda is the oldest and most populous of the British overseas territories. I thought that this was interesting because I did not know that Bermuda was the oldest of the British colonies and I did not even know that it was colonized by the British. I was also surprised that it is the most populous of all of the British territories.

Today in Human Geography we got a version  of the world in two different maps and using a CIA website we found the top 25 countries in the world and labeled where they were on the different maps and after we did that we could add any other places we wanted but I did not because we were almost out of time when I finished. I was looking around at the website during my off-mod for the day and I saw a lot of things that were interesting like how America is a smaller country than China and India because both of them have over 1 million people in their population and America does not even have half a million people living here. I thought this was interesting because I thought America had a lot more people in it But I was wrong and a lot of countries don't even have 100,000 people.

Today in Human Geography we got back our pop quizzes on the two maps that were in a packet that we did a few days or a week prior to taking the pop quiz and I was surprised that I only got one wrong when I thought I would get a lot more wrong because I did not study and was not prepared for it. We also learned about Cultural Regions and how culture is a complex concept because it can have two different meanings. The first meaning is to care about which means to adore or worship something, as in the modern word cult. The second meaning is to take care of which means to nurse or look after something, as in the modern word cultivate. We then got into groups of three and started looking at a map of regions and giving three distinct or defining characteristics for each. The class time ran out before we could get to the final step of creating a chart that compares the cultural differences between the regions which I think we will start finishing this on Thursday.

Today in Human Geography we talked about time and how it related to the rest of the world and us. We talked about how when at 1:30 it was 12:30 in the next time zone because we are an hour ahead of them but in the time zone to our right it would be 2:30 because they are an hour ahead. We also talked about how you cannot measure the present time because it is so small that if you make it something then you can always shrink it and you are forced to because now is only a way of speaking but is only true for the shortest possible amount of time which we cannot measure.

Today in Human Geography we finished looking at the election maps for the three elections prior to President Trump's election. We talked about how even though Hillary won the popular vote, Trump got at least 270 electoral votes which is why he is President. One unique state was Illinois because Trump was winning most of the state but the biggest city, Chicago, voted for Hillary and she got the electoral votes for Illinois. We also finished defining the specific regions for each of the places on the map and how they voted by looking at a map that Mr.Schick showed us and a lot of the groupings for regions were the same as how they voted.

Today in Human Geography we talked about Cultural landscape, and different types of Regions.  We also looked at three different maps where it included how the states voted in the three elections before Trump's and we had to put them into regions. I noticed that when Obama was running for president a lot of states that had been red in the prior election turned blue around Michigan and California but a lot of states stayed the same color and voted for the same party of either Democratic or Republican. Maryland always votes Republican but Texas always votes Democratic and both of these states are not swing states and will never change the way they vote.