Review on CIA Factbook

   Today in class, we reviewed our answers from our homework over the weekend. For homework, we had to answer twenty five questions that Mr. Schick gave us. We had to use the CIA Factbook to find the answers. As we went over the questions in class, we talked about each answer before moving on to the next question. If we got any of the answers wrong, it was a good idea to correct them. I think that the two things that I remember most is how high the United States is located on the HIV/AIDS death chart. Its ranked number 18 out of the many countries all over the world. It's kind of sad when you think about it because there are ways to prevent this disease. Another thing that I remember the most is that there is a 95% unemployment rate in Zimbabwe. This means that 19/20 people living there cannot find jobs. It makes you think of how lucky you are to actually have a job that pays you enough to support your family. Basically, during the whole entire class, we just went over and corrected out homework questions.

CIA Fact Book Scavenger Hunt

1.      What is the population of the United States?

-          316,668,567

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?

-          193,238,868

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?

-          95%

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

-          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 has the second largest proved reserves of crude oil in the world?

-          Venezuela

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

-          Yes

13.  What is GDP?

-     GDP means gross domestic product; t his entry gives the gross domestic product or value of all final goods and services produced with nations in a given year;

14.  What country has the highest GDP per capita ( people)  in the world, and how much is it?

-          Qatar 103,900

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 or 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

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?

-          82.7%

23.  What is Net Migration Rate?

-          The difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a country each year per 1000 persons. An excess of people entering the country is referred to as net immigration. An excess of people leaving the country is referred to as net emigration. 

24.  Does the US have the highest Net Migration Rate in the world?

-          No (3.6/1000) 

25.  According to the Fact book, what is the current population of the entire planet?

-          7,095,217,980

Migration

    Migration is the movement from one place to another. The Net Migration Rate, NMR for short, is the difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a country each year. There is immigration and emigration. Emigration is the excess of people who are leaving the country. When measuring this, it is written in a negative number. Immigration is the excess of people who are entering the country. This is written in a positive number. For example, Canada has 5.65 migrants per 1,000 population while Mexico has -3.11 migrants per 1,000 population. When people migrate, they want to leave their country and go somewhere else. Push forces are things that make the people want to leave the country. One way that you can remember this is by thinking that these things are physically pushing these citizens out of their country and making them not want to live their anymore. Some push forces are civil wars, environmental degradation, unemployment or underemployment, and religious or ethnic persecution. Pull forces are things that attract others to a country. You can think of these forces as physically pulling them into their country and having them stay there. Some pull forces are better economic opportunities, better health services, religious freedoms, and political freedoms. There is also a thing called the Total Fertility Rate, or TFR. The Total Fertility Rate is the average number of children born per woman. In order for a population to remain the same, the TFR must be at least 2.1. The higher the rate, the more the population increases. The lower the rate, the more the population decreases. In each country, there is a different TFR. For example, in the United States the TFR is about 2.6 while in Nigeria the average rate is about 5.38. In certain places around the world, the Total Fertility Rate is higher because parents tend to have more children in case one of their children die at a young age. A lot of children don’t live long enough to see their first birthday due to malnutrition or from a disease that they picked up and didn't have the right medication to cure themselves. It’s actually a really sad thing when you think about it because it’s like the parents are expecting at least one of their kids to die and to not live as long as they hope they would live.

Population and Migration

    In class today, we focused more on talking about population. There are over 7 million people living on the earth right now. The population is increasing by 77 million more people per year. Life expectancy is the average number of years that are expected to be lived by a group of people who were born in the same year. It seems that women usually live longer than men. For example, if you look at the life expectancy of the United States, you'll see that the average is about 78 years old. If you look more into depth, you'll discover that men usually only live to about 76 years old while women live to about 81. Women tend to live longer because they take more care of their health on a daily basis and have less risky jobs. You can measure population by the crude birth rate, the crude death rate, and the rate of natural increase. Crude birth rate is the number of births per 1000 of the population. Crude death rate is the number of deaths per 1000 of the population. The rate of natural increase, RNI for short, give us the natural growth rate for a country. You can find this by subtracting the death rate from the birth rate and then dividing it by 10.

First Test of The Year

  On Friday, we had our first test in Human Geography. It was made up of ten multiple choice questions and three essays. The test covered everything that we have learned so far from the meaning of arête to globalization. While we were taking the test, all of the sudden the fire alarm went off. We all had to get up and walk out to the football field and stand there. While we were standing there, Mr. Schick had to take role call just to make sure everyone was with us. After about twenty one minutes, the drill was over and we could finally head back inside. Luckily it was nice out and wasn't too hot or else it would've been worse standing out there. Once we got back into the classroom we had to finish completing the test. If we didn't finish, Mr. Schick would give us extra time due to the fact that the fire drill took time away from the test. I only have to complete one more essay and then I’ll be finished. So far the test is pretty easy to me. Hopefully when I get my test back on Monday to finish it, I’ll see that I did well on the multiple choice part of the test!  

Globalization PowerPoint

   Today we all presented our power points that we've been working on. We've been working on this "project" for a few days now in class. Our power point had to be about globalization. We had to define what globalization exactly is and also list pros and cons. A pro of globalization is that it has decreased poverty. In some countries, like China. India, Uganda, and Vietnam, they have opened up to the economy and have decreased their amount of poverty. In China, their poverty rate went from 60% to 16% between the years 1990 and 2005. While globalization has pros, it also has cons. Globalization only makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. It give better benefits towards the mangers and investors than the workers. Also, globalization has led to the exploitation of labor. This means that many children are coerced into working for places with inhumane conditions. After we all presented, we went over what we needed to know for the first test of the school year. We found out what would be on the test and what we needed to study. Hopefully, the information will still be fresh in my mind when it comes time to take the test!

"Just Don't Do It"

   After Nike didn't take care of the sweatshop situation in Indonesia, many people protested against them. The protesters' slogan "Just Don't Do It" caught Nike's attention. People were boycotting all Nike products due to the unfair labor practices. This had an extreme effect on the money they were making. Nike knew they had to do something about it before it got worse. They claimed they had fixed the problem. They said that they improved the working conditions and safety hazards in the sweatshops. Also, they raised the minimum wage to $3.70 per day. Little did they tell you that they hired military officials to coerce the workers into agreeing to the amount they are paid. In Indonesia, the minimum wage is $4.00 unless the worker signs an agreement paper saying that its okay to pay them less. Nike used the military officials to pressure the workers to sign the agreement even if they didn't like it. The workers would sign them relentlessly because they knew that they needed the job in order to support their family needs. Some articles leave that last detail out when they are covering the story while others add it in. That's why you always have to look even more in depth for left out facts.

Behind the Swoosh

    Jim Keady is the co-director and co-founder of the organization called " Educating for Justice". Jim was a pro soccer player along with a soccer coach at St. John's University. While Jim was working at St. John's he was told to be an endorsement for Nike. He was supposed to wear Nike items while the team wore Nike equipment that were given to them. After doing research, Jim discovered that Nike was practically violating everything that the Catholic social teaching is about. He then refused to wear any Nike products. The principal gave him two options: wear Nike and just drop it or he could resign after the year. Even though Jim was told this, he just kept talking about it until he was fired after the year ended. Jim wanted to see how bad the sweatshops really were. He wanted to be physically able to smell them, see them, and touch them. Jim and Leslie traveled to Tangerang, Indonesia to experience it all. They were going to live the daily life of sweatshop workers without doing all the work. They wanted to see how they live with the small amount of money they get. After paying off the rent, electricity, water bill, and any main transportation they have about $1.25 left. With that money, they're supposed to buy food and get any medication they need. Jim and Leslie tried to get into the sweatshops but were denied many times. Once they were denied the first time, the manager of that sweatshop sent out a fax to all the other buildings warning them about these two people. They said that you weren't allowed to talk to them only the managers were allowed to and if you were seen talking to them or anything, then you would have to deal with the consequences. Every time they would get near any of the workers, guards would quickly surround them and they would be under their watch at all times. While you're watching this video, it opens up your eyes and helps you realize that there are bad results of globalization along with the good ones.

9/13/13

    As soon as class started today, Mr. Schick decided to scare the whole class since it was Friday the 13th. He was pretending like he was waiting for class to start and then yelled "boo". A lot of people got scared and it was really funny. After that happened, we talked about how Wikipedia is a good source to use to jump start your research. Its basically like a summary of everything from hundreds of websites. We saw that one page on Wikipedia could lead to another page which could lead to another page and so forth, kind of like a domino effect. Also, we talked about how if the article is too big, then you can just look at the table of contents to find the area you need to cover. Once our discussion about Wikipedia was over, we were told to split into groups of three to four people. While we were in our groups, we had to start making a PowerPoint presentation. We have to define globalization and find pros and cons about it. By using Google documents, we can all work on the same presentation but different slides at the same time.

Globalization: Day 2

    In class today, we continued to talk about globalization. You can use the word interconnected to describe globalization. Interconnected means to some how be connected with another human or thing. Being bilingual is becoming more and more common due to globalization. It allows cultures to become closer together if they can all understand the same language. Some languages, like English and Mandarin, are becoming used by millions of more people. Shipping containers also helped globalization. They helped because they make it easier to export and import a huge quantity of goods to and from places. They allow us to get products that we cannot develop or grow over in the United States. After World War 2 ended, the United Nations (UN) was created. It was created so that many countries could get together and talk everything out instead of going to war. The main headquarters is located in New York, New York where it has flags that represent each country. This is where they talk about what is needed to be done in order to keep everyone safe all over the world. Globalization keeps the world all connected together by many attributes.

Globalization

         Today in human geography, we covered globalization. Globalization, also known as “Americanization”, is the results of the expansion of international cultural, economic, and political activities. It has been around for many years just like civilization. Basically, we're trying to spread our culture everywhere. A lot of American exports are the cause of globalization. For example, McDonald's is a main one. There are now McDonald’s restaurants in places like Tokyo and China. This has a small bad effect on it though. Since these new fast food restaurants are starting over there, more and more people don’t have a sit down meal with their family. It is also causing people to gain weight because of eating the food so often. Africa is the only continent that is taking longer for globalization to really effect it. They don’t have cell phone towers and electricity for many things. If you’re lucky, you might be able to have a cell phone if you have service near your home. Globalization has helped our world become more universal.


This is from Tuesday September 10.  I accidentally posted it onto my English blog once I had completed it. 

Google Documents

    Today in class, we got into groups of three or four people. While we were in our groups, Mr. Schick taught us how to set up Google Documents. He showed us that more than one person can work on the same paper at the same time.We also found out that in one week on Friday, we'll have a quiz on everything we have learned so far. Socrates, the Socrates Method, A Message To Garcia, and all the vocabulary words will all be on the quiz. On our Google Docs, we had to create questions that could be on the test and figure out the answers for them all. I think that this is a really good technique to use because it allows a group of people to work together on something even when they're not in the same room.

Did You Know?

   In class on Friday, we watched the "Did You Know?/ Shift Happens" video. While watching it, it opened up my eyes more. It made me see how big the earth truly is and how much it is still developing day by day. One of the facts that caught my eye was that Facebook has over 800 millions users as of December 2011. With that many people, if Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd largest country. If you think about it, that's an enormous number of users for a social network site that is still growing daily.  Another fact that interested me was that there are enough text messages being sent and received on a daily basis to exceed the population on earth. The first ever text message was sent in December of 1992, which was about 21 years ago. In 21 years, the human race has sent over 7.046 billion text messages. When you think about it, its kind of understandable since there are 7.046 billions of people in the world and most of them do have cell phones. The one fact that blew my mind the most was that we are being prepared for jobs that don't even exist yet. We're going through all this schooling and stuff when in a few years, the things we learned will just be outdated. We could be preparing for some job in the future that we don't even know anything about yet. I think that this video really helps you realize that every day the world is changing and is growing step by step.

Socrates

     Today, we talked more about Socrates and his trial. Socrates would go around and continuously question people. He would offer them other explanations to what they were originally taught and would cause people to think of the overall picture. Some people would even question their own beliefs. For Socrates' trial, he was charged with corrupting the Athens' youth. Out of the 500 jurors of the trial, 280 people found him guilty while 220 said he was innocent. When he was found guilty, he had two choices. He could either be ostracized from Athens or taken the death sentence. Socrates didn't want to be ostracized from Athens because it was embarrassing and shameful. He was given many chances to "sneak" away from the guards but took the death sentence proudly. In the painting of Socrates, everyone looks upset except for him. Its kind of like he had already accepted the fact that he was going to die and faced it with a positive attitude. Socrates' most famous statement was, " the unexamined life is not worth living". Socrates is remembered as someone who died for being proud of his beliefs and wouldn't change for anyone.

9/3/13

   Today in class, we reviewed all of the words we had to define over the weekend. We shared everything that we learned about each topic. An agora was a meeting place back then in Ancient Greece where basically everything happened. Voting, meetings, and sports events were some things that went on there. Arete means living to your highest potential of excellence. Also it meant to try to be the best possible person that you could be. We also talked about what happened in 508 BC. In 508 BC, the Greek citizens overthrew their ruler. It was the first time in human history that a group of people did that. The citizens then created a democracy. They made their own branches of government so everyone would have a say in what would go on in the community. Socrates was a Greek philosopher and was one of the founders of the systematized form of basic teaching which many teachers use today.  In his mid-seventies, he was put on trial for “dissing the gods” and corrupting the Athens’ youth. He was given two options, execution or forced suicide. Socrates chose to drink the poison called Hemlock. Hemlock would numb your body completely and would basically suffocate you.

Important Definitions

• agora- a place where an assembly would gather and talk
• arete- excellence, means "being the best you can be"
• polis- a city-state located in ancient Greece
• the year 508 BC- In 508 BC, Cleisthenes reformed the constitution of ancient Athens and started a democracy  He is known as "the father of Athenian democracy". Male citizens were now allowed to vote on how the city-states should be run.
• Socrates- Socrates was a Greek Athenian philosopher who was one of the founders of Western philosophy. 
• the death of Socrates- When Socrates was in his seventies, he was given the death penalty for being a traitor against the establishments and recognition of the Greek gods. As he was waiting for his execution, he drank poison and then was instructed to walk around until his legs felt numb. Once he could no longer feel his legs, the numbness slowly made its way up his body and reached his heart killing him instantly.
• the Socratic method- The Socratic method is where you ask question after question in order to find contradictions in the person's thoughts and to help them come up with a solid conclusion. It helps understand critical thinking, reasoning, logic, find holes in their own theories and to fix them immediately.
• what the ancient Greeks meant if they called you an idiot: If you were called an idiot back in the ancient Greek times it meant you were a private person who wasn't involved in politics or public life.