Geog 101 Thoughts and Notes

Class will not meet formally today. Instead, please watch the following segments of The Power of Place:

22. Dynamic Pacific Rim

Ecuador: Orange Alert — When scientists monitoring the Tungurahua Volcano see dangerous signs, they have to advise the government: evacuate or remain? Chile: Pacific Rim Player — Bordered to theeast by the towering Andes Mountains and to the west by the Pacific Ocean, Chile enjoys continued economic growth. Go to this unit.

23. Brazil: The Sleeping Giant
Sao Paulo: The Outer Ring — The sprawling mega-city of Sao Paulo is evidence that Latin America is among the most rapidly urbanizing regions. A Second Chance for Amazonia? — An American scientist discovers new possibilities for sustainable development in the Amazon basin. Go to this unit.

In addition, I will e-mail a take-home assignment to you later today; it will be due on Thursday February 11. For the benefit of those who are having problems receiving e-mails from me, I will also post the assignment on Blackboard.

I will not be in my office during office hours today, but I will be checking e-mail frequently. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Donald N. Rallis
February 9, 2010

In class today, we briefly discussed the controversial news story about the group of Christian missionaries from Idaho who were arrested in Haiti for attempting to take a group of children out of the country without permission. One of the women arrested said that her group had taken the children because “We wanted to give them lives of joy and dignity in God’s love.” A Baptist pastor told CBS news that the group, said “Based on the information we have, I’m not sure that we would do anything different” if the situation were to arise again.

Critics of the group took a different view. “”We have information about people trying to steal kids to take them out of the country, which is the reason why the government has decided to reinforce security,” Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Lassegue said of the arrests, ” Haitian Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Lassegue told the New York Times.

What do you think? Should the missionaries be prosecuted? Should they be released? Were they justified in doing what they did?

The video segments we watched in class today come from a series called The Power of Place, which is viewable online.  The series is designed to be part of World Regional Geography courses, and some of the segments (such as those on Mexico and Guatemala) provide useful case studies to accompany class discussions and your readings in the text.

Shia Muslims march through Stockholm as part of a religious celebration. (Photo: Donald Rallis)

In class on Tuesday January 26, we will continue our discussion of population dynamics in Europe with a discussion of immigration. But immigration isn’t only a demographic issue, it’s a cultural and political issue as well.

Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the stories in today’s news about a French parliamentary committee’s recommendation that women be forbidden from wearing Muslim face veils. France has the highest Muslim population in western Europe: about 5 million of France’s 65 million residents are French. The Washington Post reported last year that “many native French people… feel uncomfortable with an immigrant population that, as its numbers rise, increasingly seeks to live by its own religious and cultural rules rather than assimilate into France’s long Christian tradition.’

The French parliamentary committee’s recommendation follows last Novembers decision by Swiss voters to ban the construction of minarets in their country. Switzerland is home to some 400,000 Muslims, and the country has four existing minarets. The right-wing Swiss People’s Party had argued that the Swiss population would ‘either they would be subjected to misogynism and cruel punishments in the name of Islam, or else their existing culture, based on liberal Christianity, would prevail.’ But the Swiss vote was condemned by both the Vatican and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (which includes 57 Muslim countries.)

What do you think? Are countries like Switzerland and France justified in banning outward expressions of Islam as a threat to their traditional cultures and ways of life? Or are these bans symptoms of bigotry and intolerance?

In class on Thursday, we discussed the impact of improved sanitation on death rates in Industrial Revolution Europe. I recommend a fascinating book that is related to this subject; it’s The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson. The book describes a cholera epidemic in London in 1854, and the work of a maverick physician in figuring out how and where the disease spread. (This book would be eminently suitable for an extra credit review.)

I have just e-mailed a take-home quiz to all members of the class. Please print out the quiz, take it, and turn it in at the beginning of class on Tuesday January 26.

I will periodically send e-mails to all members of the class and some of them, like today’s quiz, will be very important. I will therefore assume that you are checking your e-mail, and that e-mails sent to the address you have on file with UMW are getting to you. If you did NOT receive today’s e-mail and quiz, you will need to figure out why. Perhaps it went into your spam folder, in which case you need to change your settings to ensure that you receive future e-mails from me. Unfortunately I can’t change the e-mail address that your mail goes to; I just click a button and the e-mail is sent to all members of the class. If you are having problems receiving mail, please contact the Help Desk to try and figure out the problem. In the mean time, you may e-mail me and I will send you a copy of today’s quiz.

In class on Thursday, I had planned to define the discipline of geography, and discuss its usefulness in helping understand world events.

In view of yesterday’s earthquake in Haiti, I plan to use the disaster as a case study for this discussion, and show how an understanding of geography is essential in making sense of the quake and its catastrophic aftermath.

In preparation for this discussion, please take a look at this posting on the Regional GeogBlog, and also make sure that you keep up with the news from Haiti.

Donald Rallis

Welcome to Thoughts and Notes, the blog site for Geog 101, World Regional Geography.

Since we have to cover the whole world in only 13 weeks, there won’t be time in class to engage in as much discussion as a course like this warrants. That’s the reason for this blog: it’s a place to pose questions, exchange ideas, and explore further some of the issues we cover (or some that we don’t cover) in class.

I will use this blog to post links to items of interest, and also to post notices to the class as a whole. So please check this page often. And please use it to make your voice heard!

Donald N Rallis

1. THE LAST MAP QUIZ.  I gave you a firm undertaking a the beginning of the semester that I would never change the date of a map quiz. I hope you will forgive me if I go back on my word. Since we will still be discussing Southeast Asia on Tuesday and Australia on Thursday, it seems to me to make sense to have the last quiz on Thursday November 19, instead of the scheduled date of Tuesday 17th.  BUT if for any reason you would prefer to take the quiz as scheduled on Tuesday, you may do so. Just stop by my office during office hours.

2. ANOTHER TAKE-HOME QUIZ, this time on Southeast Asia. I have sent it to you by e-mail; if you didn’t receive it you can also find it on Blackboard. Please turn it in at the beginning of class of Tuesday. AND REMEMBER… if your quiz is printed on two sheets of paper, the two sheets MUST be stapled together. I will not be held responsible if part of an unstapled quiz goes astray and your quiz grade suffers as a result.

Donald N. Rallis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Geography
University of Mary Washington
Fredericksburg, Virginia 22401
United States of America
+1 540 654 1492