The Halloween party

So today we had our halloween party, so a couple of people brought in bags of candy for the class to eat. I brought In a bag of kitkats, which was my dasd but he doesn't need all the sugar so I took them but id did as my mom so I won't get in trouble if he finds out. In class today we got our test back and he said that our class average was a 87% which I think for a test that was very hard like that was a very good average. When I got my test back I got a 88% which I thought was really good, so after that we went over the test and wrote down the correct answers so that we could review from this test for the midterms in December. After we reviewed the test we started to talk about push and pull factors for migration. Some of the push factors were civil war, unemployment, underemployment, religious persecution. Some of the pull factors were freedom of religion, better jobs, better health care, and the freedom of speech. When we talked about some of the push factors some of the examples were like in the Middle East countries are in a civil war and many of the businesses have been destroyed by the fighting so there is a shortage of jobs among the people, another one was that if you were following. religion that was not the standard of a country some people might criticize you for it or even might threaten you. Some of the examples of pull factors was like in Canada health care  is very cheap but in return they have higher taxes, also in Canada they welcome refugees from countries and want them to come to their country. So these are some of the factors that affect migration. there are also many other factors that could influence migration but they are usually more specific depending on where a person comes from or what country they are in, in could govt. or religion or even the economy but one thing that is very common is they all look to the USA for refuge.

population factors

So today we learned about crude birth rate and crude death rate. Crude birth rate is the number of births per 1000 people of a population, Crude death rate is the complete opposite, its the number of deaths per 1000 people of a population. We also learned about RNI or "rate of natural increase". This number is produced by subtracting death rate from the birth rate. This gives us The annual natural growth rate in percentage form-for a country or region. After this we went over net migration. Net migration is the difference between the number of people entering and leaving a country during a year. An excess number of persons entering a country is net immigration, which results in a positive number. An excess number of people leaving the country is net emigration, which results in a negative number. Both Net immigration and Net emigration can both greatly influence and change the rate of natural increase. We talked about how Canada has a high immigration number because of the health care they have, unlike countries like Canada, a example is Mexico is that they have a very -1.68 per 1000 population. So this means the population is decreasing. Canadas numbers are 5.65 per 1000 population. So as you can see Canada Is gaining people while Mexico is losing them, now this doesn't mean that people aren't leaving Canada or entering Mexico because people are but more people are leaving Mexico than people are entering the country and more people are entering Canada than people are leaving Canada. So as you can see these factors can greatly affect the population of countries. Now countries like Monaco probably have  long life spans because many people who live there are very wealthy so they can afford very good insurance and health care along with very healthy foods and products. We also discussed why women usually live longer than men, when we discussed this we said because men usually do more dangerous jobs like being cops, working in factories, firefighter, or working on boats or oil platforms, while women are nurses, secretary, or are teachers along with working mainly in office buildings. But over the last couple years women have tarted to work in more dangerous environments such as joining the military or becoming firefighters or even becoming police officers. As I said before many factors influence the population along with the life spans of women and men and the average  life span for both gender combined. Many poor countries can't get access to clean water, affordable health care or even health care at all, and the ability to get proper medical treatment and even get the proper amount of food there supposed to each day, so many factors can affect a population in so many ways.

The water bottle

So today in class we learned about population and how it has changed over the century. In 1804 there was about 1 billion people on the planet. In 1927 there was about 2 billion people in 1960 there was 3 million people, in 1974 there was 4 billion, in 1987 there was 5 billion, in 1999 there was 6 billion and in 2011 there was 7 billion people. If you calculate the number of years in between the time when this data was taken it would show there every smaller amount of years millions of more people every year and if this amount has increased there would be no more space for people on earth, luckily in places like china they have put restrictions on how many children you could have because in past years so many people were being born that there wouldn't been any room after a couple of decades, Now some of the recent data shows that 73 million people a year are being born, approximately 200,000 a day, 8377 a hour, 149 per minute, and 2.5 per second. This is some pretty important  data if you think about it because if the amount per year increases there will be less space for people each year on the earth. We also looked at the population clock which shows the estimated population of the world based on the amount of deaths, the amount of births, now this girl Jamie who sits next ,to me was sorta losing it because it was messing with her head a little to much and she felt sick, so I just told her to not look, luckily though Mr Schick moved on to the next slide. Now the fun part of the day was that I brought in two water bottles because there are always these girls who complain their thirsty so to, how do I say this politely " shut them up" when they said something I gave them a water luckily though only two of them needs one so I had a perfect amount. But today was really fun because we actually learned something and I have something for my blog yea!

So yesterday I forgot to do my blog so it will be a day late but pretty much all we did was create questions that could be on the test, and a lot of them were on the test but most of them were pretty easy one of my questions was what could cartographers make a map based upon, it could be based upon a political view point like which political party a state voted for or what a states exports are like wether its metal, coal, farm crops, or lumber. it can be based upon many different things. We also had a shadow who has shadowed before but the the first time they shadowed we had class colors week so that day was a little hectic. But pretty much the day was the same, what I was surprised about was that there were questions on situation and site but no one created any questions for those two topics but this will be a short blog because I don't really have that much to talk about this class like usual I wish we did more stuff in class wether its taking notes or doing worksheets. Whatever as long as I have a good grade I'm happy .

the test

So today we had our test before the end of the quarter and it was really hard but I think I did ok on it, I just hope my grade docent suffer because I studied everyday this week on the stuff we talked about and I still don't think I did well but I guess thats just life you have teachers who challenge you and I understand its honors geography but we don't do anything in class at all so how am I suppose to learn when we get so far off topic, now I'm not saying that we haven't learned one thing this year but its hard to remember what were learning when we get off topic, it doesn't stick in our heads. Some students do well in our class and so do I but I feel like I should be doing better than I am and I don't want to move classes but I just enjoy social studies as much as before and social studies is my favorite class but how is it supposed to be my favorite class when I am barely enjoying my class, I guess it just how the world works.

The schedule

So today in human geo when we walked in everybody is asking this girl for donuts. The fact though she only had 4 donuts and the fact that they were donut balls is hilarious. Any way when Mr Schick enters the room faith starts to pass out cookies which I kindly said no thank you. So someone gets the idea to create a schedule in which each day we have class someone will bring in food for the class to eat. Know firstly I don't even understand why we need to bring food in for the class but the girls desired to create a schedule which I will have no part of. I am at John carroll to get a education, I shouldn't be paying thousands of dollars just to eat donuts. The fact that this is what we talked about for half of the class makes me so angry because I'm not accomplishing what I went to school to do. Learn, anyway after that half an hour discussion Mr Schick tells us that we have a test next week and we went over latitude and longitude but overall that class was the most pointless of the day I just hope though that Mondays class will be much better than Fridays because Friday was just terrible, we always get off topic and I don't understand how it gets is far off it just amazes me.

nothing

So today when we saw Mr Schick where he was yesterday, we all thought that he took of to watch the cubs game. But really he spent all day with his dog who he had to put down. He wanted his dogs last day on this planet to be a good one and one that he will cherish forever. I do feel the same pain Mr Schick is going through over the past ten years I have had to put 2 dogs down and I couldn't even stand in the room or even go to the vet, I just couldn't stand it.So today we didn't talk about anything really very girl who sits behind me was balling their eyes out because of the story then they started looking at dog pictures and started telling really weird stories about dying animals. So anyway we just picked up where we left off yesterday so I don't have that much to write about this blog but we did talk about how a man who sued the environmental protection agency who then became their president now that is just going to even more damage then their trying to stop but we also learned that big factories would pump toxic waste into Lake Michigan which killed a lot of plants and wild life and people also swam in the lake too, thats just disgusting but the environmental agency stopped that but with this new leader they have a lot of bad things are gonna happen.

think global act local

So today in class Mr Schick wasn't here probably for one reason ( Mr Schick don't get mad at me or take offense to this but you do seem like this person whoo would do this) He took off today so he could mourn over the loss the cubs had. Everyday he is wearing a cub piece of clothing wether it's socks, a belt, or a tie , or even a shirt. But Today is class we learned that global scale means to encompass the entire world which means more broad patterns. We also took some notes so here they are.

• Global scale means to encompass the entire world and means broad patterns
• Geography matter because it can explain human actions in a global scale such as what our actions are doing to cause global warming
• Geography also studies why arrangements such as where a company places a factory or where the population is growing rapidly could cause problems
• Globalization- is a force or process that involves the entire world and results in making something world wide.
• This means the scale of the world is shrinking in the ability of a person object or idea to interact with a person object or idea in another place.
• People are always worried about the economy and money and are becoming more of a uniform society, that’s is interdependent and integrated.

Now I know this isn't a lot but if you read its means a lot. We learned that geography studies the affect that if a company puts a factory somewhere what that would have on the environment around it, or if a population is growing rapidly in one area what big changes that could occur to the Earth and the environment in that area too. Globalization is a force or process that involves the entire world and results in making something world wide. A example is if the whole world stop using fossil fuels and switched to solar energy. That would put a major decrease in air pollution and stop some of the global warming crisis from worsening. Some other definitions is when a business starts to develop international influence or starts operating on a international scale. Now if a Cadillac a American car company went global more factories would be built causing even more pollution from the gas the cars and machines would burn in order to operate. The third definition which is very broad is the act of globalizing or extending to all or more parts of the world. Most of the world countries do international trade with different countries so since most countries trade internationally thats called a global economy, a example is the US, the USA does most of the world International trading wether its oil, clothing ,food , metal ,or even vehicles. We trade globally and since most of the world also trades globally the worlds economy is becoming more uniform because we all are trading globally, we don't just trade to neighboring countries we trade with all because most peoples minds are on the ruining of anyones life money, money buys power, protection, and evens buy people, you can bribe anyone with just the right amount of money to get what you want wether its influence over a country or to buy weapons for a military or even to control a country, back during the colonial times only people who were wealthy could vote so if you had a lot of money you could bribe other to vote for you or another person to get something you want. Another example is since apple makes their products in china, their able to make a lot of money because they pay their worker very little  but sell their products for a large amount of money to multiple countries or even all across the world. Their focus is making money but what they don't realize is the amount of pollution the factories create, china has days where the smog is so bad that people have to were breathing mask so they don't inhale poisonous fumes. Thats air pollution and its killing the earth so if bug factory companies go global their amount of factories will increase causing pollution to increase causing global warming to increase. But if we go global on switching to solar energy instead of buying fossil fuels pollution could be cut in half. Its all because people want to make the most money and if they switch to solar energy that cost a lot of money for them to buy solar panels and put them on their factories, it just depends on what people want, more money or for the earth to heat up until the north and south poles melt completely which could cause massive flooding causing many deaths and even the destruction of whole nations. In order to help the earth we must think global then act local because even if we switch a whole state to solar power its doing more then not doing anything, we just need to act.

Some of the products I use daily is my computer, my phone and my pencil and or pen. Both my phone and laptop are apple products. Apple was originally founded in the USA. My products like many other apple products were made in china

• Phone-apple-made in china
• laptop-apple-made in china
• pencil-ticonderoga-made in France, Italy, Latin America, asia
• calculator-texts instruments- Dallas texas
• computer mouse-insten-made in china
• Pen-pentel-japan,taiwan,france
• Xbox one-microsoft- made in china

As you can see most of my electronic items are made in china or another foreign country, this is because it cost companies less to pay foreign worker because the US dollar is a bigger value than the countries own currency, a example is china many companies such as apple and Microsoft have factories in china because chinas minimum wage is very small compared to the USA so companies don't have to pay workers average amounts of money as if the products were made here in the US, over I china they only have to pay them maybe 2 dollars for working a full day in the factory. As you can see it relates back to money.

solar panels

So yesterday we talked about solar panels. The reason was because we talked about the deepwater horizon oil spill that occurred and that because so much of the world runs on oil it is a very important resource. Mr Schick has solar panels and said that every time they added more solar panels to their roof they reduced their electric bill to a quarter of what it was so. Many people believe that solar panels aren't worth it because you loose money before you start saving and making money. That is because solar panels are very expensive but if you add a little at a time the panels will become more affordable because your saving money. The reason we talked about oil is because almost all machines on earth run on petroleum or oil and plastic is made out of oil, So with the oil spill of deepwater horizon a lot of money was lost. We also learned that the US is the largest consumer of oil in the world and we produce enough oil to supply India which is the third biggest consumer. The reason we consume so much oil is because plastic has oil and since so many companies use plastic containers the amount of oil we consume is almost tripled compared to the amount of oil we use for cars and engines. So if we switched to a small amount of solar panels and add one very year you will save more money than buying a bunch of solar panels at once. Oil is referred to as black gold because without oil many of the middle eastern and African economies would suffer and maybe cause major debt in the country along with the loss of many jobs so that why we buy so much oil. So clearly we didn't do much yesterday in class but I still was entertained and had fun.

The branch off of yesterday

So today was pretty much the same thing we did yesterday. Mr Schick allowed us to finish labeling the top twenty five countries in population size. So after we finished that we were allowed to find one cool fact on any country. I picked the Marshall Islands and my famous fact was that it contains two sites were the USA tested multiple nuclear weapons. So as I said before it wasn't that different from yesterday except the fact that we had a higher quiz grade average than the other class and ours was only a 60% so you can only imagine what the other classes grade average was on the quiz. But pretty much the day was the same but Im pretty sure Mr schick is excited that the cubs won their game and are advancing up the to the World Series because at least twice a week he's wearing a piece of clothing that has the cubs symbol on it or its some how related to the cubs because since he's originally from Chicago thats one thing he still hold on too since he moved here from Chicago to Maryland which a bunch of kids joke with him about because its part of the class routine. We come in , people complain, we sit down, Mr Schick says he docent care and we start class every day we have human geography thats what happens and its getting really annoying.

The CIA .gov

So today is human geography Mr Schick gave us a pop quiz on what we learned last week and this girl Kelsie was freaking out about it along with this girl Jamie who sits next to me. But this girl Faith who sits on my other side just says " oh shut up and stop complaining" and Mr Schick is just laughing  at my class because when Kelsie found out about the quiz she yelled :" NOOOOOO!!!!!" So I knew about the quiz and I did my best on what I remembered and I think I did pretty well but its a pop quiz and how well can you do if don't study. So after that Mr Schick shows us the CIA.gov website which has information on almost every country in the world because thats their specialty, sticking their noses in other peoples business but its for national security, but no ones every going to forget bay of pigs and that whole mess they created. So Mr Schick is showing us that this website can tell us almost anything about a country like their population, their government, their relations with other countries and the amount of people leaving and entering the country. So Mr Schick tells us that we need to label this map that he gives us with the Top twenty five countries with the biggest population. Which I almost finished but class ended but he is allowing us to finish it tomorrow it was actually pretty interesting to learn about different countries and all the little secrets they have. So overall today was the same as usual we did barely nothing and did something thats pretty easy.

The coordinates of the earth

So today Mr schick taught us what latitude and longitude were. Latitude is measured by parallels. Parallels are drawn parallel to the equator and at right angles of meridians. The way I remember what latitude is, latitude, latter their both parallel to the equator and on the geographic grid latitude looks like a latter. The second piece of a geographic grid is longitude. Longitude is measured by meridians. meridians are arcs drawn between the north and south poles. Now another difference is that if you stretched earth out flat parallels would be straight lines but meridians would be curved because they all intersect at the north and south poles. Both latitude and longitude help make up the geographic coordinate system the third part is elevation which is pretty self explanatory. So after that we watched a video with this weird British narrator that Mr Schick replayed the intro 3 times so we would just understand and laugh at his voice because it was just so monotone. Mr Schick also explained to us that since timezones usually revolve around countries that places that are out of a timezone but part of a country would have different time zones. Then mr Schick pulled up this pictures to explain why timezones are so weird.







800px-Standard_World_Time_Zones.png




So if look the time zones aren't straight lines down the earth. They are stretched out to include full countries so half of a country try has a different time then another. But with places like the USA its kinda of hard to make one fourth of the world in one time zone but most countries have their own time zone. another neat little fact is that in Greenwich England the coordinates is zero degrees longitude because the prime meridian passes through Greenwich. Today we actually had a fulfilled class with stuff to do.

The brain killer

So today was a pretty slow, boring, easy, relaxing day. Since it was Thursday Mr schick went around the school singing its Thursday. So when I got to class I was the first one so I just waited for everyone else to arrive. So when class started two of the other kids introduced their shadows. Then the brain killing discussion started Mr schick decided to pull some socratic method stuff today. He asked us why does the world not just centralize around one clock and time or why isn't it the same time around the world. So I raised my hand and explained that because of the earths rotation and how the sun rises and sets that to people on the other side of the world its night time when its day time here, but I wasn't really correct so after half of the class answered he started telling us about how there is no present because every second is passing so there is only a future and past. This is because the future is now the past and the past was once the future. Now I'm sitting there trying to comprehend wether Mr schick didn't sleep at all or if he just lost it. Me along with my other class mates are trying to not to pass out because what he's saying is literally breaking my brain. So after a half hour of explaining to us that theres only a future and past and asking us why the time isn't the same around the world we go too take 5 minutes of notes. So the reason why he asked this was because a man with the last name of Fleming introduced the idea that the time should be based on the center of the earth and that time should be the same around the world. Now I'm just sitting there trying not to have a seizure because what he is talking about for one I don't even know how this relates to human geography and two none of it makes sense it like the hippies of the sixties just abducted him and brainwashed him or that he is just loosing it so yeah today was pretty chill and laid back and I still don't understand the purpose of that discussion.

The Air Force flight suit

So today in human geo when I arrived Mr Schick wasn't there so I went and put my phone into the bin and sat in my seat. So as I'm waiting more of the kids start to arrive and take their seats then as I was waiting for it Madison walks in and says "its to cold in here" I was just waiting for someone to say that. So after that Mr Schick arrives wearing another piece of cubs clothing like every other day of the week. So as class begins he says that the guys are lucky because we have a dress code for the winter not a uniform the girls though have to still wear their skirts when its freezing outside. So he suggest that we should wear airfare flight suit as a uniform.

http://trooperclothing.com/product/flight-suit-with-2-patches/

So when everyone hears this he puts up a picture of Tom cruise in his flight uniform from the movie top gun. Now I'm thinking in my mind that Mr Schick is probably going to go home and watch Top gun and Jag. So after we've done that he gives us time to work on our regions based on states that have voted republican or democratic. So after I asked him to explain to me what were supposed to do yesterday I had to ask again. So once I do that I have created about 6 regions based on their physical features and political view. He thought when I asked him that I put California and Maryland in a category. Their on the opposite side of the country and have no relation besides they voted democratic in the three elections. So today was a pretty fun day and I didn't have to really do anything. Yea me.

Regions and cultural landscapes

So today in Human geo we started off by getting back our pop quizzes. Usually when someone gets an A Mr Schick rings his little bell but the. he called my name he didn't ring the bell so I know I did bad on it and I usually don't count an 85% bad but its social studies and I usually get the best grades in social studies so I wasn't very happy. After that Mr schick taught us what a region and cultural landscape. A region is a area of earth defined by one or more distinctive characteristics. A cultural landscape is a area fashioned from nature by a cultural group. After that he discussed that Chicago and Maryland have a different cultural landscape because of the different natural features in both regions. In Chicago they usually have the same weather all year unlike here though in Maryland we experience four seasons every year thats a regional difference. It also depends on their view of government. In Wyoming and North Dakota they don't like the federal government so they usually vote republican unlike these states ,states like network which usually vote democratic, this also can be affected partly by gun laws many people in Texas are allowed to carry a firearm but people in network don't , in Texas they have many wild predators in New York they have huge rats that can be removed with a exterminator. so after that we just partly worked on a assignment where we have to categorize the states into regions based on their similarities and differences. Today has been the worse day yet because I have 6 quizzes this week and when my dad picked me up he told me my great uncle had died from throat cancer. every year we have lost someone in my family and even though I was never close to my great uncle it didn't help by adding even more stress to my day and along the fact that I have to finish todays assignment for homework along with all the studying I have to do today I'm just about done with school and I even wonder should I be going to John Carroll?