September 2009 Archives

Read the September 2009 Newsletter: Is Your School Ready for the 21st Century?

Inside
GeoFeature: Hispanic Heritage Month
Geography in the News: Growth in Minority School Enrollments
Blog: Travel to Costa Rica with NG Explorer Enric Sala




Plus:

You may have noticed that the blog has been a bit sparse lately. There are two explanations: 1) We are in a period of transition between interns, who do the bulk of the writing. 2) Last week I was on vacation!

Taking vacations is a very geographic pursuit, of course, and I always try to turn my personal experiences into "teachable moments," as you may recall from previous blog posts on my trips to the UK, the BioBlitz, etc.

So, last week, I journeyed out West to visit a friend in Vail, Colorado--arguably the ski capital of the U.S. This friend, an ardent MWW supporter, is an East Coast native who had never put on a pair of skis before moving to mountain country.

You can imagine my surprise, and my delight, to discover that this friend had completely assimilated into a whole new culture at 8,000 feet above sea level, complete with a distinct lingo. I'm serious: there were points during conversations among Vail residents when I could barely follow the dialogue. So, like any good ethnographer, I asked what must have seemed like an incessant number of questions and took notes on this curious new ski-nation dialect. Below, five new additions to my vocabulary:

1. gnarly (adjective)
Used to describe anything really far out and amazing; an extraordinary stunt, or event. Also, onomatopoeia.

Use it in a sentence: "That was/is SO gnarly!"
*the root "gnar" can also be used as a noun--see below.

[definition adapted from the Urban Dictionary]

2. shred (verb)
To skate, ski, snowboard, surf or BMX (bicycle motorcross, a la former intern Cameron) aggressively.

Use it in a sentence: Tim totally shredded that last run. "SHRED IT!" - vocalized as an encouragement.

[definition adapted from the Urban Dictionary]

Put 'em together =
 "shred the gnar"

Dude [can apply to a guy or gal], let's go shred the gnar!
Bro [short for "brother," but meaning a friend], I can't.
Last gnar session I tweaked my dome [bumped my head].
Bummer [shame].

I came across this comical, yet thought-provoking article in the D.C. Washington Post Metro newspaper this morning:

D.C. Area Prinicipal Hits the Roof for Pledge

It seems an elementary school principal in Hyattsville, Maryland, has taken to extreme measures to motivate students to perform on standardized tests.

Two years ago, Lewisdale Elementary was placed on the state's "school improvement" list, meaning that it had failed to meet standards of "adequate yearly progress." AYP, as it is referred to in education circles, is a construct established under the 2001 congressional No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act that requires each state to set standards for public school accountability, along with timelines for meeting those standards.

When Lewisdale made the grade to improve off the "school improvement" list last year, Principal Glee-Woodard and testing coordinator James Green celebrated by allowing students to submerge them in a dunk tank, carnival-style.

This year, the two adventurous administrators raised the stakes. They encouraged teachers and students to don military fatigues in their quest to "win the war against the MSA [Maryland School Assessments]." And when the student body did achieve AYP, Glee-Woodard and Green spent an entire day this fall working from the school's rooftop.

What do you think of these administrators' approach to school improvement?

A couple notable global geologic events making headlines today...and why we should care about them as geographers

 

Earthquake in Indonesia
An earthquake shook the island of Java, Indonesia, at 2:55pm local time. [Review your map of world time zones: Jakarta, Indonesia, is 11 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time--in the westernmost of three Indonesian time zones]. The most recent NY Times update cited 33 fatalities coming from early reports. The earthquake registered 7.0 on the Richter scale, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

 Indonesia Fact Sheet

-- Indonesia is a nation of many islands--over 17,000!

--Several of these islands are shared with other nations. The famous island of Borneo, for instance, is made up of the Indonesian region of Kalimantan, as well as part of Malaysia. The island of New Guinea is shared with Papua New Guinea.

--The capital of Indonesia, Jakarta, is situated on the island of Java, where the earthquake struck. Java is the most populous island in the world [2005 data].

--Indonesia is the 4^th most populous country in the world--after China, India, and the U.S.

--A majority of Indonesians identify as Muslim--over 85%--making Indonesia the world's most populous Muslim country.

--Some of Indonesia's most prolific exports are coffee, tea, rubber and rice.

Why geographers care about the quake:
Natural disasters are prime examples of human-environment interactions. Communities in areas prone to natural disasters, such as the seismic Pacific Ring of Fire where Indonesia finds itself, must prepare for the inevitability of such events--socially, economically, architecturally, and in other important ways. Did you know that Indonesia has been struck by 29 quakes of magnitude 6.3 or higher in the last 5 years since the devastating 9.1 behemoth of December, 2004? Increasingly, governments, corporations, and other groups are using geographic tools like GIS to prepare for and respond to natural disasters.

 
New oil field discovered in Gulf of Mexico
The British oil company BP claims to have discovered an oil field deep in the Gulf of Mexico that it is describing as "giant." Read full stories in the NY Times and National Public Radio to learn more.

Why geographers care: