Western Civilization

Today was all about reviewing for the exam. The main thing we covered were the prompts for the essay questions which Mr. Schick was so kind as to give us them. Everybody will answer essay one which, as directly stated on the class blog, is: Essay One: The population pyramids below represent two countries at different stages of the demographic transition and economic development. Explain the demographic characteristics of each country below with respect to the demographic transition model. Describe potential issues both countries could face in the future if their population pyramids remain the same. Discuss possible solutions to each country’s population concerns. Some possible points of focus in an essay about this could include that Country B could experience a job shortage since there will be no people to work on construction fixing roads and bridges, or no coal miners to work the mines will result in a trade shortage. Also, with a lot of elderly folks who do not wo

Today, Owen baked two cakes for Mr. Schick since it is his birthday tomorrow, December 9th. One cake was pink to symbolize the female side of population pyramids and the other was blue to symbolize the male side of the population. Mr. Schick had to ask if the top part of the cake was super old to poke humor at the fact that the top portion of population pyramids is where the elderly is accounted for. Then the class sang 'Happy Birthday' to Mr. Schick. We spent the remainder of class enjoying the cake and spent the last ten minutes or so reviewing some topics people were unsure about for the exam. The Demographic Transition is a process contrary to what I thought. I previously believed that the demographic transition was a graph since that is what Mr. Schick had when on the board when he was explaining it. The demographic transition is a process or series of stages a nation or community will go through. Enjoy your birthday weekend Mr. Schick! 

Mr. Schick was out today but left us with a treat. We spent the class reviewing for the exam using the blog post explaining everything that will be on the exam. I worked with Aidan S. to create a review guide with thirty some questions. Here it is: Human Geo Semester 1 Exam Questions Q1: What is human geography? Q2: What does human geography focus on? Q3: What is a map? Q4: What is a time zone? Q5: What is the geographic grid? Q6: What does GPS stand for? Q7:  What is the difference between site and situation? Q8: What is a region? Q9: Define Globalization. Q10: What are meridians and parallels? Q11: What is the line 180 degrees East or West Longitude called?   Q12: Why is each point on Earth unique? Q13: What is the name given to each place on Earth? Q14: What is diffusion when talking about human geography? Q15:  After which war was A Message to Garcia written? Q16: Who wrote A Message to Garcia? Q17: Which U.S. Presiden

Today we listened to all the helpful and wise advise Mr. Schick had to give us about exam's week. The exam for human geography class will be worth one hundred points. The exam will have two essays. These essays will be essential to the entire grade as they are worth fifty percent of the exam grade, or fifty points. Essentially, the essays are worth ten percent of our grade, since they are fifty percent of the exam which is worth twenty percent of our grade. There will one hundred multiple choice questions each worth a half a point. The good part of it all is that Mr. Schick will give us a little bit of help with the essays. The first one will deal with the demographic transition model and population pyramids. The second essay will be our choice from two or three writing prompts. Mr. Schick believes that giving us a little bit of aid on the essays will be beneficial to us and to him because studying for the essays will help us with the entire exam. Also, it will be more enjoyable f

Today we started off class by having some people suggest the idea of taking a picture of their notes directly from their notebook. This could serve as the blog for the day. Mr. Schick advises that this is not the best practice because physically transferring and reading back through your notes will help you learn what you wrote down in class that day. Mr. Schick’s most recent blog post at the time of the writing of this, reads “another view of the Demogrpahic Transition model.” This is what we did today. In the blog post, there is a description with a new set of words to explain in a different way what a Demographic Transition Model demonstrates. Demographic Transition (DT) refers to the transition from high birth rate and high death rate to lower birth rates and death rates. Another interesting fact that I learned today was that the Industrial Revolution began in the seventeen-hundreds in Great Britain with the development of textile mills. 

Today Mr. Schick introduced us to a new form of measuring population growth by deaths and births. This new form is called a Demographic Transition Model. This looks like a graph with two shaded regions indicating births and deaths. The United States of America's population is growing but not rapidly. Our population grew approximately by two million people going into this year. The population pyramid and demographic transition model both do not take into account the number of immigrants and emigrants entering or leaving a country. Following up on yesterday's discussion, I did some additional research on spending on the U.S. Military. So far this year, there have been 22 U.S. Military non-combat plane crashes. This number is up thirty eight percent from last year. According to multiple people on Capitol Hill, multiple years of budget cuts are taking a toll. The U.S. Marine Corps have it the worst. Approximately seventy percent of its fleet of older F-18 hornets cannot fly. in th