Hot off the press: final study guide

The final study guide is here and ready to be poured over. Find it on the right under the Lecture Notes subdivision! Good luck and have a great week!

Best,

Ian

A Little Ditty from My Colleagues at UMN

This should help you catch up on the history of geography before you read the slides I posted on the right. Definitely watch this before your final exam!

Hiya

To the right you will find a reading that I expect you to do along with the Urban Geography readings from your reader mentioned in class -- "The Megacity."

When we meet again in a little over a week, we will discuss the readings and then begin the final phase of the class -- political geography! You may want to finish Harm de Blij's book this week to save yourself some time later this semester.

To emphasize Mr. Harm's point... here is a little clip of Miss Teen South Carolina explaining why geography and maps are important!

Check out this animation!

Hi class,

Check out this movie on the history of the world for a good laugh. It ties in with economic geography somehow... I just know it!

Cheers,

Ian

Cultural Geography Lecture Posted (Material May be on Exam)

Dear Class:

To the right I posted last Friday's cultural geography lecture. Please note that this material is fair game for the midterm. Please review the slides at least once, if not twice, before coming for the exam. However, no more value should be placed on these slides than any others.

Good luck studying tonight and at your study session tomorrow evening. Remember to bring lots of questions for your TAs.

Best,

Ian

P.S. I find that listening to that Kraftwerk song "Mensch, Natur, Technik" while grading papers makes me work far more efficiently. Perhaps it works for studying too?! You can listen to many of Kraftwerk's songs online at their own personal radio station -- www.kraftwerk.com. Hope it helps!

To get you revved up for Nature, Society & Technology!

Probably the most underrated song by a gang of robots ever recorded! Probably because it was merely a jingle for the 2000 Expo in Germany, but just wait... just wait... at around one-minute-forty you will hear the stellar line that summarizes our entire past week of lectures!!! Enjoy!

Midterm Study Guide Now Posted

Dear Class:

Your midterm study guide has been posted with all of my lectures (please find them on your right). Good luck studying! We certainly have covered a lot of material, but don't panic. Just learn! There will be a study review session next Monday or Tuesday with the TAs, likely in the evening. So keep your nights open!

Best,

Ian

Check Out This Article

Your next assignment will be to read this article, Big Foot, from the New Yorker several weeks ago. (No, it is not about searching for Sasquatch in the woods. Unfortunately, you have to take a class on Folklore to read about that. Rather, it refers to "Carbon Footprints.") I will give a hand out in class this week as to what you should do after you have read it. Anyway, if you want a jump start, you should just start reading the article now.

UPDATED @ 13:41, March 2, 2008: The assignment is posted to the right if you want to download it and begin straightaway!

This article is timely and just absolutely fascinating. I have been annoying my wife Birgit by talking about it all weekend at home. She can't even pour a glass of orange juice now without me speculating on how much environmental carnage she is inducing... yes, read this and you will surely have ammunition to drive your roommates and friends crazy for years to come! :) If you are from the East Coast and drink Californian wine out there you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself! After all, wine from France is far less destructive on the environment than wine from California if you are living out there. Geography... yes, transportation geography makes a difference! So cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, please listen to the follow up commentary by the author of the article, Michael Specter (New Yorker science writer). An interview/discussion is available in mp3 format so you can listen to it over and over on your iPods or Zen Micros or Zunes or whatever for years to come! Download it or listen to it by clicking on the respective blue, underlined words in this sentence. But you knew that.

I hope you are all having a great weekend! I for one have had too much coffee (from Brazil, because I am down on Sumatra)!!!! Which means I have contributed two tons of carbon to the air... shame on me! But I have an excuse, right? I am a caffeine addict! Of course, perhaps I am an energy addict, in which case nothing is excusable, but we can debate that on Monday (time permitting) and Wednesday.

Lectures Going Live...

Hi Class,

I have begun posting my lectures in PDF format. You can find them to the right. They may not all be working yet, as I am waiting for them to upload and I am going to go to bed and just presume that it worked. I won't know until the morning. Sorry for any inconvenience -- just by the off chance that some of you want to read these at 10:45 on a Thursday night.

I will see you tomorrow!

Best,

Ian

Readings for this week

Dear Class:

You do not need to read Chapters 13 & 14 from the Reader this week. Happy belated President's Day.

However, you must read Chapters 11, 12 & 16, as well as finish Chapters 3-5 in the "Why Geography Matters" book. You have until Monday to read these chapters.

Finally, though the online schedule says to read Chapters 18 & 20 from the Reader for next week, please hold off. You may get out of reading them. :) We will see.

Oh, a true finality... I will be posting my lecture slides to the blog at some point this week. Anything I did not cover in class -- slides I skipped -- is not valid for the midterm or final exam. So please note you only need to study what I covered in class. I will try to delete slides I did not cover in class, but I may miss one or two. If you don't remember it at all, it probably was not a slide in class and you do not need to read it.

Thanks, Geographers! We'll see you later today.

Best,

Ian

Julian Simon & CATO Promo Video

All I can say is that this is priceless! A propaganda video for propaganda!

Speak of the devil... talking about humans migrating around the world and where we come from, this just popped up on MSNBC.COM today. Check it out!

Best,

Ian

New Readings for the Weekend and Upcoming Week

I have posted some additional readings that are required (except for the one on the basics of geography, which is supplemental). Please read the Economist reading on Migration by Wednesday and the anti-overpopulation readings I posted, as well as the other readings on your syllabus assigned for Week 4, by Friday, February 22nd. Thanks. Have a great weekend!

Spying on Your Neighborhood's Lifestyle

Click here to spy on neighbors in your zipcode.

For Friday, please finish reading Chapters 5 & 6 in the Reader and read Chapter 2 of de Blij's "Why Geography Matters." Bring in an article -- current event or otherwise -- to discuss on Friday. Think about questions a geographer might ask about the place or people in the article and what techniques they might use to get information to answer their questions.

See you on Friday!

In Case You Don't Have Enough To Do...

Learn the countries of the world -- sans former Soviet Republics and Slovakia. :)

Hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl! See you all tomorrow.

Favorite Music, Books, and Films

Me again. Or actually "I again," which works as both my initial and a pronoun using this abbreviated sentence structure. Cool!

I digress.

I just want to remind you that you need to bring in a list of (some of) your favorite music, books, films, and whatever else you are into ("Lost," "Gray's Anatomy," "Scenes from a Marriage," "Alf," etc.). I would also like you to list where these bands, authors, and films come from. And if you feel like it, where they take place/are filmed/or whatnot.

That's all tonight. Thanks.

------------------------------------------------------
Ian's Picks
Recent Favorite: Radiohead (Oxford, England). In Rainbows.
Honorable Mention: Kimya Dawson (Olympia, Washington & Upstate New York). Remember That I Love You.
Honorable Mention: Budapest Eskimos (Budapest, Hungary). Any of their DJ sets. Find them on Pandora!

Film: Lost in Translation. American. Film Location: Japan.
Honorable Mention: The Last King of Scotland. Not sure. IMDB here I come!

Readings for this week...

It was great to meet you all today. I think we are going to have a great class. The vibe just felt right.

We'll see for sure, though, when you come on Friday. If you are ready to talk about the readings, I will be stoked.

FOR FRIDAY PLEASE READ

Harm de Blij "Why Geography Matters": Chapter 1.

• Offers A good introduction to... well, yeah, the title doesn't leave much for speculation, but aside from the title, this book is pretty darn good.

The Introductory Reader in Human Geography

• Introduction to the Book -- read this. I may have said you don't have to in class, but I lied.
  
• Intro to section one (read this but if you skip any reading, skip these three pages)
• Chapter 1: "The Four Traditions of Geography" (or: how to oversimplify something that is far more exciting)
  
• Chapter 2: Geography's Perspectives (or: how to complicate something that should be far more exciting)
• Chapter 3: Geography & Foreign Policy
  
• Chapter 4: Reflections of an American Geographer on the Anniversary of September 11th