Dear students: here is your supplemental reading for the week. It is an opinion piece from the New York Times from by a structural engineer and earthquake consultant. Seattle may be a cool place, but is it ready for a mega-earthquake of the sort that just hit Chile? Apparently not.

Professor Price's YouTube Playlist

Much awaited! Now it is finally yours to enjoy. All of the music from around the world - the cool, the bizarre, the strange (and, of course Maharaja Cowboy!) - that's been entertaining us at the beginning of class.

Map Quiz Component for Exam #2

For the four regions we're studying for Exam #2, you will familiarize yourself with the locations of their most important places. Each world region has 15 study locations. Only 5 of them from each region will be on your midterm but you won't know which in advance. There is a total of 20 midterm questions that come from the map locations (5 from each region @ 4 regions = 20 place names). It's exactly like on Exam #1.

Middle & South America

South Asia

North Africa & Southwest Asia

Southeast Asia

Study guide: place names

Indian fishermen use cell phones to keep up with the location of fish, it's market price for that day, and weather forecasts. One example of the digital divide being crossed. See the Washington Post article here.

Happy reading!

Russia's Demographic Collapse

OK, so I'm sure you're all enjoying your Spring Break. Me too ... Old Prof Price has got a bucket-load of writing done this week.

But what's break without some supplementary reading, you ask? So, for your reading pleasure, here is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on just the sort of things we've been talking about this semester. It's focused on Russia and what's happening there demographically-speaking. I mentioned Russia as a case for a country that doesn't follow the demographic transition, and here are the details. Very interesting! Enjoy, and see you all on Monday.

Lost 'n Found

A piece of jewelry was found in RDB 1100 and turned in after class on Wednesday, March 10. If you think it might be yours, please email me and provide a detailed description.

Prof Price's Grad Student in Bogota

Dear students: I'd like to share a story about my PhD student, Amy Ritterbusch. She is doing her dissertation field research in Bogota, Colombia (AKA "the Athens of South America"!), with street girls. Here is the link: FIU Magazine Winter 2010. Here is a link to her blog. This is an example of what it is, really, that academic geographers do. In terms of the categories we discussed at the beginning of the class, Amy would be considered a cultural and urban geographer who contributes to the field of children's geographies. She uses GIS as one of her techniques. Maybe this sort of thing will inspire some of you to major in Geography at FIU! Or go on to graduate school in Geography at FIU!

Venezuela's Power Woes

Yes, it's a double-entendre: "power" as in electricity, and as in who's in power. This New York Times article on Venezuela's "Resource Curse" is an illustration of how politics and economics are tightly bound to each other. It's also an illustration of Latin America's paradox: how is it that a region so rich in natural and human resources is as poor as it is? BTW, the image shows Venezuela's Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall in the world.