GIF from the Animation Factory
OCTOBER 2003
GeographyPages in the GA NEWS. A lot of other visitors since - roughly double what I had before the summer break.
BECTa are offering various GEOGRAPHY events. In OCTOBER you have the chance to 'Ask an Expert'. There's a National Conference in London. In January 2004, there's an ONLINE INSET EVENT. Look out for a newsletter in February too. GeographyPages featured in the summer issue.
School meals are referred to as 'muck from a truck' by the
policy director of the SOIL ASSOCATION, which offers an excellent free resource called
, which is a PDF download from their site.
Click to go to their site. This is a good free resource!
Article on the BBC News site regarding the preparations in Tokyo for 'the big one' following the earthquakes in Northern Japan at the end of September. New buildings have earthquake proofing built in, and the emergency services go through a range of elaborate drills. Over a million people were involved in the September 2003 issue. Tokyo is right above the point where 3 plates meet and grind against each other. There are simulators where people can experience being shaken around a mock up kitchen with foam furniture.
"Finding Nemo" comes out today (10th of October) - listening to Radio 4's 'You and Yours', while completing the 'AS' entries for January 2004 there's an item on fears that a growing trend in keeping tropical fish which comes from seeing the film (a little ironic given the storyline of the film...) may lead to damage to some of the ecosystems where the fish are sourced. Shop owners are advising customers to ask questions about the ways in which the fish have been imported so that they can be reasonably sure that their fish is not a 'dodgy' one. My daughter loved the film by the way...
Geography in Action Week: 13th to 18th of October. Theme is 'Images in Geography. On the SLN site, Chris Durbin recommends sourcing images from GeographyPages: a wise choice. Here's part of the post from SLN FORUM
2. All your lessons this week might involve THE BIG IMAGE or a MYSTERY IMAGE
– Pupils could:
-imagine they are in the picture
-create questions about it;
-write poetry about it;
-make a wordscape over it;
Borrow a few from our Geo-Images at
www.sln.org.uk/geography/Images.htm site or from other geography sites like
http://www.geoexplorer.co.uk/ or
http://www.georesources.co.uk/ or
http://www.geographypages.co.uk/
Check out the GEO RESOURCES Mystery Images - some great images for getting people started.
Ever heard of 'Confluence spotting' ? Apparently it's a growing trend - although it's been around for a few years. Using a GPS handset, the idea is to head for a place where a line of longitude means a line of latitude i.e. exactly 54 degrees or 3 degrees (no fractions of a degree allowed) - move around until the display shows the right reading and photograph the area. There are over 60 000 of these places, and apparently all the land based ones in the UK have already been 'bagged'.
Report that AIDS could mean that the world's population doesn't reach the predicted levels, because it will increase mortality. Around 6000 young people become infected with HIV every day.
A bill for excess bandwidth ? A quick check on the control panel and it turns out that I've had 4 months worth of traffic to GeographyPages in about 2 and a half weeks! At this rate I'll need over 5Gb of bandwidth per month. Quickly shut the door and reconfigure the main pages to be much smaller, and take off the bandwidth-hungry Powerpoint presentations which were being downloaded in their hundreds...
Reading VIZ at my brother in laws and came across 2 humorous Geography related items. The first was a spoof on the HSBC advert about never underestimating the value of local knowledge (in this case to move jobs in call centres to India...) and in the Profanisaurus an entry as follows:
Netto Ghetto: "a shopping arcade consisting entirely of discount stores"
A small article and the World had changed. The Maltsch River between the Czech Republic and Austria shifted course and left a 10 acre strip of Czech land on the Austrian side of the river. The move in border has now been approved.
Report in the Guardian by Alok Jha on the state of the UK's environment and what we could do to help.
NOVEMBER 2003
Report in 'The Times' on many local councils' plans to charge 90% council tax to second home owners. King's Lynn and West Norfolk is one of those listed. Many homes in the village where I live are second homes or holiday homes.
A busy week of fireworks. I wonder how much pollution is added by all the fireworks that are let off in the weeks around November 5th ? This week was a total eclipse of the moon. Some campaigners were concerned about the amount of light pollution which means that a lot of people never have the chance to see the stars anyway. I remember seeing the last major comet over the Isle of Arran and having a great view. Maybe some day I'll see the Northern Lights.
GeographyPages will soon have a new section. We've been awarded a Royal Geographical Society / Institute of British Geographers Innovative Geography Teaching Grant too develop BLOGS in Geography teaching.
Another week, another acronym for a particular age cohort. An article on the BBC website HERE introduces us to what the Prudential is calling KIPPERS. A KIPPER is someone who has not yet left home, although they are old enough to, and are staying put because it's easier.
KIPPERS stands for "kids in parents' pockets eroding retirement savings"
Apparently almost 7m people over 18's still live with their parents. Parents subsidise their children to the tune of £20 billion a year, with contributions such as paying towards a house purchase, for a wedding, for a new car and payments into savings accounts or pensions. Clearly the last one is the one that Prudential would like them to be doing.
Article in Guardian on the threats to reefs in Vanuatu in S. Pacific because of increase demand for some of the species featured in the 'Finding Nemo' film. About 200 000 fish and other marine creatures have been exported from the country in the last year. Some rare fish can fetch over £300 each. Apparently over 100 000 clown fish are imported into the UK each year. (The Guardian, 21/11/03)
The Times reported on the search for Japanese soldiers who are believed to STILL be in the rainforests of the Philippines, still believing that the Second World War is going on. Some of them will be in their 80's of course... could there really still be soldiers out there ? Apparently up until the late 70's people were still being discovered with their uniform and weapons.
North Hoyle wind-farm opened, and first electricity flowed: see ENERGY page for more on this, and some great sites.
Want news ? Go to GOOGLE NEWS.
DECEMBER
Some scumbag stole my digital projector!
How would you like a job which involved climbing to the top of a mountain in the Lake District whatever the weather, so that you could see what the weather was like at the top ? An article in 'The Guardian' featured Nick Chetwood and Peter Collins who have the job of "fell top assessors" for the Lake District's WEATHERLINE website. Helvellyn is 3000 feet (950 metres) high, and the conditions at the summit give a good idea of what they are going to be like at similar heights on other summits in the area. Search for 'Striding Edge' to get some stunning images and details on one of Britain's great ridge walks: Crib Goch and numerous parts of the Cuillin traverse are others...
Article in the news on new hybrid GCSE: combination of History and Geography.
More jobs going to India - Norwich Union moving over 2000 jobs to India, where the average annual wage is £1250 rather than over £12000 for a UK call centre worker. This was followed by many more. The general term for this trend is 'OUTSOURCING' and some countries are more 'aggressive' at this than others. There was also an article in the 'Sunday Times' magazine which
One major event in early December was the opening of the M6 toll. This was the first toll motorway to open in the UK and is intended to provide an alternative to sitting in a jam on the existing M6 to the north of Birmingham. Living in Norfolk, over 45 minutes drive from the nearest motorway, I'm glad I don't have to sit in it every day.
The M6 TOLL site uses the image of pills, and touts the road as a 'cure for congestion'. There was also coverage of what has been called the country's biggest billboard: the whole side of a building used to get the message across. The BBC had good coverage, and also had one of their TALKING POINT features.
There's a site HERE which has aerial photographs of the various parts of the motorway.
Idea of flying aircraft lower to reduce the impact of their emissions on the atmosphere. This would reduce the effect of contrails in the high atmosphere.
Article on the use of monster trucks in diamond mines. Satellites are used to navigate them.
Article on a project to drill into the earth's crust. The project goes by the acronym of SAFOD: San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth. USGS scientists are drilling down to try to predict earthquakes by studying the fault at depth. The project has just got a $20m grant to pursue the project until 2008 according to THIS BBC ARTICLE.
GHOST TOWN BRITAIN. An article in the Daily Mail referred to a report published by the New Economics Forum. This can be downloaded free in PDF format and makes fascinating reading, and a great case study for GCSE and A level students on declining rural services. Search for the story on the BBC site, and follow the link to the NEF. The download is of a 50 plus page document with some fascinating information. Get a copy and read it today!
Fascinating article on a phenomenon called GLOBAL DIMMING.
This is the idea that over the last few decades, less insolation has been reaching the earth's surface. This takes me back to the DAISYWORLD idea, and the theories of James Lovelock. This links in with the idea of self-regulation, bearing in mind that people are just
The article describes how less sunlight now reaches the earth's surface than in the past. Due to increased cloud cover etc., we get less insolation: Incoming Solar Radiation (that definition was one of the questions for my 'AS' Geographers in their exam this week...)
Support the Royal Geographical Society's POLAR ARCHIVE APPEAL. The Royal Geographical Society has access to thousands of priceless records from early polar exploration, including scientific material collected and produced by Dr. Edward Wilson, who died with Captain Scott on the return from the South Pole in 1912.
Will we have a WHITE CHRISTMAS ? For that to happen, a single flake of snow has to be seen by a Met Office observer on a roof in London. Have you thought about SNOW itself, and what an unlikely substance it is - no ? - then maybe you should. Go to my new SNOW page.
Another feature of Christmas is BRAZIL NUTS. Just like dates, we all buy them, and then wonder why...An article in the Guardian gave us the distressing news that BRAZIL NUTS are an endangered species. This was followed up with an article on the BBC WEBSITE.
Article suggesting that the UK's population is set to reach around 65 million by 2051, but fewer people than ever will be of working age. I hope I'm one of them... The country will become increasingly dependent on immigrants to maintain its economic vitality, as the dependency ratio will continue to rise. Home Office Minister Beverley Hughes said: "No modern economy can afford to be anti-immigration."
Massive landslides in the Philippines after torrential rain have apparently killed hundreds.
GOOGLE have their usual festive graphic on Christmas Day:
Image from http://www.google.co.uk
Is there an archive of these special images ?
Can you think of how you would change the graphic to make a GEOGRAPHICAL image ? Perhaps get in touch with GEO BLOGS with your ideas. There was the short-lived site run by the current Geo Explorer webmaster: GEOGLE.
GeographyPages has over 170 hits on Christmas Day.... I even get some e-mails...
Earthquake in Iran - for more on this go to the 2004 news page...
The UK has apparently been valued at £5000 billion by the Office for National Statistics. A lot of this comes from the value of properties.