Blog topic #11

I chose this map because i am a huge baseball fan and i find it interesting that all of the teams have certain areas that their fans are based for the most part. There are some people who cheer for teams that don't live in the areas that they have marked in the map above, but it does a good job of showing just exactly where most of the people live for cheering for teams in the Nation live. My personal favorite team, the Minnesota Twins, is a very accurate claim for where all the Twins fans live.

Blog topic #10

I believe that we should go into Africa and help them build their infrastructure, trade, and industry because if we keep doing what we are doing now and just sending them aid they might not receive all of the money for aid that we have sent them. If we develop their infrastructure, trade, and industry there so that they can begin to become more developed and have better living conditions and be self sufficient. If you give a man a fish he can eat for a day, but teach a man how to fish he can eat for a lifetime. That is something that we should do to help the people of Sub-Saharan Africa and helping them become more self sufficient.

Blog topic #9

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/2011128125157509196.html

The protests in Jordan are the people demanding that the Prime Minister to step down and for them to be able to run the country for themselves.One of the main reasons that they really want to get rid of the Prime Minister is because they want to try to eliminate or at least lower the amount of debt that the country has right now. They have a struggling economy because the Prime Minister isn't trying to help them out at all and be able to let the economy thrive and become more advanced. The way that they people are reacting is respectable because they want to be able to become more advanced and help get on the global map and be a better economic player in the global economic scene and they think that they can get to their dreams by switching Prime Ministers or completely changing the face of the Government.

Blog topic #8

This picture from Google Earth, gave me a new perspective on the way the world looks from the arctic circle. As we grow up we usually have to look at a map that is flat and has north always at the top and south at the bottom of the map, but in this image we have to look at the world in a completely different way because the focal point is the Arctic Circle. It is also interesting to see how much of Russia is really close to the Arctic, and imagine how cold it could possibly get in those places and why no one would want to live there. You can see that most of the land mass of the world is located in the northern hemispheres and that from this view most of North America, Europe, and Russia is visible.

Blog topic #7

http://www.cfr.org/afghanistan/good-bad-news-afghan-opium/p21372

The good and bad news about Afghan Opium.

By reading this article about Opium in Afghanistan, there were a few things that came up that were interesting. First, there has been a recent decline in Opium production and there are many provinces in Afghanistan that are going "Poppy free." With there being a decline in production of Opium, there is some bad news and that is there is an increase in the focus on the refining, stockpiling, and transportation of Opium because they need to do everything in their power to keep the trade going and need to make money some how.
Unfortunately, there is still a ton of Opium that is being sold and produced in Afghanistan and a lot of that money is being used to fund the Taliban so they can buy weapons and ammunition, explosives, vehicles, and foot soldiers.
In the end, no matter what we do to help try to stop the production and selling of Opium in Afghanistan seems like it won't stop anytime soon and the Taliban will be funded for many more years.