A Block Physical Geography - Today you'll need to start work on the physical weathering questions in your week 8 package: definition of frost action, exfoliation, and pressure release jointing along with questions 10, 12, 13, and 15 from page 442 of your Geosystems textbook. You can find the answers between pages 420-423 in the text. Next, we move on to chemical weathering. We'll take some notes down about carbonation (solution), oxidation, and hydration and fill in a chart on weathering types, rates, and their connection to climate conditions. Lastly you'll need to work on questions 17, 20, and 21 from page 443 in the Geosystems text and you can find the answers between pages 423-427 in the text.
B Block Human Geography - Today, we'll examine the Internet and Social Media's influence on popular culture. The Internet has been a key factor in driving globalization. At its core, globalization is the lowering of economic and cultural impediments to communication between countries all over the globe. While some political and social barriers still remain, from a technological standpoint there is nothing to stop the two-way flow of information and culture across the globe.
So, the Internet has made pop culture transmission a two-way street. The power to influence popular culture no longer lies with the relative few with control over traditional forms of mass media; it is now available to the great mass of people with access to the Internet. As a result, the cross-fertilization of pop culture from around the world has become a commonplace occurrence.
Valerie Berset-Price wrote a lovely piece called From Pop Culture to Global Culture: How Millennials and Technology Are Influencing Our World. In it she states
For Millennials (although you are iGen in the context of this quote that would be you - my inset), two things are happening simultaneously: culture is impacting technology, and technology is impacting culture. On one hand, culture serves as a standard of judgment. It places an importance on what is acceptably good, valuable, and ethical. It conditions how and what we communicate, and it is the lens by which we perceive the world and, in some ways, the way the world perceives us. On the other hand, technology has served as a force for sweeping cultural change, joining the ranks of war, colonization, religious influence and military expansion as cultural modifiers. The expansion of the internet has allowed global communication and information to permeate everything from apartment walls to international borders...Such global exposure has provided the basis for peaceful international homogenization as well as deep conflicts of perspective, and technological advances have increased the speed and frequency of both.In addition to individuals contributing to culture, Multinational, nongovernmental corporations can now drive global culture. This is neither entirely good nor entirely bad. On one hand, foreign cultural institutions can adopt successful American business models, and corporations are largely willing to do whatever makes them the most money in a particular market. However, cultural imperialism has potential negative effects as well. From a spread of Western ideals of beauty to the possible decline of local cultures around the world, cultural imperialism can have a quick and devastating effect. (from Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication).
Today you'll need to answer:
- Social media (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) is changing the way that popular and folk cultures are diffused. Give and support an argument for how the Internet might aid the preservation, or even expansion, of some folk cultural elements.
- Why do many governments consider it important to limit the freedom to use social media?
- A recent study of University of Maryland students found that not using any electronics for 24 hours produced anxiety, craving, and other symptoms akin to withdrawal from alcohol or drugs (FOMO). How do you think you would react to a 24-hour ban on all electronics?
Has technology changed cultural taste?
How the Internet has Changed Pop Culture
C & D Block Environmental & Social Sciences - We'll start in 115 by finishing our discussion on Palm Oil from Thursday. Next we'll introduce your terrestrial ecosystem land use conflict project and then after we'll spend the rest of the time in the learning commons/library to work on your land use (terrestrial ecosystem) conflict poster project.
Covering 36 million square kilometres, or roughly 30 percent of the globe, the world’s forests are among its most important natural resources. For many communities, forests are crucial to food security and nutrition, to meeting energy needs (fuelwood), and to their ability to produce and sell non-timber forest products, which may account for a significant proportion of household income (From the OECD Forests and Violent Conflict). And from the World Resources Institute, Human society and the global economy are inextricably linked to forests. More than 1 billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods. And forest ecosystems play a critical role in stabilizing the climate; providing food, water, wood products, and vital medicines; and supporting much of the world’s biodiversity. So it can easily be seen that forests and how they are used can become a source of conflict. From Global Forest Watch
Red = Commodity-driven deforestation: long-term, permanent conversion of forest and shrubland to a non-forest land use such as agriculture (including oil palm), mining, or energy infrastructure
Yellow = Shifting agriculture: small to medium-scale forest and shrubland conversion for agriculture that is later abandoned and followed by subsequent forest regrowth
Green = Forestry: large-scale forestry operations occurring within managed forests and tree plantations
Brown = Wildfire: large-scale forest loss resulting from the burning of forest vegetation with no visible human conversion or agricultural activity afterward
Purple = Urbanization: forest and shrubland conversion for the expansion and intensification of existing urban centers.
The commodity-driven deforestation and urbanization categories represent permanent deforestation, while tree cover affected by the other categories often regrows. The data set does not indicate the stability or condition of land cover after the tree cover loss occurs, or distinguish between natural and anthropogenic wildfires.
So for your project, remember:
- Why is there a crisis over forested land in your area? What social and environmental factors do you think are contributing to the crisis? Does this forest have intrinsic value? What are common factors that go along with the land disputes, such as political instability, social unrest, economic downturn, heavy unemployment, civil warfare, etc.?
- Who are the “players” or "stakeholders" in this conflict? What are their motives and interests in the forest?
- What (and what type) is the forested land in question (Tropical rainforest; Sub-tropical forests; Mediterranean forest; Temperate forest; Temperate rainforest; Coniferous forest; Montane forest)? How large is the forested space, and how large is the area which it belongs to? Who and how many people use this forest and what do they use it for? Identify 10 dominant plants and 10 dominant animals of the forest. Are there any endangered or endemic species in this area?
- Where in the world and in the country and/or region is the forest? Identify the forest on a map, and highlight areas of the map involved in or affected by the issues in dispute (locations of villages, industries, crops, water sources, country/clan borders, etc.).
- How would the forest and its biodiversity be affected by different outcomes of the dispute (logging, mono culture, dams, agriculture, tourism, human development)? Has any group of humans successfully lived sustainably with the forest?
- How, if at all, would this forest conflict be resolved? What is the current state of the dispute, if it is ongoing? Are there forest products of economic value that preserve the integrity of the forest? What are solutions to the forest crisis? Can you come up with ways that would provide the basis for a forest-sharing plan?
- Virunga/Bwindi region of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Burundi and Uganda
- Rondônia or Maranhão in the Brazilian Amazon
- Ogun State in Nigeria
- Vancouver Island or Haida Gwaii here in British Columbia
- the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, La Macarena, and San Lucas mountains, and in the regions of Tumaco and Catatumbo in Colombia
- Mekong forests of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar
- Chocó rainforest Ecuador
- Khabarovski Krai and Primorski Krai in Siberian Taiga, Russia
- Kalimantan, Borneo (Indonesia, Malaysia)
- Menabe region of western Madagascar
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