Oops.

                Today in Human Geography class we didn’t do much, as it was a shortened period and Mr. Schick didn’t have a review based thing for us to do. On Tuesday, it was a review day before exams, so we had a modified schedule that allowed us to have every class we attend in one day, but with shortened periods so we could review for midterms this week. Mr. Schick first told us our curved grades for our climate change test, which he curved up about four points. I got an eighty-seven with the curve, which isn’t great, but is considerably better than the eighty-three that I originally got. After that (which took a reasonable amount of time) Mr. Schick told us the basics of our mid-term. In the most basic format, he said there was going to be a huge amount of multiple choice questions, along with two five paragraph essays. I’m a little worried about this (not a lot, because stress doesn’t help when taking exams) because I’m an extremely slow writer, even if I write well. I’m just hoping that I can get my two essays in before the time limit. We didn’t do too much the rest of class, and it was kind of uneventful. Probably why I forgot to write this blog until Wednesday…..

Earthquakes are clearly caused by global warming... clearly.

                Today in Human Geography we took our climate change test. Hurray! I did some quick studying (before Mr. Schick told us we had five minutes to study) then went on to the bungie website for game information. Bungie is the company that makes the Halo series, but they have currently backed off and are making another game series called Destiny. Yes Mr. Schick, I am a gamer. And yes, I play with my fifty-year-old Scoutmaster. After getting the test, I, like an idiot, did not read the directions on the top of the page clearly stating what to do for the honor pledge. I regretted this later when I went to ask Mr. Schick what to do. Looking through the test, there weren’t a lot of hard questions, and some of them could even be done by just using common sense. The hardest questions were mostly statistic based, and I had memorized those so they were easy. After taking the test and turning it in, I did this blog.

Rain Tax. Because rain is a pollutant.

Today in Human Geography we reviewed and finished our climate change PowerPoint. When going back through the PowerPoint, we skipped the first couple of slides which we had already seen or didn’t have any notes to take. We started doing some deeper review on some slides that were right before our last stopping point. After reviewing the PowerPoint slides we had already went through there was three slides at the end, one totally new, and two that we had went over but did not use the Internet links attached. One was about oil, the second about opposing viewpoints, and the new third about the new head of the EPA (Environmental Protections Agency) elected by President elect Trump. The link on the oil company slide discussed how oil companies deal with global warming, as their byproduct can and does have many ecological and atmospherically based backlashes. However, oil companies aren’t really interested in improving the environment because that would cut off the massive flow of money they get. So, oil companies fight regulations and pay scientists to come up with false results to support the falsity of global warming. On top of that, oil companies tell everyone that global warming isn’t real, then proceeds to refit their oil rigs against rising ocean waters, a side-effect of global warming. Then there was a slide about opposing viewpoints, which we did not look at links for. The last slide was ‘breaking news’ about President Elect Trump putting in Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. Scott Pruitt has before sued the EPA multiple times before and is pretty much in self-denial over the fact that global warming is happening.

BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY!!!

                Today in Mr. Schick’s class we continued our environmental change PowerPoint. The first thing that showed up on the screen was my favorite scientist; Bill Nye the Science Guy. Goofily grinning, it was a picture of his younger self with some bullet points on the side talking about who he was and what he does. The next slide had a video link on it (YouTube, why are there so many Viagra commercials on your ad stream? It’s driving Mr. Schick insane!). The video talked about how temperature increase is affected by humans, the supporting facts behind these points, and what it does to the environment. At the end, Bill talked about what everyone can do to help, and even named some that I’d never heard of like not eating as much meat. The next couple of slides covered the main points of the video, and we took notes on these. There was a nice pie chart that showed the different percentages of gases that make up greenhouse gases. CO2 made up 82%, while methane being second at 10%. You’re probably asking, “why is methane a big factor”? Apparently the large amounts of animals (especially cows) on the planet, if you’ll excuse the pun, beefing it up, are creating large amounts of methane which then become part of the greenhouse gas layer. This is why Bill said to eat less meat. Remember, less demand equals less supply. The temperature rise of the Earth affects the ocean the most due to the ocean’s generally stable temperature. Rising temperatures also raise acidity, which is an important factor when it comes to the ocean. Life in the water for animals with the exception of few must maintained stable or the animals will die and the ecosystem will collapse. Oceans are also rising due to the polar caps melting, also upsetting the natural balance.

Climatic Apocalypse! Yay!

                Today in Human Geography we started our environmental geography PowerPoint. This PowerPoint is about climate change and global warming. First there was a slide talking about the video we were going to watch. There weren’t any real notes to take on this slide. Once the video started, we got a great 10 second look at a Viagra commercial before Mr. Schick turned the projector off. Once the commercial was over, we began the video. I have heard about the greenhouse effect before, but never really heard proof behind it. Before watching the video I thought that climate change was based more off of the earth’s axis changing, but I’ve changed my perspective a little bit after hearing about the 1.4-1.2 degree increase in overall world temperature in the time presented. The video first explained how global warming worked, where greenhouse gases trap and release certain amounts of radiation from the sun on the Earth’s surface. Human machines are producing greenhouse gases, upsetting the atmospheric balance. This causes more radiation to be trapped in Earth’s atmosphere, which in turn causes the temperature to rise.

Bashar Al Assad = Hitler reincarnated?

                Today in Human Geography we took our culture test. This test was a multiple choice and ‘match the religions to their proper facts’ test. Before the test, we had about 10 minutes to study. Unfortunately I couldn’t because SOMEBODY next to me was using my mouse to click around my computer (Just kidding, I studied in the period before). When the test finally came, I looked at it and found it to be a little easier than I thought. Of course, I got Buddhism and Hinduism mixed up just as I thought I would, and there were a couple statistics questions I didn’t expect, but I think I did pretty well.  After taking the test I did the survey (I’m not revealing my answers here) and did my blog. While I was doing my blog Mr. Schick handed me back my last test, which was not an 89, but a 94. What was really funny is I put a note next to Bashar Al Assad that said “He reminds me of Hitler for some reason”. Mr. Schick then proceeded to finish the mustache and hair and wrote “lots of reasons” next to it. I’m debating on whether or not to photocopy this, cut it out, and put it on the Schick-mobile, but we’ll see.

Genocide! Yay!

                Today in Human Geography we finished our culture PowerPoint and went through the rest of our religion PowerPoint. So this makes more sense, I’m categorizing the information I got by what PowerPoint it was on, not by when I received it. First I’ll go over the rest of the culture PowerPoint. We covered the rest of the language section first. Language as stated before can divide or unify a region, however Switzerland has four national languages. It’s funny, because everyone gets along in their country nicely even though there are four different accepted dialects. Canada has two national languages, French and English (This creates an odd mix of French and English, which my family calls Canadian French. Truth be told, when speaking French most Canadians won’t call a hot dog un chaud chien, they most likely will call it ‘un hot dog’.) The U.S. has no official language, but English is spoken here in large amounts and is a ‘bridge language’ for business. Brazil speaks Portugese even though the surrounding area speaks Spanish because early settlers of Brazil (from Portugal) spoke it. Next we did a section on religion. Throughout the whole world, Christians (and their other denominations) make up 1/3 of the world. Muslims make up 21.01%. The smallest current religion listed on this pie chart was Judaism, at 0.23% population made up of Jews in the world. We also went over ethnic heritage, and how ethnicity has affected certain cultures. In Yugoslavia, Serbs were taught to be Yugoslavic first, and Serbian second. When strong leadership in the country died out, the nation fell into civil war and became five separate countries. The U.S. have a very diverse population for all the obvious reasons, but some countries such as North Korea or Japan have only one ethnicity due to the way the government is run. After finishing the culture PowerPoint (ending with mass genocide) we continued the religion PowerPoint. The last and final religion on the list was Judaism. There are fourteen-eighteen million adherents to Judaism (Keep in mind still 0.23% of the world population). There are high concentrations in Israel and the US, and the founder is considered to be Abraham. They uphold some of the same law as Christians, such as the Ten Commandments, and they have considerably large amounts of tradition in their religion.