Happy Countries

Thursday July 03rd 2008
Filed Under Current Events, World | Leave a Comment 

Denmark is the most happy and Zimbabwe is the least happy country as determined by the latest survey from the World Values Survey.  According to MSNBC, the survey has been conducted since 1981 and asks two questions “Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not at all happy?” And, “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?”  The top happiest countries in order are:

Happiest Countries:

  1. Denmark
  2. Puerto Rico
  3. Colombia
  4. Northern Ireland
  5. Iceland
  6. Switzerland
  7. Ireland
  8. the Netherlands
  9. Canada
  10. Sweden

The United States ranked 16th.  The results were gathered from survey 350,000 people.



Geography Girl

Sunday June 29th 2008
Filed Under Education | Leave a Comment 

Here’s a flashback moment (at least for me) to grade school geography.

Visit the image on Flickr, read the fun posts and help out Skye by adding a note on where you live.



Ice-free North Pole?

Friday June 27th 2008
Filed Under Climatology | Leave a Comment 

Researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado are predicting that the North Pole may be briefly ice free this summer.  Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist states, “It’s a 50-50 bet that the thin Arctic sea ice, which was frozen last autumn, will completely melt away at the geographic North Pole.“  Serreze blames the condition on global warming noting, “We’ve known for at least 30 years, from our earliest climate models, that it’s the Arctic where we’d see the first signs of global warming.”

Read more: North Pole could be ice-free this summer, scientists say - CNN.com

Shape-Shifting Highrise

Thursday June 26th 2008
Filed Under Middle East, Urban Geography | Leave a Comment 

Italian architect David Fisher has announced plans to build an 80-story highrise in Dubai with 80 apartments that will spin independently of one another in order to constantly change the shape and look of the building.

 

Read more:

Happy Geography

Saturday June 21st 2008
Filed Under Education | Leave a Comment 

Joy over on the Happy to be at Home has posted some useful links to sites that help kids and adults learn more about geography.

Test Your Geography for a Good Cause

Tuesday June 17th 2008
Filed Under Games | Leave a Comment 

Your can test your knowledge of geography and help a good cause at the same time.   Freepoverty.org hosts a geography game that donates 10 cups of water for every correct answer. With progressively harder questions, the game shoots out the names of various locations around the world. Click on the point on the map where you think that location is. The closer you get to the location, the more cups of water you are awarded. Click too far away and no cups are awarded. Donations are provided to agencies such as UNICEF or WaterAid and are underwritten by advertising on the site.

Visit and Play: http://www.freepoverty.com/

Congestion Cities

Tuesday June 17th 2008
Filed Under United States, Urban Geography | Leave a Comment 

INRIX, a traffic-information provider released their list of the top 100 most congested cities in the United States.  Not surprisingly, some of the most populated metropolitan areas rank at the very top of the list.   According to the press release, “The INRIX Scorecard takes a micro look at traffic problems all across the country — zooming in on the total hours spent in traffic, worst day of the week for commuting and average speeds for the top 100 cities in the U.S., along with hundreds of other details including the identification of the nation’s worst bottlenecks Americans drive through every day.”  The top four ranked cities (Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Washington D.C.) account for 50% of the top 1,000 bottleneck locations in the country.

The top ten worst cities for congestion are:

  1. Los Angeles, CA
  2. New York, NY
  3. Chicago, IL
  4. Washington D.C.
  5. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
  6. San Francisco, CA
  7. Houston, TX
  8. Boston, MA
  9. Seattle, WA
  10. Atlanta, GA

Learn more: National Traffic Scorecard - INRIX

Top Ten Pictures from NASA

Friday June 13th 2008
Filed Under World | Leave a Comment 

Take a peek at the top ten photos from NASA’s Crew Earth Observations Team.  The photos were selected from the International Space Station Astronaut Photography Collection and feature images not only taking of spots from around the world but also ones of the earth’s atmosphere and the moon.

Visit: Crew Earth Observations ‘Top Ten’ Photos

Top Ten

  • Eruption of Cleveland Volcano, Aleutian Islands, Alaska
  • Layers of the Earth’s Atmosphere
  • Nighttime view of Los Angeles, California
  • Aurora Borealis and lights in Finland, Russia, Estonia and Latvia
  • A glimpse of the barren moon through the Earth’s limb
  • Mt. Everest and Makalu
  • Green aurora
  • Bernese Alps, Switzerland
  • Nukuoro Atoll, Federated States of Micronesia
  • Harrat Khaybar, Saudi Arabia

Geo-censorship in China

Wednesday June 04th 2008
Filed Under Asia, Current Events | Leave a Comment 

Some readers of National Geographic in China had trouble reading the May issue (dedicated to China) because some of the pages were glued together.  A couple of the maps (on pages 44-45) showing disputed border areas with India and Pakistan and distribution of ethinic minorities (pages 126-127) were apparently glued together by a local distributor in China. 

Beth Foster, the magazine’s director of communications, says, “It appears that someone connected with local magazine distribution in Asia glued together a few pages of the May English-language issues of National Geographic magazine that were shipped into China. We have not gotten to the bottom of the specifics of this isolated activity, but we have had no communication from or with the Chinese government about this matter.”

Read more: Glued Geographic - China Journal at the Wall Street Journal

Matt’s Olympic City Poll

Wednesday June 04th 2008
Filed Under Current Events | Leave a Comment 

With today’s announcement of the final four cities for consideration for the 2016 Summer Olympics, Matt Rosenberg has launched a poll on his About Geography site. The four cities in the running are: Chicago (United States), Tokyo (Japan), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and Madrid (Spain). Matt asks, “Which city would you like to see as the host city for the 2016 Summer Games?”

Place your vote - Poll: Four Cities Finalists for 2016 Olympic Games

Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan U.S.

Sunday June 01st 2008
Filed Under Environment, United States | Leave a Comment 

In a study issued by the Brookings Instititute, the surprising conclusion was that the carbon footprint of urban dwellers was 14% smaller than the average American’s.   The top three smallest metropolitan area carbon footprints in order are: Honolulu, HI, Los Angeles, CA and Portland, OR.  The top three largest metropolitan area carbon footprints in order are Tulsa, OK, Knoxville, TN, and Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA.

Read more:

Grand Tour of Rome

Sunday June 01st 2008
Filed Under Cartography, Europe | Leave a Comment 

University of Oregon recently announced the unveiling of “Grand Tour of Rome”, an interactive mapping web site that takes the visitor back to 18th century Rome.  The project is the culmination of a two-year grant from the Getty Foundation:

“Imago Urbis: Giuseppe Vasi’s Grand Tour of Rome” presents an innovative geographic database and Web site that brings to life the work of two 18th century masters of Rome’s urban and architectural treasures: Giambattista Nolli (1701-1756), who published the first accurate map of Rome (La Pianta Grande di Roma, 1748); and his contemporary, Giuseppe Vasi (1710-1782), whose comprehensive views of the city and its monuments from 1747-1761, can be precisely located and explored by using the Nolli map as a reference.

Visit:

Weird European Names Quiz

Wednesday May 28th 2008
Filed Under Games | Leave a Comment 

Spiegel, the German magazine, has fun with some of the weirder names of locations found in Germany and other European cities:

Germany has a string of cities that take one through the entire digestive tract: Essen (eat), Darmstadt (intestine city), and Pforzheim (which is close enough to the German word for “fart” to make it a punch line). But are you familiar with the weirdest town names in Germany and Europe?

Take their quiz to find out how well you know where some of the more strangly named European locations are.

World Globes - They Still Make Geography Fun

Wednesday May 28th 2008
Filed Under General | 2 Comments 

Once upon a time people thought the world was actually flat and if you got to the end you would fall off. Then in the Middle Ages a globe was made depicting the world as round. People marveled at the thought of our world being spherical and a passion for exploring was born. Now world globes can be seen in class rooms, office buildings and homes and they are still capturing the imagination of all those who gaze upon them. Read more

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