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Foods represent a key intersection between biogeography and cultural geography. This article from Geographical (UK) looks at the importance of the nsenene, a seasonal, edible grasshopper, to communities in Kampala, the capital of Uganda: geographical.co.uk/culture/ugandas-beneficial-nsenene-feast
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With warmer days ahead, insects will be breaking dormancy and hatching out. In the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic, residents are being asked to be on the lookout for the spotted lanternfly, an insect native to Asia that was first found in Pennsylvania in 2014 (counties with infestations shown in blue on this map). The sticky secretions of the spotted lantern fly attract a black fungus that prevents photosynthesis on affected plant leaves and renders grapes unsuitable for consumption, among other things. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/FBEBIV5KVZH73H2GH53HAHYII4.jpeg&w=1200 (Map from www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/02/01/spotted-lanternfly-fairfax-invasive-insect/.)
This map, based on U.S. Department of Transportation data, shows train derailments over the last 47 years. (Map from www.nytimes.com/2023/02/17/opinion/ohio-train-derailment-safety-regulation.html.)
Practice your logical deduction skills with the old-fashioned code-breaking game Bulls and Cows. The game is like Mastermind except there can be no duplicates: www.mathsisfun.com/games/bulls-and-cows.html
The latest Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index shows country-by-country data on trends in perceived government corruption: www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022
This series of maps looks at the prevalence of various animal names in place names across the U.S., but it's also an interesting proxy for biogeography. (No salmon in Illinois, for example, and no wild burros in Florida.) www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/VCPNVOYRSVEDXI6NT4JNLYV2AI.png&w=1200
Do the old have a moral obligation to move out of the way to make room for the young? Or is even suggesting this perpetuating dangerous bias against the elderly and vulnerable? These may not be theoretical questions much longer in rapidly aging societies. A case in the point is the traction the provocative statements of Yale economist Yusuke Narita have gotten in Japan, where those 65 and older make up roughly 30% of the population and those 80 and older account for 10% of the population. www.nytimes.com/2023/02/12/world/asia/japan-elderly-mass-suicide.html
The Chagos Islands have been in the news this week. The Chagos Archipelago is in the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar and Mauritius and south of the Maldives. In the 1960s and '70s, the British government forced more than 1,000 residents of the Chagos Islands to leave their homes to make way for a military base on the largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, that was then leased to the United States. The Chagossians have fought for their return ever since. This week Human Rights Watch called for Britain to pay reparations to the Chagossians and allow for their return to their homes.
www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F21f707ea-3949-11e9-8581-34e77e2582ca.png Today is the beginning of the 2023 Great Backyard Bird Count, an annual citizen science project sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (The first day of the bird count used to be one of two official home school holidays for us :-)) All the info, including birding resources, here: https://www.birdcount.org/
Is it possible to retain a liberal democracy* without an independent judiciary? That's the question behind huge protests in Israel over the last two weeks. Earlier this week, for example, an estimated 100,000 protestors took to the streets in Jerusalem to demonstrate against the government's plan to allow the legislature to void decisions of the country's supreme court. But for other Israelis, the judiciary is seen as subverting the will of the voters by overturning laws passed by the legislature. (*In political science, a "liberal" democracy is one that respects civil liberties, not one that espouses progressive values.) www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/world/middleeast/israel-judicial-protests-netanyahu.html
Valentine's Day is a major chocolate-giving holiday. This site has an interesting collection of links related to the geography of chocolate: cocoarunners.com/the-geography-of-chocolate/
The Super Bowl attracts more gambling dollars than any other single event, and in 2023 more Americans than ever before had the opportunity to bet on the Super Bowl via online gaming sites. This map shows the legal status of of sports betting in the U.S. www.americangaming.org/research/state-gaming-map/
Would you want to know which day you were going to die? That's the premise of a new science fiction book The Measure in which people all over the world are delivered a box that contains information about how much longer they have left to live. (Would you open the box?) It's also the premise of the website www.death-clock.org. (Will you click on that link?) Science is still not particularly good at making these estimates, which might give us some psychological wiggle room regardless of what Death Clock comes up with, but what will happen as medical estimates improve? Do you want to know when you will die? If you do, would you want the day or just a range? How might the information change the way you live?
This map from Geographical (UK) is a reminder that the Eurasian plate, from Italy through Iran, is intensely seismically active: geographical.co.uk/science-environment/danger-zones-mapping-earthquakes-in-europe
The biogeography of Siberia is changing as melting permafrost in the tundra is exposing viruses previously unknown to science, some of which have been trapped in the ice for tens of thousands of years. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/02/zombie-virus-russia-permafrost-thaw/
Although some locations in the U.S. have gotten massive amounts of snow this winter -- 9.7 feet in Buffalo, New York, for example, and nearly 43 feet on Mammoth Mountain in California's Sierra Nevadas -- other traditionally snowy places like Boston and Chicago have received below-average snowfall. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/02/03/us-snowfall-extremes-map
The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore has a series of free videos and downloadable activity packets to encourage children to make art, linked to the Walters' collection, at home: thewalters.org/experience/virtual/adventures/
Over the last two decades, China's economic influence in Africa has grown enormously, as a lender, as a buyer of raw materials, and, as this map shows, as a primary source of imported goods. www.statista.com/chart/26668/main-import-countries-sources-africa
Chicago is hoping to further its ambitions of becoming a tech hub by attracting tech workers laid off by firms in Silicon Valley and elsewhere to the Windy City. Specifically, Chicago is trying to make itself a destination for holders of H-1B visas. H-1B visas, which are reserved for in-demand occupations, require employer sponsorship; when holders of H-1B visas are laid off, they have only 60 days to find a new employer willing to sponsor their visa or they must leave the country. (Roughly 40% of software engineers working in the U.S. were born outside the country.) A consortium of Chicago employers and civic groups is trying to target laid off H-1B visa holders to fill job openings, keep tech talent in the U.S., and promote Chicago as a destination for top tech talent. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-25/chicago-seeks-to-lure-foreign-workers-laid-off-by-tech-giants
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