But why did this have to take five years?
The Washington Post website, On Faith, is a fantastic website dealing with the issues of faith. Coverage includes most Christian faiths, though also includes some Judaism. Currently, On Faith is hosting several Muslim scholars who are entertaining questions regarding Islam and Arab faith. Controversial and challenging, the forum is much appreciated.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
FT.com / Home UK / UK - US takes China to task over Iraq and Afghan arms
FT.com / Home UK / UK - US takes China to task over Iraq and Afghan arms
Arms: their use, distribution, and manufacturer have a definite geographic character. Many countries are net weapons exporters. France, Great Britain, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Germany, and, of course, the United States. The United States is the world's leader in weapon's production and export, according to FAS.org, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the World Policy Institute.
Sometimes, I wonder how long it will be before we are attacked with our own ordinance. A widely-reported fear is that our own military or commerical aircraft will be shot down with a Stinger missile.
Recently, the US has scrapped many of its own F-14 Tomcats so replacement parts will not fall into the hands of the Iranian Air Force. We sold a few of those to the former Shah of Iran, before The Great Revolution.
Iran has recently been accused of helping manufacturer IEDs used recently in Iraq. Now, China has been targeted by our administration, as Chinese-made armor-piercing munitions are finding their ways nto Afghanistan and Iraq.
Please note the Pentagon official's name. The irony should not be lost.
Arms: their use, distribution, and manufacturer have a definite geographic character. Many countries are net weapons exporters. France, Great Britain, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Germany, and, of course, the United States. The United States is the world's leader in weapon's production and export, according to FAS.org, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the World Policy Institute.
Sometimes, I wonder how long it will be before we are attacked with our own ordinance. A widely-reported fear is that our own military or commerical aircraft will be shot down with a Stinger missile.
Recently, the US has scrapped many of its own F-14 Tomcats so replacement parts will not fall into the hands of the Iranian Air Force. We sold a few of those to the former Shah of Iran, before The Great Revolution.
Iran has recently been accused of helping manufacturer IEDs used recently in Iraq. Now, China has been targeted by our administration, as Chinese-made armor-piercing munitions are finding their ways nto Afghanistan and Iraq.
Please note the Pentagon official's name. The irony should not be lost.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Foreign Policy: The List: Six Reasons You May Need a New Atlas Soon
Foreign Policy: The List: Six Reasons You May Need a New Atlas Soon
Without a doubt, this is a great bit of geography!
Devolution and Failed States, these are the topics. What can make a new state successful, and what can kill a state in its infancy.
Kosovo - yes, I foresee Kosovo as standing on its own, one day. For how long is another matter ...
South Sudan - geez, this is a hard one. The southern part of Sudan is the oil-producing region, and, like the article states, the government in Khartoum is not likely to see this division as a positive. A Velvet Divorce this will not be. I would imagine that as soon as South Sudan decrees independence, North Sudan will invade. Korea, anyone?
Somaliland - This needs to happen sooner than later, so that some people can begin living better lives, and so that the region can experience some semblance of normalcy.
Kurdistan - See South Sudan above, except it won't be the Sunni attacking, well, at least not the Iraqi Sunni. The Turkish Sunnis have other ideas. Turkey may have no choice but to accept a Kurdish homeland if it wants to become more enmeshed in the European Union.
Palestine - Inevitable. Israel needs to grow beyond the opposition. Secondly, The Palestinians themselves need to hold each other accountable for their actions and learn to govern themselves in rational ways.
Taiwan - Not likely. China wants to bring Taiwan into the fold and they have time and patience on their side. Eventually, as China institutes democratic reforms and as its economic prowess expands, the Taiwanese leadership will eventually soften. The United States and Japan would be the only Taiwan supporters. The United States doesn't recognize Taiwan currently, anyway, so why would that change? Finally, no one would want to upset the global applecart buy slugging it out over Taiwan. That would be a no-win, everyone loses, confrontation.
Without a doubt, this is a great bit of geography!
Devolution and Failed States, these are the topics. What can make a new state successful, and what can kill a state in its infancy.
Kosovo - yes, I foresee Kosovo as standing on its own, one day. For how long is another matter ...
South Sudan - geez, this is a hard one. The southern part of Sudan is the oil-producing region, and, like the article states, the government in Khartoum is not likely to see this division as a positive. A Velvet Divorce this will not be. I would imagine that as soon as South Sudan decrees independence, North Sudan will invade. Korea, anyone?
Somaliland - This needs to happen sooner than later, so that some people can begin living better lives, and so that the region can experience some semblance of normalcy.
Kurdistan - See South Sudan above, except it won't be the Sunni attacking, well, at least not the Iraqi Sunni. The Turkish Sunnis have other ideas. Turkey may have no choice but to accept a Kurdish homeland if it wants to become more enmeshed in the European Union.
Palestine - Inevitable. Israel needs to grow beyond the opposition. Secondly, The Palestinians themselves need to hold each other accountable for their actions and learn to govern themselves in rational ways.
Taiwan - Not likely. China wants to bring Taiwan into the fold and they have time and patience on their side. Eventually, as China institutes democratic reforms and as its economic prowess expands, the Taiwanese leadership will eventually soften. The United States and Japan would be the only Taiwan supporters. The United States doesn't recognize Taiwan currently, anyway, so why would that change? Finally, no one would want to upset the global applecart buy slugging it out over Taiwan. That would be a no-win, everyone loses, confrontation.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Leica & TITAN
I downloaded, installed, and played with TITAN the other day. Honestly, I cannot see the utility of this, but it sounds like a cool tool.
TITAN is like Google Earth with an Instant Messenger and P2P built-in, and you have the ability to share your local imagery with others in your contact list. So, I guess, imagine that your are chatting online with a partner, client, collaborator, whoever, and you want the other person to see your data. Essentially, you would drag-and-drop your imagery (more-or-less) onto your chat client, and, wah-lah, your chat buddy can see your imagery, correctly referenced, on a viewer on his/her/its desktop.
You can build your own world, MyWorld, which you can share with your chat buddies. Want to see what others are doing? Search other MyWorlds to see what others are up to.
I hope I have this correct. I have interviewed a person at Leica and if you follow the link above, you can find out more.
TITAN is like Google Earth with an Instant Messenger and P2P built-in, and you have the ability to share your local imagery with others in your contact list. So, I guess, imagine that your are chatting online with a partner, client, collaborator, whoever, and you want the other person to see your data. Essentially, you would drag-and-drop your imagery (more-or-less) onto your chat client, and, wah-lah, your chat buddy can see your imagery, correctly referenced, on a viewer on his/her/its desktop.
You can build your own world, MyWorld, which you can share with your chat buddies. Want to see what others are doing? Search other MyWorlds to see what others are up to.
I hope I have this correct. I have interviewed a person at Leica and if you follow the link above, you can find out more.
ESRI:More Waves in the Ocean
The ESRI UC2007 conference is over. I did not attend this year. The conferences are tiring. And too big. Too big to be really helpful. Previous experience at the conference has shown me that spending time at the Doctor's Office is the biggest aid of all. The rest is just too overwhelming. I will attend in 2008.
Not only is the conference become too bloated but also, in my opinion, is their software. ESRI was once the largest wave in the ocean of spatial products. That environment is changing, due to the likes of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and a few others. I ran across a statistic a while back that only a small percentage of users really want to do anything other than put a marker on a map. That is easily done today without paying for anything.
I work everyday in an environment where our students have all ESRI products accessible to them. I teach as much of those products as I know. My frustration easily mounts when I want them to constuct a 3D choropleth map but first I have to walk them through 3D Analyst first. This is a huge drawback in my mind. Needing an additional software extension, at a cost, to produce a cartographic product that should be part of the base software is mind-boggling.
I am stunned at how challenging the software is for the novice user. And the software is not getting easier. Stunned at how difficult producing visually pleasing map products has become. ESRI maintains a Mapping Center that everyone who maps with ESRI products needs to visit. There are some good tips at getting what you want out of ArcMap.
The difficulty of using their products, I predict, will lower their market share. Oracle will eventually challenge ESRI head-to-head. They have the spatial database and tools in development that will allow them to use their established user base for grabbing a portion of ESRI's market.
Leica Geo-systems, with its recent acquisition of ERMAPPER and IONIC, will probably see its relationship with ESRI sour. Imagine is a good raster-based GIS system, and with its newly-acquired image-processing competitors, their capability will only become better. ESRI is trying to make strides into a realm where it has little experience, being a vector-based GIS system. The early bird has collected the worms...
I personally have used ERMAPPER and found it to be easy-to-use and faster in many cases than its new parent, Imagine. ESRI is going to find that keeping its lead into the future more challenging, as the gazelle feels the nips at its heels from the hungry lions.
Not only is the conference become too bloated but also, in my opinion, is their software. ESRI was once the largest wave in the ocean of spatial products. That environment is changing, due to the likes of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and a few others. I ran across a statistic a while back that only a small percentage of users really want to do anything other than put a marker on a map. That is easily done today without paying for anything.
I work everyday in an environment where our students have all ESRI products accessible to them. I teach as much of those products as I know. My frustration easily mounts when I want them to constuct a 3D choropleth map but first I have to walk them through 3D Analyst first. This is a huge drawback in my mind. Needing an additional software extension, at a cost, to produce a cartographic product that should be part of the base software is mind-boggling.
I am stunned at how challenging the software is for the novice user. And the software is not getting easier. Stunned at how difficult producing visually pleasing map products has become. ESRI maintains a Mapping Center that everyone who maps with ESRI products needs to visit. There are some good tips at getting what you want out of ArcMap.
The difficulty of using their products, I predict, will lower their market share. Oracle will eventually challenge ESRI head-to-head. They have the spatial database and tools in development that will allow them to use their established user base for grabbing a portion of ESRI's market.
Leica Geo-systems, with its recent acquisition of ERMAPPER and IONIC, will probably see its relationship with ESRI sour. Imagine is a good raster-based GIS system, and with its newly-acquired image-processing competitors, their capability will only become better. ESRI is trying to make strides into a realm where it has little experience, being a vector-based GIS system. The early bird has collected the worms...
I personally have used ERMAPPER and found it to be easy-to-use and faster in many cases than its new parent, Imagine. ESRI is going to find that keeping its lead into the future more challenging, as the gazelle feels the nips at its heels from the hungry lions.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Response: The destiny of bad geography - Salon
Letters: The destiny of bad geography - Salon
A good opportunity to discuss the Geography of Africa.
By all measures, the slave trade had an enormous impact on Africa. To place the responsibility of Africa's lack of economic development solely on the slave trade greatly oversimplifies the forces at work on the continent, however.
Several cultures existed for thousands of years prior to European involvement. Humans, by some accounts, evolved on the continent and migrated elsewhere. The Cradle of Humanity, Africa is sometimes referred to. The question really should be: for as long as humans have occupied the space of Africa, why is it not more developed?
We must examine the climate, for it plays a great part. Seasonal rainfall, drought, hours of daylight, seasonality are all parts of the calculus in deteriming climates role. Climate plays a part in disease, and disease is another variable in our equation. The tropics are notorious for their infections, and not just Africa. We can look to our own hemisphere, in Middle and South America for examples.
The role of culture is another input into our equation. As expressed in combat in Somalia, the mentality seems to be "me against my brother, we against our family, our family against our tribe, our tribe against your tribe, our tribes against the foreigner." That mentality does not necessarily breed cooperation.
The Europeans were not the Great Benefactors that perhaps they thought. While introducing railroads and bureaucracy, they also played different factions against each other. They had already reduced the populations in Middle and South America, through smallpox, and needed a new labor force. Europeans focused what development took place towards the coast in order to move not just future slaves but also gold, silver, and timber to the coast.
I look forward to reading the actual paper. Here is the link to the source, and more of Diego Puga's interesting work.
A good opportunity to discuss the Geography of Africa.
By all measures, the slave trade had an enormous impact on Africa. To place the responsibility of Africa's lack of economic development solely on the slave trade greatly oversimplifies the forces at work on the continent, however.
Several cultures existed for thousands of years prior to European involvement. Humans, by some accounts, evolved on the continent and migrated elsewhere. The Cradle of Humanity, Africa is sometimes referred to. The question really should be: for as long as humans have occupied the space of Africa, why is it not more developed?
We must examine the climate, for it plays a great part. Seasonal rainfall, drought, hours of daylight, seasonality are all parts of the calculus in deteriming climates role. Climate plays a part in disease, and disease is another variable in our equation. The tropics are notorious for their infections, and not just Africa. We can look to our own hemisphere, in Middle and South America for examples.
The role of culture is another input into our equation. As expressed in combat in Somalia, the mentality seems to be "me against my brother, we against our family, our family against our tribe, our tribe against your tribe, our tribes against the foreigner." That mentality does not necessarily breed cooperation.
The Europeans were not the Great Benefactors that perhaps they thought. While introducing railroads and bureaucracy, they also played different factions against each other. They had already reduced the populations in Middle and South America, through smallpox, and needed a new labor force. Europeans focused what development took place towards the coast in order to move not just future slaves but also gold, silver, and timber to the coast.
I look forward to reading the actual paper. Here is the link to the source, and more of Diego Puga's interesting work.
More Typing, Less Griping
I haven't posted in a long while. Several reasons for that, the biggest is laziness, outside of family, coaching basketball and baseball, committee service, updating my website, getting computers to cooperate, and teaching World Geography.
I am going to endeavor to improve this. Also, I will try to stick to more geographic-related rantings and less griping. Lots of changes are in store for the GIS and Remote Sensing fields, globalization is finally becoming a household word, and my wife and I finally made it to England!
Please visit me at http://www.constantgeographer.com as I could use the feedback and am using Google Maps to enhance the communication of geographic knowledge.
I am going to endeavor to improve this. Also, I will try to stick to more geographic-related rantings and less griping. Lots of changes are in store for the GIS and Remote Sensing fields, globalization is finally becoming a household word, and my wife and I finally made it to England!
Please visit me at http://www.constantgeographer.com as I could use the feedback and am using Google Maps to enhance the communication of geographic knowledge.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)