Papa New Guinea Urban Facts

• 12th fastest growing economy in the world
• 1.9% unemployment rate
• 841 different languages, 11 have no known speakers
• money poor, resource rich
• growing populations- lots of young people
• more males can read than females- boys are more highly valued
• 37% of the population is below the poverty line
• TFR 3.39
• NMR 0
• 13% of the total population is urban
• Over half of the world population is urban
• 6.1 billion imports
• 6.48 billion exports- oil, natural gas, gold, metals, seafood, hardwood
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Class Participation Grade

I would give myself a 90. I talk sometimes but not all the time. But I think I ask enough questions but not too many. There's room for me to talk more but I think I talk enough to get a 90 or higher.

Even More Movie Watching

Today, as well the previous days, we have watched  Guns, Germs, and Steel. Mr. Schick kept getting mad though because people were talking a lot in class. The section of the movie talked a lot about the fertile crescent and how the latitude around the globe is pretty much the same climate, time, and fertile land. Americans consume about 20 million tons of wheat per year. Over 100 million cattle are present in America. New Guinea does not have a lot of animals or crops. Part of this is due to the hilly and rain forest landscape. In order for animals/crops to be grown, there needs to be a large space or animals to graze and crops to grow. Because of the inability to grow/raise crops/animals, it has been harder for New Guinea to prosper as much as societies that existed in the fertile crescent.

More Movie Watching

Today in class we continued watching the movie about Jared Diamonds' theories. One fact that I thought was interesting was that there are only fourteen animals that have been successfully domesticated. Most of these animals are big animals that weigh over 100 lbs. The animals are goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, bacterian camels, Arabian camels, llamas, water buffaloes, reindeers, yaks, mithans, and bali cattle. All of these animals, except the llama, came from Africa or the Middle East. The movie began to talk about steel a little. The mentioned how steel is better than stone and is more productive. Also how the control of fire and learning how to use it to its abilities to create weapons, including steel.

Continued Movie Watching

Today in class we continued to watch the movie about New Guinea. The portion of the movie we watched today was about how the people in the Middle East were able to grow grain, barely, and other things successfully while people in New Guinea can't grow those things. Also how Drah is the oldest surviving evidence of a non-hunter gather society. Diggers were able to discover a granery which would have been used to store the grain that the grew nearby for years. New Guinea grew sago trees which didn't have as much nutrients as wheat. Jared Diamond explains the inclined success of the Middle East and the neutral success of New Guinea as "geography luck".

Jared Diamond and Guns, Germs, and Steel

The book Guns, Germs, and Steel was written in 1997. The book tries to explain why civilizations in Europe survived and conquered others. The book argues against the idea of Eurasian leadership is due to any form of Eurasian intelligence, morals, or genetics. The title of the book comes from how weapons were a symbol of power (guns), Eurasian diseases weakened and killed many local civilizations with no immunity, making it easier to maintain control (germs), and how government promoted nationalism and powerful military organizations (steel). In 1998, the book won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. The book also received the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book.

Jared Diamond was born on September 10, 1937. Jared has a passion for birds. He has been to New Guinea and near-by islands to study the evolution and ecology of birds. Diamond was born in Massachusetts. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College in 1958. He was originally trained in physiology but has several other different fields. Diamond believes that the different level of power and technology is because of environmental differences, guided by positive feedback loops. Currently, Jared Diamond is a professor at UCLA. He won the national Medal of Science in 1999.

12/12/12

In class everyone did there presentations based on their projects. Personally, I think our group did good except for a few things here and there. I didn't talk during the presentation of my group, but I controlled the computer to switch the slides from one to another. Before we did the presentations, we all received a piece of paper. On the paper we were supposed to grade each others presentations out of 100 and make comments based on a list of questions we received. Of course, I gave my group the highest grade. We also had to do how much of the work percentage everyone did in our groups. Since we had 5 people in my group, I had to split the percentages among us. Mr. Schick also said that out of the class that had gone prior to us, our class was the most prepared and had the best presentations.