HDI

To calculate HDI, they look in to how long and healthy the average life is in the country, how educated the country is, and whether or not the country has a decent standard of living. I notice that higher HDIs tend to be more developed countries. I know that the website states that you cannot tell if a country is developed by whether it has a high or low HDI, but I still think that it has an impact on it. To go along with that, the poorer populations tend to be on the low HDI side. This is because they can't afford to have good health care to help people live longer, they don't have as many people entered into the school systems, and most families are very poor with a low standard of living. Another pattern I've noticed is that Southwest Asia and North Africa tend to have a lot of countries on the medium HDI list. I think that the Sub-Saharan Africa is ranked so low on the HDI list because they are a poor area. As I mentioned above, they can't afford to have superior health care. They can't afford to have vaccines and medications to fight of things like malaria. Also, you have to pay to go to schools in a lot of places in the Sub-Saharan Africa. Many families have a lot of children and can't afford to send all of them to school. Sometimes a family of 10 can only send 2 of their children to school because that's all they can handle. Lastly, is the standard of living. Most people in Africa live in little huts, and in Rwanda, many people live on less than a dollar a day. For these reasons, and more, is why most of Sub-Saharan Africa is ranked on the low end of the HDI.

National Geographic Photo

This is Vanu Levus Island in Fiji. I chose this picture because to me, is the definition of peace. Every day we hear about so many horrible things going on in our world. We hear about murders and poverty and war and other awful things. When I think about how good I have it compared to some people in the world it breaks my heart. I wish that everyone in the world could experience peace. I wish no one had to go weeks without eating. Although, in reality, that can't happen. But I like to look at this picture and see that there is peace at some place in the world. Even if it is just for a brief second, somewhere as beautiful as Vanu Levus Island is a place where you can find comfort in knowing that the sun still rises and sets and there is still going to be a tomorrow. That is why I chose this photograph. It is a great reminder that God created this earth and he still takes care of us each and every day.

Travel Ban on Cuba

There have been 100 million deaths that can be linked to either decisions made my a Communist government or directly by the Communist government. Does this sound like something that we as Christians should support? While Castro is still alive we should not lift the travel ban and trade embargo on Cuba. The article said that money spent on tourism would just be like putting oxygen into the dying Castro regime. Travel to Cuba would send millions of dollars into the Castro regime, just giving him fuel to thrive on. The article also talks about how if Cuban exiles were able to return to the island whenever they wanted, it would abuse their refugee privilege. Lifting the travel ban would be unsafe because the president would only be able to step in and do something about it if there were an "armed conflict or armed danger" arises. I think that if the travel ban is lifted it will send out a message to everyone in the world that we support the Castro regime, therefore saying that we support communism.

Mexian Drug War

I chose to look at the war on drugs in Mexico for my current event. We talked briefly about it in class and I was curious to find out more about it. I found that http://xrl.us/befp7c was a good website to give me just a general idea of what it is all about. We talked in class how people are getting killed every day and how there are cops who are always checking people's cars and putting their own lives in danger for this war. There have been 7,211 drug related deaths realted to this drug war since January of 2007. The website had a really great map that said how many people have died in what cities and things like that. Chihuahua has the most deaths, ranking in with 1,678. Next on the list of Sinaloa which has a total of 962 deaths. This war if taking place all throughout Mexico. It trails all the way down to the very southernmost tip. This war is based largely on the U.S.A.'s large demand of drugs. Many of these drugs are sent to our country from Mexico so they are fighting over that and the groups sending the drugs up. This war is a bad deal and it looks like it is going to take a long time before it is all settled.

International Fast Food

This is a map from worldmapper.org. I looked at a lot of the different maps and they were all so interesting. This one that I chose to write about it on International Fast Food. The map is of one major fast food outlet. I had a feeling that the United States would be pretty big on this map. Fast food restaurants are a way of life in the United States. So many days I just go and run to Subway or run to Runza to get away from Janzow food. I don't think twice about it. But then I look at places like Africa and they really have no fast food. It's intersting to see how what we eat and how we eat influences or is influenced by our culture. The United States is such a fast paced culture. We don't have time anymore to sit down and have a nice dinner every night. A reason for this is because women are working so much more, they aren't able to just stay home and cook something fancy every day. So it is a lot easier to order something fast and bring it home. The website says that by 2004 there were 30,496 of these restaurants worldwide. And of that number, 45% of them were in the United States. That's an outrageous percentage! The next highest ranking were in Japan, Canada, Germany, Andorra, New Zealand, Austria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, and Kyrgystan. These places too are more developed countries. It says that the world average for these outlets are 5 per million people. In the U.S.A. there are 47 per million people. As we can see, Africa is very tiny on this map. The number of outlets in Africa is 150. Most of these are in South Africa where you can see it is a little bit bigger. At the bottom of the map, they have a quote from McDonalds. It reads, "One World. One Taste." That is saying that there is only one world, but McDonalds and other fast food restaurants have become so big internationally that you can find these fast food restaurants all over the place.