Religions

I chose this map because I found where certain religions are located and how they rank among the other religions in the United States.  As you can see in the map Baptist are most represented in the southeast section of the United States.  This is not shocking to me because most everybody has heard the term southern Baptist.  We can also see the Church of the Later-day Saints are located in Utah and the surrounding areas.  Lutherans are mostly located in the Mid-Northern states and seem to be spread around to many of the same places that one could find a Concordia University.  Catholics are pretty evenly spread throughout the United States.   

Africa

 The article that you gave us to look at in your blog stated that “More than $500 billion in foreign aid—the equivalent of four Marshall Aid Plans—was pumped into Africa between 1960 and 1997” This number is outrageous especially when you notice that in 2004 the economic growth of Africa was only 5%.  This money that is being sent over by the millions in order to “aid” Africa is not helping at all it is only making the rich people richer and the poor people poorer. 

            I believe that instead of sending all of this money in “Aid” over to Africa we should send people and leaders over to help reform Africa.  Africans are receiving this aid and thus for example they are not providing their own means of textiles.  Which is the most common industry of developing nations.  I think that if we allow Africa to develop an infrastructure in order to become self sufficient we will help Africa out tremendously in the long run. 

Egypt

 In Egypt they have just successfully "ousted" President Hosni Mubark.  This revolution in Egypt began on January 25 2011.  The main spread of this revolution was different from many others in the world’s history because social networking sites spread information.  This revolution has started a major uprising of many countries in the Middle East.  In recent history the United States has devolved a no fly zone over Libya.  While they are trying to force there leader Muammar Gaddafi. 

Blog Topic 8

I choose this picture because of the maps that are in our school system nowadays most students think that Hawaii is a lot closer to the United States.  However, Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  It is pretty much alone by its self and not anywhere close to California. 
I think that we need to make sure that in our schools today we make sure that the students to not mistake where Hawaii and Alaska are because on the map in are school books just show them off to the side.   Most people in the world do not really realize just how far away Hawaii is from the west coast until they fly there.  I have never been to Hawaii but i have heard from other people that it take a very long time to fly over there. 

Restrepo

 

In this video Tim Hetherington answers the question "how do we win?".  This question has been the point of many debates throughout the years that we have been involved in Iraq, and Afghanistan.  Tim tells us how at the point when we invaded the approval rate in Afghanistan of this was around 90%.  He then goes on to say that if we want to "Win" in this war that is going on we must "Win them over by giving them the best possible outcome"  We saw in the Movie Restrepo how that Afghan people are turning to the side of the Taliban because they might pay them a few dollars to lay down some fire.  We need to work to instill trust in these people and encourage them to stay away from the Taliban and focus on good ways of making money to provide for their families. 

I think that what these guys did by filming Restrepo is wonderful.  It allowed the American people a chance to see what the war in Afghanistan is really like.  Because it seems that the news nowadays always have some sort of a bias.  This movie gave a straight foreword view of how the war really is in this region of the world.  However I think that it is sad that we moved out of the area in which this documentary was filmed.  People gave their lives for this valley and we just backed out I do not understand why we did that but I guess it is all part of are plan for achieving success in Afghanistan. 

The Great Firewall of China

In China the government has established what has become known as the "Great Firewall of China".  This is government censorship of many web sites also includes many search terms such as the three T's.  Although as this article state the government in china is going to have a harder time controlling what is put on the web nowadays with podcasts and video messages it is becoming harder for the government to control what is being put on the web.  These podcasts and video messages require a deeper look then text files, which the government can easily watch. 

I also found this picture to be an appropriate descriptor of the government in china. It seems to some people that the government is looking at every thing that they do like they are under a microscope. 

This map shows the world in relation to the amount of movies that are watched in a movie theater by people each year.  We can see that this map is dominated by the USA, and India.  There are over twelve thousand movie theaters in India, which can very from a one-room shack to amazing movie theaters.  And of the 7.6 billion movies that were watched in one year almost 3 billion of those viewings happened in India. 
Bollywood, which is the Indian equivalent of the American Hollywood.  Makes a amazing amount of movies each year and we can see the effect of this out put by how many trips are made to the movie theaters each year.