Informed Comment

A rock-solid up to date blog on Iraq and other doings in the Middle East. Cole is a professor of history.

Fallujah 101: A history lesson about the town we are currently destroying. -- In These Times

Rashid Khalidi is a a prof at Columbia U in NYC. He's a frequent guest on PBS Newshour -- this piece connects the dots on my in-class comments on the British in Iraq. If you have time, scroll down and see the comments -- remember the WWW is open to lots of clickers. You'll see how a single set of events can be appropriated for different points of view. [BTW I got here from the Utne Reader which compiles articles and links on a weekly basis]. * The perspective of this piece will not appeal to all readers *

heraldtribune.com: Southwest Florida's Information Leader

This article addresses another aspect of the geography of the last election -- I am not sure how durable a link it is. Certainly there's a geography to this idea. How would you change the system to "balance" this effect? [p.s. I don't read this paper routlinely, I found the link on another blog -- http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com
It might not be to your political taste, that's OK.
I read it less than I used to during the election season.

Groups, U.S. Battle Over 'Global Terrorist' Label (washingtonpost.com)

I am not sure how long this link will be durable but this considers one of the issues we talked about in class regarding charities which donate to Islamic organizations.

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/

This is a site dedicated to migration information. For our Russia studies -- check out the Global Data in the left hand pane menus and look at the sources for official migration into Russia for the past few years. This site uses government stats as its basis.

Tutorial Page

Here's a neat page on faults -- it's part of a longer sequence. It addresses some cool stuff related to the transform zone and San Andreas.

International Data Base (IDB)

Root site for IDB data -- better entry point than the previous link.
This link will be used for class demo.

Bush Kills - Bush's Record
Best I could do at short notice..... the partisan site does rank TX as #1 in terms of executions -- it doesn't do a per capita rating and is out of date. No time to dig further. I welcome more recent data and will ask someone tomorrow for info.

Texas Tough?: An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State

This site explores the TX prison population. The claim to be #1 in terms of TX's proportion of its population "under supervision" appears to be valid based on this 2002 data. Of interest here are the comparisons between TX and some other key states and some issues related to race. I don't have the death penalty data to hand.
I will look a little more. RK

Plate tectonics animation

A slow load but a cool animation over geologic time.
I load it and load it again.... watch out for India moving along....

National Geographic: Roper Geographic Survey 2002

This page has some brief discussion of the Roper Survey we sampled in class. The full report can be downloaded from this page as a PDF. If you wish to read it and can't get it to download, let me know and I will try to help.

IDB Data Access--Display Mode

The mother lode of available demographic data...... a great source for all sorts of current and historical data. Use it!!!!

National Low Income Housing Coalition: The NIMBY Report

This site, mentioned in a student, journal considers specific LULUs that focus less on land uses but on the people who inhabit/use them. In this case, it's housing. It's worth a skim and may give you an idea of the larger picture of this particular phenomenon.

Iraq as an evolving place

The idealism of creating a new liberal democracy in the Middle East "a brand new place" if you like.... is giving way to a more complex situation. Some expected this to happen.... others felt like the power of the US and the vision of its President would triumph in this necessary conflict.
In class, we talked about insurgency and territorial control as well.
Feel free to comment here.

Canadian Asbestos: A Global Concern

I have been trying to get back to an account I heard of the community which was almost completely depopulated when its mines closed. I called it Asbestos, Ontario -- I cannot home in on it. I think my memory has blurred places and names. I am pretty certain that the place I heard about was in Ontario. But, Asbestos the town is in Quebec and is definitely NOT the place I was thinking off. Asbestos, Quebec is near the Thetford area. I will churn on that some more.

Meanwhile, I found an interesting conference report on asbsestos at the global scale. Canada and its interests were the target of the discussion. I thought it was a solid example of the way in which globalization produces complex relationships -- we'll come back to this.

USGS - Minerals Information: Asbestos

More than you'd ever want to know about Asbestos as it relates to the United States.

Click here for links to all other mineral reports -- a great source!

A Watchful State

Here is the link to the article A Watchful State

Poverty in the Suburbs

I had a good question about poverty and its link to core ideas in geography. While my intentions in discussing poverty were to get into play ideas of research, explanation and policy, poverty does link to geographical ideas of the creation and recreation of places and our knowledge of them. Here, Peter Dreier discusses the urban-rural-suburban division of folks who live in poverty and provides some context and explanation. It's worth a read.

Guardian Unlimited Special reports The Caucasian vicious circle

Beslan -- a short piece from the Guardian in the UK. Note how the situation becomes even more complex when one factors in some history. The choices of "international terrorism" vs. "Chechen fighters" gets blurred.

Arizona Geographic Alliance - Maps

This link is to the Map site for the Arizona Geographic Alliance.
It's a nice source for outline maps -- some focus only on Arizona, others on world regions etc.

They are all in Adobe format.

Perinatal Health in the United States

March of Dimes site for perinatal health. Remember in class I talked about disaggregating IMRs by race? Here is a quick and easy way to check out such stats by state and even by county. I asserted in class that IMRs for African Americans got close to 20 in some states. I looked at statewide #s and found some in the high teens but none as high as 20. I might have been remembering an old statistic (I recall looking at this in hard copy not online) OR I could have been looking at some specific county level data. In any event, if interest takes you in this direction, here's a good place to look. Of course, primary data of this sort will be collected and analyzed by most State Health Departments. The MOD site provides a link to such departments when you specific a state in your search.

International Data Base (IDB)

The famous IDB site -- the online access link is a good one. Maybe start with summary data though -- while the PRB does most recent data, this site allows you relatively easy access to historical data. The trouble is its coverage is quite uneven.

Country Reports on Health, Nutrition, Population, and Poverty

Super interesting site from WBank. I jumped to it from their World Development Indicators CD product.