Thinking Spatially - AP Human Geography and Current Issues

Have you ever thought about why music makes us happy? Eating food and being around other people make us happy because we need both of these things to survive, but we don’t really need music. Music somehow activates similar brain areas as other activities that bring us joy. Every generation enjoys music, but there is one generation that is changing the music industry more than the others. Generation Z is changing where we get music, what music we listen to, and how often we listen to it. According to Music Row, Gen Z spends on average 18 hours a week listening to music. About 63% of people in Gen Z use Spotify to stream music with 37% of those people actually paying for Spotify Premium. Compared to older generations, in which only 37% of people actually stream from Spotify and only 17% of those pay for Premium, this is a significant number. The chart (below) shows where Gen Z pays for music, with Spotify having a lead of 10% over the next biggest music streaming service that Gen Z spe...

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. When people think about Afghanistan they typically think of the country that is a breeding ground for terrorism and violence, and that’s not wrong. Since the USSR (Soviet Union) invaded the country in 1979 there has been continuous conflict in Afghanistan. However, what people don’t tend to question is how this country had gotten to this point. What often happens is that when poverty is widespread in a county, terrorism and instability take hold. That is exactly the case in Afghanistan. Infact, poverty in Afghanistan had been a huge problem since the Soviets invaded the country in 1979, and poverty stayed when the Soviets left in 1988. Picture from Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The lack of jobs in Afghanistan is also a big problem for the country. In 2013-2014 there were  1.92 million people unemployed, and unemployment reached 22.6%. The Afghan job crisis is especially challenging for youth. One i...

Widespread antibiotic use is responsible for the emergence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, that is presently one among the largest threats to world health. It is associated with the antibiotic resistance that has already caused a calculable 700,000 deaths a  year, it's additionally created various infections,  respiratory illnesses like TB, and VD, that are tougher to treat. This recent discovery could potentially lead to a worldwide catastrophe, it's foreseen that the growing resistant bacterial diseases may cause ten million deaths a year by 2050. Though there is no known way to stop the bacteria from developing a certain immunity to antibiotics, there is research decoding how they develop their resistance. MRSA become immune to antibiotics through changes within the bacteria's ordination. An example of this is when the microorganisms (MRSA) pump the antibiotic out, or break the antibiotics down. They additionally stop growing and divide, tha...

It is no small matter that the Middle East is engulfed in the flames of war and anarchy. For years, the Kurdish people have fought relentlessly against all odds to earn their independence. The Kurdish inhabited region is made up of areas in southeastern Turkey,  northern Iraq and Syria, as well as parts of Iran and Armenia. In December 2018, the Turkish government announced that it planned to begin a formal operation against the Kurds in northern Syria. This was met with little opposition from the United Nations, however the United States imposed substantial trade sanctions on Turkey the following January. It was near this same time that President Trump also announced the withdrawal of US troops from Syria. Expectedly and inevitably, the Turkish soon began a military offensive, codenamed “Operation Peace Spring” into northern Syria. The goal of the operation was to swiftly go in and occupy 30 kilometers of a “buffer zone” in between Turkey and Syria, something some would call an ...

Deforestation is the clearing of trees through deliberate, accidental, or natural means and is done throughout the world, almost everywhere. The clearing of trees is done for a number of reasons including farming and another being logging.  Logging is the destruction and clearing of trees for materials and development. In the Philippines there has been massive amounts of deforestation that has been done since the beginning of the 20th century. At the beginning of the 20th century the forest cover in the Philippines was 70%, nowadays, it is only at 25% and all but 10% of it is owned by the government.  A huge amount of illegal logging has been one of the main causes for the deforestation of the Philippines. The forests of the country used to be a stretch of 16 million hectares (39.5 million acres) but today the country’s forests only take up 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres). This has caused massive flooding, rapid soil erosion, water shortages, and mudslides in the ...

The definition of mental illness is a person’s condition concerning their psychological and emotional well-being. There are many different types of mental illnesses and they each affect a person in different ways. Certain illnesses are more common in either more developed or currently developing countries. Each country around the world is affected differently by mental illness. Mental health has been an issue for people for a very long time. In early history, it was not as documented as it is in modern times. Mental illness does not only affect certain types of people it affects all people in one way or another. It seems to spread almost contagiously because of the rise in mental health issues quite recently. Not only in the United States, known for its variety of cultures and freedoms, but all around the globe. This raises questions. Is the spreading of mental illness just a figment of imagination in the way it spreads or is it truly contagious? The term ‘mental health’ was not p...

On October 26th, a Dallas policeman shot his son after thinking he was an intruder. Fortunately, no serious injury or death occurred. No charges were filled and an arrest was not made. After I read this I began to think, what would people who don’t live in the U.S. might think about this. According to Reutters, in 2011, 47% of Americans reported owning a gun. In other parts of the world owning a private gun has many different laws. In the UK the gun laws are extremely strict. You have to have a Shotgun Certificate and a Firearm Certificate. To gain the Firearm Certificate you must be over the age of 14 and you must have a good reason for needing one. You must also have two different references and state all or any of your criminal records. This certificate has to be renewed every five years. According to Business Insider, in 2011, the UK had 0.07 gun homicides for every 100,000 people and the U.S. had three gun homicides for every 100,000 people. Because of the strict gun laws i...

Ever since people have terrorized others there has always been someone to fight against it. Today, most of this fighting is done by The U.N. and the countries within it, mostly the United States, on terrorist organizations like ISIS and the Taliban. Ever since September 11, 2001 the United States has raged the “war on terror” and has been attacking these groups and killing important leaders within them, one example being Osama bin Laden. This week, the leader of the  ISIS terrorist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a raid on his compound. This raid was conducted by United States Special Forces. The ground forces met resistance from ISIS fighters, but the fighters were met with small arms fire and American air support. When Baghdadi saw that there was no escape from American forces, he crawled into a hole with his two children and killed them and himself with an explosive he had strapped to him. The compound was later “reduced to a parking lot with large potholes” so ...