The video below was put together using a collection of photos taken from the International Space Station (ISS). It was assembled by an online newspaper. So forgive me for the 15 seconds advertisement at the beginning....
City lights appear white, yellow or orange depending on intensity and concentration, so what are those red dots that are visible in some areas?
A couple of things strike me every time I look at images of the earth from space, especially at night. Although there is no clear boundary separating earth’s atmosphere and outer space, the Kármán line which lies at an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 mi) above sea level, is commonly used to define this boundary. Our lives depend on this thin layer of gases containing the air we breathe. Amazing!
The second, even more striking thing is that political lines disappear when we look at the world from space. City lights of the same color dot the landscape in North America as well as in Africa and Asia. Rivers flow from mountains to oceans crossing international boundaries without passports. Snow is visible on top of mountains in both the northern and southern hemisphere and thunderstorm clouds move over lands and seas without following predefined flight paths over "friendly skies".
The world is one smooth continuum of wonderful places. We humans are the ones that have divided it up with boundaries that are so familiar to us on our colorful political maps. We are the ones who directly or indirectly contribute to radically different standard of living in countries far apart from each other, or in bordering cities like El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico:
View Larger Map
Or Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip:
Watching the world go by at night makes those flat maps come alive. It gives us a different prospective of cities and highways, of populated places and remote locations, of vast oceans and long rivers. If we take some time to reflect about it, it gives us a better understanding of how people and places fit together and how we are all connected. The ISS takes only about 90 minutes to travel around the earth. During that time, it flies over rich countries, city slums, people at war and people on vacation. So little time, so few miles, yet such striking differences.
What would I do if I were born in a Central American country, or in rural Africa without a job and the opportunity to support myself and my family? I often wonder about that...
As you ponder about what your life would be like "if you were born somewhere else", take some quiet time to watch this touching documentary, which follows the journey of a few young people leaving El Salvador in search for a better future.
Across Mexico: Chasing an impossible dream - Risking it all - Al Jazeera English
Have you ever stopped to consider what your life would be like if you had been born in another country? Not just another state (if you live in the USA), but another COUNTRY.
Last week, I went to visit a friend who came to Colorado from Mexico. He and his wife just had their fourth child. Their family has struggled to make ends meet since they arrived several years ago. They live in a poor neighborhood, in an old house with only very basic furniture. Yet, he works longer hours than most people I know.
As it often happens when I am exposed to people who were born and grew up in developing countries, I stopped to think about what my life would have been like if I had been born in a poor village of Mexico instead of the town of Verona- Italy, if my parents had been migrant farmers instead of working in a bank, if I had had to work in the fields every day instead of attending private school and being able to go to college.
In the end, a lot of what we have is a result of the country, environment and family into which we were born. What if we had been born in a place and family which had no running water or regular food or would not have been able to send us to school? Our life would, likely, be drastically different.
It is a sobering realization, but there are millions of smart children and adults around the world that will never be able to achieve their full potential because of the circumstances they are in, for no fault of theirs. What contributions could these persons provide if they had the opportunity? Find a cure for a disease? Negotiate a peace agreement in a war-torn area? Win the world cup of soccer? Or simply teach at an elementary school and empower children to strive for a better future….
There is a simple but interesting website that gives a glimpse into what our life would have been like if we lived in any other place around the globe. Just pick any country you are thinking about and check out the few simple statistics presented. Here it is: http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/
So, what should be thankful for today? Why have I been blessed to have hot water, a warm house and a job that allows me to have enough money to feed my children?
I will post a video-story about this subject in a few days. Stay tuned. :-)
I spent some time looking at the tags of all shirt, T-shirts, sweaters and pants in my closet and recorded the country in which they were made and then generated the graph below using Microsoft Excel. It was an interesting exercise which I recommend trying. If you have children, it’s a fun educational activity to include them in. It will spur some interesting conversations.
What does this graph tell us?
Probably that I have too many clothes in my closet.
The next thing that comes to mind is that I bought all these clothes in the United States, yet only about 10% of them were manufactured in this country. That means that it is cheaper for American companies to have the product manufactured abroad and then shipped over here, rather than making it in the US.
Factory workers in developing countries, like Honduras, Bangladesh and Thailand are paid only a few dollars a day. This makes our goods cheaper, but it does not improve the financial situation of these workers, nor does it help US factories which cannot compete with developing countries waves.
My quick research on clothing labels also helps us to understand how connected our economy is with that with that of Asian and Central American countries, most of which are considered developing nations. These countries have a high percentage of people living under the poverty level, a poor infrastructure and might be governed by unstable or unfriendly governments. So, when any of them faces a natural disaster or political crisis, our economy and that of many other nations can be affected as well.
Geography affects our everyday lives in more ways that we realize.
How did Geography affect your life today?
Do you remember a situation in which Geography significantly affected your life? I will share a few of mine in a future post.
P.S. Two of the names shown on the graph above are not, officially, independent countries.