Map of Twitter Followers of World Leaders

Earlier this week I blogged about world leaders who have Twitter accounts.  The post has a life as it own as the excellent World Geography Blog (whose blogger, Ryan, is a frequent commenter therefore an all around cool guy) has a post which maps the popularity of world leader's Twitter feeds.

The amount of followers various world leaders have on Twitter.  Map made by World Geography Blog

Not surprisingly the English-language Twitter feeds are the most popular.  America's President Barack Obama and the United Kingdom's Prime Minister David Cameron have the most popular feeds.  The media savy Jordanian Queen Rania comes in at third.  These three top feeds are well above the rest with over a million followers.  Fourth place, with only 195,000, is the Spanish-language feed of Chile's President Sebastián Piñera.  I assume that the reason this feed is so popular is a combination of the wide spreed use of the internet in Spanish-speaking countries and Piñera's background in the media business.

Travel Advisories from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States

The end of the Cold War and start of globalization has led to a rapid expansion in international tourism.  A parallel increase in risk has lead to governments taking a more proactive role in monitoring and advising their citizens of various dangers.  These dangers range from human-caused like crime and terrorism to ecological like diseases.  The internet has allowed governments to easily reach its citizens with travel advisories.  The United States and the main Commonwealth countries have led to the charge in advising their citizens via the web.

Countries Travel Advisories Websites:
Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade
United Kingdom's Foreign & Commonwealth Office
United States' Department of State

The Commonwealth countries do a good job of providing warnings.  The first information displayed, usually in a color-coded system, gives the general advisory and any related important information.  New Zealand even provides links from the other countries' travel warnings pages.

The United States' State Department page is horrible, though.  One has to scroll through a CIA World Factbook-style introduction and then sort through other general information to get to the advisories.  Looking up Iran one will have to read past "Iran is an Islamic Republic" to get to any useful information.

September 2010 Travel Photo: Guanajuato Sun Roof

I took this photo in November 2009 during my trip to Mexico.

The city of Guanajuato is the capital of the Mexican state with the same name.  It is located in a bowl with historical, New Spain-style colonial dominating in the center.


View Larger Map

The mornings were cool, to the point my fingers ached.  However, once the sun's rays conquered the hill and filled the bowl it warmed up into 70 degrees (lower to mid 20s degrees Celsius).  The home I rented had a roof which had tables and a wooden shade roof on top.  From here I could eat breakfast and enjoy the outdoor sounds lie a man selling propane while he yelled "/ghaas/", cars in distance, bells from the many churches in town, and the market a few blocks away.

An added extra was the glass floor on the roof which acted as a skylight for both the library on the second floor and the kitchen on the main level.

Saudi Arabia: A Neat and Orderly Police State

The Government of Saudi Arabia kindly wishes to inform you that they do not like your geography blog.

These are hard post to write.  My feelings of Saudi Arabia are incredibly mixed.  The physical geography is beautiful and I can only heap praise on the many Arabs I met in the country.  However, Saudi Arabia is the first time I truly felt in a different world.  Being raised in the United States I have been able to share cultural traits which I encountered while in Latin America, the Caribbean islands, and Europe.  Even Iraq and Qatar had a wannabe, Westernish-modernish feeling to them.  Saudi Arabia though, is different.  My time in Saudi Arabia has given me the impress that Saudi Arabia wants to be modern but on its terms with as little Westerness as possible. 

A Neat and Orderly Police State
 

The Government of Saudi Arabia kindly wishes to inform you that they will kill you if you bring in drugs.

Doha, Qatar's airport is one of the most disorganized cosmopolitan places in the world.  I saw Americans, Brits, French, Germans, Saudis, Egyptians, Iranians, Pakistanis, and Filipinos cutting in front of each other, pushing, and desperately seeking anything that could guide them to their gates.  At the ticket counter a dolled-up, fake blonde young Arab woman became my smiling savior as she guided me to my Riyadh-bound flight.

When the plane took off I was thinking that Saudi Arabia would be similarly chaotic.  I was quickly diverted though when a East Asian flight attendant handed me a customs form which in bright red lettering threatened me with death if I was trafficking in drugs (If only "Death for Terrorism" or "Death for Human Trafficking" were on the form).  For the rest of the flight I, a non-drinking, non-smoking, non-drug using Catholic, just dwelled on this stern warning while remembering movies like Brokedown Palace.

When I landed the stereotype of an Arabian chaos was shattered.  Everyone quickly yet quietly formed a line and stayed in it.  We all went through security silently.  Heavily armed police overlooked the whole process.  Women in face showing burqas, more skin reveling than in Qatar but much less fashionable as they were cotton and not silk, checked in women while men in uniform (much like Homeland Security in the United States) checked men in.

Qatar relies on cameras for enforcement.  Police cameras are everywhere and used in malls, sidwalks, roads, neighborhoods, and even in restaurants.  In Saudi Arabia police are everywhere while the camera was virtually unseen.  Going to the hotel and around town there were many road checkpoints manned mostly by police but at several places by military-equipped National Guard.  Even the hotel I stayed at had a heavy police presence.

What truly made me feel in another world was the openness of punishment.  Public punishment has gone out of sytle in the West.  The biggest controversy is if the names and addresses of ex-convicts should be placed on the internet.  In Saudi Arabia there is no real controversy over any form of punishment public or private.

The seemingly innocent public square in front of the Ministry of Justice building.

In front of the Ministry of Justice building is the "Ministry of Justice Square."  I visited it on a Thursday evening.  Little kids were playing in the main fountains that came out of a complex gutter system while older kids played a soccer game.  Some adults walked in and out of the square while others were merely enjoying the cooling evening shade. 

While I was enjoying the view someone came up to me and asked if I was going to be in the square tomorrow, Friday.  When I asked why I was told that I should.  "You should come.  We will put you up front so you get to see everything."  I quickly found out that the Ministry of Justice Square was used for executions and amputations for people caught stealing three times.  Crowds and the police will move foreigners up front with the preference for those who they consider likely Christians.  That way foreigners get to see "true, Saudi justice" while the last thing the condemned see are kafir Christians.

The man probably saw the shock on my face.  He responded with "Don't worry.  The criminals are drained of blood so they cannot struggle and no blood will get on.  The rest of the blood and washed away by the fountains."

Later this week: The Gastronomical Delights of Saudi Arabia and Its Enemies

World Leaders on Twitter

Twitter has provided yet another form of electronic communication to the masses.  What first seemed to be a gimmick has turned into a social media phenomenon.  Twitter is so wide spread that world leaders have their own accounts which they use to announce news, views, and general comments.  Below is a list of world leaders and/or world leaders' offices official accounts.  The accounts publish in English unless otherwise noted.

Canada
Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Chile
Sebastian Piñera (Spanish)

Costa Rica
Casa Presidenical: President Laura Chinchilla (Spanish)

Denmark
Primer Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (Danish)

Ecuador
President Rafael Correa (Spanish)

France
The Office of the President: President Nicholas Sarkozy (French)

Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Jordan
Queen Rania Al Abdullah

Latvia
Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis (Latvian)

Malaysia
Prime Minister Mohd Najib Tun Razak

Mexico
President Felipe Calderon (Spanish)

New Zealand
Prime Minister John Key

Norway
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Norwegian)

Russia
The Kremlin, President Dmitry Medvedev

South Korea
The Blue House: Lee Myung-bak (Korean)

Thailand
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva (Thai)

Turkey
President Abdullah Gul (Turkish)
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkish)

United Arab Emirates
Prince Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum

United Kingdom
Number 10 Office: Prime Minister David Cameron

United States
The White House: President Barack Obama
President Barack Obama

Online Live Meteorological Maps of the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea

News stories about hurricanes and tropical storms fill the media as summer turns into fall.  This is also the season where I get requests for geographic information about these powerful sea storms.  Fortunately I have found something of use for those who desire meteorological data.  My Fox Hurricane pools the resources of radar, satellites, models, and sea gathered information to offer a wide variety of maps.  There are also KML (Google Earth) and SHP (GIS) files available about the current storms in the news.  So if you are looking for something like wave heights in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, water temperature in the Atlantic Ocean, or an air pressure map then this is worth a look!

Central Place Theory and Its Dark Origin

The development of Central Place Theory is one of the great realizations in modern geography.  The theory's acceptance allowed for better integration of quantitative data and mathematics into geography and allowed the field to regain scientific respect which was lost after World War II.  What few realizes or acknowledge though is that this important theory has its origins in one of mankind's darkest hours.

Central Place Theory deals with cities, their satellites, and other populated places.  Central Place Theory is defined, by James Rubenstein in "The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography," as "a theory that explains the distribution of services, based on the fact that settlements serve as centers of market areas for services; larger settlements are fewer and farther apart than smaller settlements and provide services for a large number of people who are willing to travel farther."

Translating that into everyday speak, the theory can be explained as "rural people go to a town for certain goods that can be sold profitably in a lightly populated area.  For specialized goods that need a high population density to be sold profitably (a car sales man can sell more cars in New York City than Scotland, South Dakota) rural people and town people go to a city.  Thus the city is the central place for the city, towns, and satellite areas like suburbs, exurbs, and farms. 

Central Place Theory states that it would be economically unlikely that two major cities would be located close to each other because they would split profits from the outlying area (think of two trees competing for limited soil neutrants, they could not grow as big as they could if the other tree was not there).  However, it is possible for two cities to be spatial close if travel between two cities is difficult due to high density traffic or poor roads (think how Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland are so close together but a considered world's apart by nearby residents).

A simplified explanation of Central Place Theory

To figure out the fine points and apply Central Place Theory one needs to use mathematics and economics.  The use of these statistical sciences helped open geography up to the quantitative revolution.  Today, while the revolution has ebbed, many geographers like urban planners and GIS user still ground their studies in spatial statistics.

A Dark Origin

Central Place Theory was started by the German geographer Walter Christaller in the 1920s.  Christaller observed the spatial patterning of settlements in southern Germany and published his results in Central Places in Southern Germany.

However, Christaller was not able to apply his theory until a few years later.  He was unique, compared to other planning geographers, in the sense that he was given a blank slate and an uptopian goal: remake occupied Poland for his Nazi masters using Central Place Theory.  You see, Christaller was a member of the Nazi Party who worked for Heinrich Himmler in the SS Planning and Soil Office.  He even made a map showing how a German-settled Poland should look with central places and adjacent places (below).

The Central Place in the Eastern Regions and their Culture and Market Sector map for the SS Reorganization of Poland.  Click to enlarge.  From Visualizing a Map of Walter Christaller, Poland 1941.

Christaller did not see his dream completed due to the Nazi loss of World War II.  However, like many believers in National Socialism he made the small hop from German National Socialism to International Socialism (the Communist Party).  Today, Christaller is well respected in geography with his many admirers not only praising his theory (a valid thing to do) but also honoring him with with award and scholarship titles.  His theory is accepted with a few modification yet his dark past is rarely discussed in any geography class.