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We spend about 10x as much on the military as we do on diplomacy and aid. Fine, weapons are expensive. (That is where the money goes, not to soldiers or veterans). But increasing the big one and slashing the small one is Washington-only mathematics. It will leave us more in debt AND more vulnerable. And that is not just a wooly-headed professor talking: 121 retired generals and admirals have said the same thing.  Have a listen: Cut aid diplomacy, and people will die. In many places. In various ways. Refugees will be greater in number and greater in desperation; embassies and military personnel will be less aware of potential threats. Communicable diseases will spread more easily. Moreover, many positive experiences and relationships will be lost, and our standing in the world will be diminished. All to save small amounts of money while spending continues unchecked in other areas.

The Mass Moments  list to which I subscribe recently reminded us of an ignoble anniversary -- the creation north of Boston of the gerrymander -- a legislative district crafted by Elbridge Gerry (pronounced "Gary") and shaped like a salamander. Very early in the history of the United States -- at the first opportunity, actually -- a politician figured out how to select his voters, while giving the appearance that the opposite was taking place. How can people not go to jail for this kind of fraud? Back in 2010, I wrote in some detail about the sordid geography of gerrymandering -- including some examples of shameless disenfranchisement. Article One: Enumeration refers to the fact that the framers of the Constitution tried to avoid exactly this problem, putting the geographic exercise known as Census at the very beginning of the document. Right after the anniversary, I learned of a special summer course on redistricting offered by Tufts University in Boston. The course is int

BSU Travel Course NOTE (March 9, 2018): We offered this course in July 2017, but did not have sufficient enrollment to run it. We hope to offer it in the future and would very much welcome in-service teachers! Join BSU geographers Dr. Rob Hellström and Dr. James Hayes-Bohanan for the experience of a lifetime this summer. And earn 3 credits in the process. Two geographers are offering this version of the department's popular Geography of Coffee travel course in South America for the first time. Since 2006, the course has been offered in Nicaragua almost every January, and more than 100 participants have found it to be a life-changing experience, many of them returning on their own for weeks or even years at a time. Bringing the course to Peru allows us to visit a coffee-growing area whose harvest season coincides with our northern-hemisphere summer break. Climate change has become an important part of all serous discussions of coffee; this course allows us to visit important climate

I have long appreciated this graphic by the late, great Dr. Harm de Blij, who was perhaps the most prolific writer of geography texts of all time, and a friend of our geography department in Bridgewater. (For more, see our department's remembrance page and a link to all de Blij references on this blog for more about this remarkable geographer.) Seen more broadly, geography is at the intersection between two areas of learning that are considered areas of critical need in education: STEM education and Global Education. At the intersection of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) and Global Education Geography in 3-4-5 It is fair to ask a bit more of geography. The fact that it seems to overlap with everything does not tell us what it is . The lack of clear limits suggests it is not about anything at all, as a geologist colleague once told me. For him, most disciplines have a clear subject, such as rocks. In reality, even geology is not defined by the rocks themselves,