Social Studies: South America

Most of South America is not far from sea level. There are some peaks, though. Along the Chilean and Peruvian coast, the Andes Mountains skyrocket to to over 10,000 feet. On the eastern side of the continent, the Brazilian Highlands are between 2,000 and 5,000 feet up. Between the Andes Mountains and The Brazilian Basin, there is the Amazon Basin, which is right near sea level, between 0 and 1,000 feet. Most of South America’s southern tip has fairly low elevation, with a band of area between 2,000 and 5,000 feet. The Amazon river, as well as all of its various tributaries, snake through much of the continent. The highest spot in South America is atop Chile’s Mt. Aconcagua, whose peak is a dazzling 22,834 ft above sea level.

Most of northern South America (northern Brazil, Peru, and pieces of Venezuela and Colombia) is covered by the Amazon Rainforest, which is mainly broadleaf evergreen forest.

The very southern part of Brazil’s coast also has broadleaf evergreen. The central section of the continent (southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and bits of Bolivia), is tropical grassland. Much of Argentina (the southern part) is temperate grassland. On the southern coast of Chile, there is a thin band of deciduous forest. The Atacama Desert is slightly farther north, at northern Chile and Peru, which is basically desert and highlands.

The largest cities in South America are Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Río de Janero, each with over 8,000,000 people. Santiago, Lima, Bogota, and Belo Horizonte are all slightly smaller cities, each having between 4,000,000 and 8,000,000 people living in them.The most dense areas on the continent are in and right around big cities (like the three mentioned in the first sentence) as well as around a few smaller cities, like Caracas, Recife, and Bogota.The majority of people live on the continent’s coast, especially on the coasts of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia. In most of the Amazon rainforest, in the center of the South America, there is a very low population density, with under 2 people per square mile. A good amount of the southern tip of the country also has a population density of under two people per square mile.

There is a large area of tropical wet that covers northern Brazil and parts of Peru and Colombia. A plot of tropical wet and dry is spread over most of Brazil and Bolivia. In Uruguay, Paraguay, and northern Argentina, there is a section of humid subtropical.  There is also a small piece of arid climate on the eastern tip of Brazil. Most of Argentina, Chile, and Peru are made up of patches of arid, semiarid, highlands, and marine west coast. Given that South America is 6.888 million square miles, it makes sense that the climate would vary from hot, rainy tropical wet to cool, not-too-much-rain humid subtropical.

On all the maps, I see six different regions. They are: The Andes Mountains, Patagonia, The Amazon, The Brazilian Highlands, Pampas/Gran Chico, and The Guyana Highlands. First of all, the Andes Mountains are located all the way up the west coast. Both the vegetation and climate maps describe the Andes as “highlands”, with a strip of “Desert”/”Arid” going down the coast. On the Physical Features map they are very high up, reaching over 10,000 feet. Patagonia is located on the tip of the continent, and is not very populated, with <2 people per square mile. Its vegetation is deciduous forests and temperate grassland, and it’s mostly marine west coast and arid. The Amazon is located in the center of South America, and is also (mostly) not very populated, at <2 people per square mile, with strips of between 2 and 25. It’s a Tropical Wet, Broadleaf Evergreen Forest, which is not very far above sea level. The Brazilian Highlands cover southern Brazil and Bolivia. They are Tropical Wet and Dry, with Temperate Grassland, and range from near sea level to between 2,000 and 5,000 feet up. Pampas/Gran Chico is a region I’ve placed covering Paraguay, Uruguay and northern Argentina, Right around Buenos Aires.  Pampas/Gran Chico is low, between 0 and 1,000 feet above sea level. It has a Humid Subtropical climate, and has Temperate Grassland and Tropical Grassland for its vegetation. Finally, Guyana Highlands is a small region in the northern part of South America, mostly elevated to a height of between 2,000 and 5,00 feet. Like The Brazilian Highlands, it has Tropical Wet and Dry climate and temperate grassland. It has a slightly larger population density, between 2 and 250 people per square mile, with more dense areas around Bogota and Caracas. As you can see by comparing my regions with the maps, each region is different enough from the others and has enough similarities among it.

South America is an amazing place to visit, offering beautiful wilderness and wildlife, as well as culture and cuisine. The Andes Mountains offer amazing scenery and a wonderful hike, or an intense journey to the 15,000 foot peaks. The spectacular Amazon Rainforest, the biggest and most biodiverse rainforest on Earth, offers dazzling flora and fauna, and no people, boasting less than two people per square mile. Visit Patagonia, with its deciduous forests and see the immense glaciers, slabs of ice thousands of years old. If you prefer civilization, go to Buenos Aires, a fascinating center of food, society and history. Río de Janeiro is a busy, culture-heavy, amazing city, packed with over 8 million people. In conclusion, South America offers a variety of experiences, both natural and anthropological.

How To Set Up a Blog (using blogger)

     On request, I am making a post about how to set up a blog. I will be instructing in how to use Blogger, the blogging platform that I use, but note that Blogger is not the only way. To make a successful blog, there are a few steps:

1. Create a Google Account

This is the part where you fill out the information.

      If you already have a use Gmail, Google Drive, or any other google product that requires an account, feel free to skip this step. If not, the first thing to do is to go to Google. in the top-right corner, you should see a "Sign In" button. Even if you don't already have an account, click it. In the upper-right corner of the page you were just brought to, you should see a "Sign Up" button. Click it. You should go to a page titled "Create a Google Account". Fill in the info, and if you're under 13 tell the the computer you're actually not. You can, if you want, use your current email address, in which case you should click the "I prefer to use my current email address" link below the "Choose your username slot". Once you've filled it all in, click "Next Step" at the bottom, then click the next "Next Step" button. Then hit "Get Started". You should be back at Google. You now have a google account.

2. Create a Blog

The pop-up window for used to create your blog

    

      Once you have a google account, go to http://www.blogger.com. On the far left hand side of this page, you should see a "New Blog" button. You should get a pop-up where you fill in the name, address and theme of your blog (it should look like the one on the left). Fill in the info, select your theme, and press "Create Blog!". Great. Now on your blogger home page, you should see a little rectangle with the name of your blog, an orange button with a pencil, a button with a piece of paper, and a "view blog" button. To start typing your first post, hit the orange pencil. To see your blog, hit "view blog". To see your blogs info (comments, views, and other things, hit the piece of paper. You now have a blog.

3. Add the Email Subscription Gadget (and Other Gadgets You Like)

     In order to build an audience, you need people to be able to subscribe, so your posts go straight to their inbox. To do this, you need to add the email subscription gadget. I have a few others, but the email subscription is the most important one. To install it, first click the pieces of paper on the blogger home screen. There should be a list of things on the left side. Click "layout". Here you will see how your blog is laid out, as well as where you can add gadgets (it should look like the picture on the left). I suggest you put your subscription link on the right  side of your blog, but click any of the "Add a Gadget" links. This should open up a smaller window with a list of all the gadgets you can chose from. Find "Follow by Email", and click the plus sign next to it. This should instal the gadget wherever you chose.

4. Subscribe Family & Friends

     For anyone to get your posts in their email, they have to be subscribed. There are two ways that this could happen. One of them is that you could keep asking them to do it until they finally get around to it. The other option is to do it yourself, then just notify them. I suggest doing the second one. To subscribe someone, first you must view your blog. You can search for it on the internet, or you can go to your blogger home page and press "View Blog". Either way, You are looking at your blog. Find where the email subscription box is (it's wherever you put it in step 3), and enter the person you want to get your post's email address. This will send them a conformation email. At this point, you should probably call them up and tell them it's not junk mail, and that all they have to do is click the link in the "Feedburner" email they have just received. When they do this, they are registered, and will get your posts every time you write them.

Feel free to comment if you have an issue.

Ready for more limericks,
Max

Fantasy Story First Draft

     I have to do a creative writing assignment for my English class in school. The assignment is to write a 4-page-minimum short story. I have written a sci-fi/fantasy story. This is my first draft, and I will post my final when it's done. Please comment so I can improve it, especially title ideas. Enjoy!

Max Nadeau

October 2013

“I, Senator Martinez, do solemnly swear…”

“I, Senator Martinez, do solemnly swear…”

“That I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States…”

“That I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States…”

    

Josh was glad he was in sitting his cozy basement apartment rather than standing outside in the not-quite-sticking snow. He had never been a cold person. Even though he lived only five miles from where the inauguration was happening, Josh was much happier where he was. He had always liked the inaugurations. Often, the speeches were about thought-provoking things, and he had always liked watching them. More importantly, the inauguration of 2036 wasn’t swearing in just any president. This was the first gay president ever to be elected, so tons of people were out watching. Josh set his smart glasses to transparent and glanced over his shoulder as he heard the collar of his dog clicking as Fido walked over to him and sat down on his foot.

Josh liked to tell people about his dog’s name, because he thought he was clever for thinking of it. “Fido” is the sort of generic term for dog, probable because it was at one point common. It was no longer at all common, making it unique without being strange.

Later, after the whole thing was over, Josh took off his smart glasses and took out his banjo. He had always liked the old, non-electric instruments, even though the finger-sensing ones were more popular. He started playing the strange, off-tune but on-tune song he was composing, but moved on to another piece. He skimmed the internet a little and found that that week there were supposed to be some very big solar flares, releasing tons of UV rays, some of which were headed for Earth.  The first one had happened the day before. Of course, that wasn’t as dangerous for the skin as it used to be, due to the natural, organic sunscreen/lotion/cleansing cream that was very popular. The cream was only one of the marvels genetic engineering had yielded in the recent years, one the reasons Josh had made biology a small hobby of his in recent years. The do-it-yourself modification kits never yielded anything potentially useful, but they were fun.

Josh suddenly felt a little bit of rumbling. He wondered what is was, but dismissed it as something heavy falling in the house above him. He continued searching the web. Josh took out his smart glasses and read for a long time, then, being bored, went to sleep.

The next morning, Josh got up and fed Fido. He pulled up the New York Times on his display, being one of the few people who still read the paper, and stopped in shock. On the full front page, there was an image of a huge, green, dome, titled, “Washington Covered By Plant Mutation” Josh quickly learned that overnight, “a quickly growing plant mass of vines and tendrils had burst of of the ground all over Washington D.C.” Thinking it was a joke, Josh called for Fido and dashed outside.

He stopped in awe. Going from the edge of his vision all the way up as high as the clouds, a wall of green punctured with holes that let in sunlight completely obscured the sky. From what seemed to be the middle, a pillar a thick as a city block at its base connected the dome to the ground. In shock, he stood and stared for a couple minutes.

He dashed inside and turned his glasses to the news. A message was scrolling in many different languages, and being read in english.

“All of any residents inside the city are being instructed by the government remain in their houses and stay calm while we are opening the dome.”

It repeated over and over. Josh immediately decided that he would find out what this impossible seeming thing was and how it happened. He dashed inside and threw on his glasses. He pulled up all the news websites, and quickly learned that the it was indeed made of plant matter, and that scientists had already (Josh was surprised they had worked so fast) determined that the entire thing was one organism using DNA tests. One organism! Josh double-checked some other trustworthy sites and found they were reporting this too. Josh wondered where this plant came from. It must be inside the city somewhere, Josh thought. But why and how did it get so huge? What has happened last night that caused this to grow? he thought.

Suddenly he remembered that solar flares. A quick check showed that yes, there was a large flare overnight, which according to the New York times, should have hit earth around the time this thing burst from the ground. But what came from the sun that could have caused this? X-rays and UV rays were the main things released during a flare. On a hunch, he did a quick search for “plant + x-rays + washington dc” yielded nothing. So Josh tried “ plant + ultraviolet + washington dc”. The only thing that appeared was an article in a science magazine about a plant-based sunscreen created by a company based in Washington. Josh decided this probably wasn’t relevant. Then he remembered his friend, Alex, who worked at a government-funded lab, telling him about a project he was doing a few years back. The lab had created a vine-like plant that fed off tiny bits of ultraviolet light and air. It had only been given tiny bits. Josh remembered that Alex had told him that Alex had seen what he was pretty sure was the plant’s seedpods scattering seeds around the plant, which wouldn’t have been an issue if other plants hadn’t been been temporarily housed in the same room as the UV-feeding one while the lab was under construction. This meant that other plants could have seeds of the original UV-feeding plant in them, which could mean that there could be a plant with access to the sun that feeds off UV rays.

Suddenly Josh realized something. If one solar flare caused the dome to grow, and there was supposed to be more big ones coming up, what would the next flares do? He checked the internet again and found that another large flare was scheduled to come up tomorrow night. He had to stop the plant.

Josh thought, and decided that he should travel to the lab and see if his hunch about the project Alex had worked on was correct. So he took Fido, who was eager to go outside, and started walking to the lab, which lucky enough for him was only a few minutes from his house. As Josh exited his house, he looked up and stared again. Wow. he thought.

On his way to the lab, Josh noticed flowers on top of stems the size of lampposts coming up from the ground. They were only every block or so, but when Josh went over to the and inhaled, he immediately felt very drowsy. Oh, he thought, this must be why there aren’t more people running around. When these were blooming I assume they made a whole lot of the sleep-inducing  pollen.

When the building came into view, Josh started to feel more confidant about his hunch. The pillar that connected to the dome seemed to come straight from the lab. Strangely enough, a passageway through the base of the pillar into the building seemed to have been already formed by the plant. Josh followed the tunnel in, and found a dimly lit entry room. The center of the pillar being fairly obvious from the direction the vines were coming from, Josh had no issue finding the middle of it in a room marked “Experimental Fragrance Plants”. Interesting, Josh thought, Obviously seeds from the mutated plant were spread by accident, because this plant is definitely not being bred for fragrance. Josh continued into the room and saw a pod the size of a room inside the enormous space meant for creating new smells. He entered the pod through a hole in the side and found another shell, this one only the size of a basketball.

The brain of the entire plant must be housed in that shell,  Josh thought. He walked to it and tried to pry it open with just his bare hands, while Fido cowered behind him, obviously very frightened by the enormous plant. This yielded nothing, with the plant seeming to close even more. So he went home and back, this time bring a saw, a crowbar, and a water bottle (he hoped maybe water would open it). The saw didn’t even make a scratch, the crowbar couldn’t find a strong enough purchase, and the water just made the shell wet. So he went home again, and checked the news. he learned that that nobody was able to break the vines of the dome; They just were harder than anything anyone could throw at them. Josh started playing his banjo, hoping this would help him think. He couldn’t come up with anything, until just as he was putting his banjo away.  Could music of some sort ease open the shell?, he thought.

He picked up his banjo and a knife, and walked to the lab, again. He walked through the tunnel, through the door the the experimental plants room, and into the large pod.He took out his banjo and started playing the first few bars of one of his favorite songs. The plant’s shell slowly creaked open, revealing a flower, with a glowing blue mass of tiny cords running through it. Josh kept playing until it was all the way open, and then stopped. He took out his knife, ready to cut the inside into tiny pieces, then hesitated. here was an amazing work of art. It was able to quickly build a structure taller than all the buildings, with a huge length between edges. This has so much potential, he thought. So he retreated home, with a plan to tell the outside word.

Josh quick took out a video camera,  walked outside, and started recording himself.

“Hello, my name is Josh Brehnem And I am inside the dome, he said, then panned around for an inside view. “I have found out how to destroy the dome”, he said. He walked the the lab while explaining to the camera how he thought it happened. When he got there, he elaborated on how amazing the plant was while entering the tunnel and the pod. Then he stopped, and explained how he’d gotten it open. Then he told the entire world what he was going to do.

“I am not going to kill this plant,” he said, “ But I will let people watching this inside.”

Josh took out the scissors from his pocket and snipped the blue sphere from its position. He ran home and in a dark room, put it in a bowl of water. He then took out a black light he had once used for a concert and plugged it in over the plant to give it some UV light, while still recording.

“I will give this up to the government if they agree not to kill it and dissect it, but to carefully study it and keep it alive. Think of the potential this has!”, Josh said, “What if we could use this to grow bridges and structures, not build them. It could be huge.” Josh quickly posted it on as many video sites as he could, and watched the views come in. Within 5 minutes I was starting, with one website giving his video 1,000,000 views. Within 15 minutes, they were showing it on CNN, NBC, and all the other news networks. Soon it was reported that the tendrils were breaking, and that people were inside.

It took a while to take down the dome, but the some tendrils were studied, and some were even used in reconstruction. A new lab was working hard on the blue sphere, and they reported they were close to a major breakthrough.  The pollen from the flowers was studied too. Josh became semi-famous, and had a lot less trouble being hired for gigs after the president complimented him on national television. He moved out of a basement, and decided he liked having windows.