The Geography Blog UK: October 2013

Thursday, 24 October 2013

The British Seasons

We are well into Autumn now here in the UK, with leaves changing colour and dropping of the trees and temperatures beginning to drop. I love all the seasons and what they individually bring, so I have created a collage of images taken through the four seasons in areas which are local to me on my iPhone. I live in the South East of England and, when reflecting on the images, I can see that it is a wonderful place to be as there is easy access to both the capital city and countryside.

From top left to bottom right: the tower of London, my back garden, my home town, Kingston Upon Thames, Nonsuch park, Box Hill, lavender fields, Cheam park, the London eye, Hammersmith bridge, Greenwich, my home town

In England we have now become accustomed to having a significant amount of snow fall most years, however there have been many reports claiming that there is 'record-breaking snow' predicted for the month of November.

Here is a link for an interesting article on this topic: Daily Express

Wednesday, 16 October 2013

My Favourite TED Talk

As a keen geographer, I often find myself on the TED website : an online catalogue of conferences which take place globally discussing matters concerning technology, entertainment and design amongst many more subject areas. It was first introduced to me by one of my teachers 3 years ago and since then I have been an avid watcher. Since June 2006 the talks from TED annual conferences have been available to watch for free online, and with more than 1500 videos available I am never stuck for anything to look at.

My favourite TED talk is also the very first one I watched. I'm not sure why it made such a great impression on me, but it did. The conference is titled 'Global population growth, box by box' and was delivered by the Swedish academic Hans Rosling who is extremely captivating and holds an audiences attention effortlessly, which is a real achievement with a group of Year 10s in a hot classroom on a Friday afternoon!

Rosling explains the global issue of population growth and illustrates how the world has developed and what needs to be done to make every nation in the world a developed one. A huge topic and yet viewers are well informed by the end of the 10 minutes.

"Well, I'm not an optimist, neither am I a pessimist, I'm a serious possibilist, It's a new category."Hans Rosling

I would urge you to watch the talk which is linked below, and perhaps it will inspire you like it did me.

In 2011 over 500 million people had watched a TED confernce and I'm sure this figure has risen, showing that it's perhaps not only me who is an avid watcher. The TED slogan is 'Ideas worth spreading' and I must agree with them.

Tuesday, 8 October 2013

City in the Spotlight: Barcelona

In a recent post I wrote about the globalisation which I observed on my holiday to Barcelona. Since then I have had requests to feature some of my photographs from this trip to share with you. I was only in the city for just over 48 hours but managed to see many sights in my limited time. I hope you enjoy this documentation of my travels.