Geography Test
If men are the first to leave, why do families still beg their gods to have sons?
Devyn Mañibo
Poetry | Poetry Tuesday, poetry
January 23, 2024
January 23, 2024
- Consider Tobler’s first law of geography which states that all things are related, but closer things more so than further ones. Explain or show all work:
a. How do you set a table for a man you do not know?
b. How can you possibly miss a home across an ocean?
c. Must you love your father more than your grandfather because you are only one life apart?
- Thomas Robert Malthus feared that population growth would outpace agricultural production, eventually resulting in mass starvation. Explain or show all work:
a. When do we know if we are hungry enough?
b. Why are some accustomed to hunger, while others protest at the slightest overcooked fritter?
c. Suppose we have a number of rations n and a number of families f, where f > n. Some poor families f1 have small children while others f2 consist of affluent single parents. How can n be maximized to feed the maximum number of families f, where f1 ≠ f2? What is the opportunity cost?
- Ester Boserup contested Malthus’s theory, arguing that humans would find new means of agricultural production to keep pace with population growth. Explain or show all work:
a. If humans could find new means to agriculture, is it possible to find new means of embrace?
b. Would one ever exhaust themself smiling differently at everyone they didn’t quite like?
c. If a girl behaves in a particular way in the presence of men, write an expression g(x) for the number of years it would take for her to become unrecognizable.
- Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman’s Multiple Nuclei Model states that as cities grow in complexity, they will become less dependent on the Central Business District and develop edge cities. Explain or show all work:
a. What, if any organ, could replace a heart? Or, would it simply evolve to be vestigial, a memory fossilized in silence?
b. Suppose humans theoretically became less and less dependent on what was once necessary. The heart beats 100,000 times a day. The tongue swallows over 500 times a day. How would we prove we’re still here?
c. When you first left your mother country, how did you survive without a home? How could you tell what was yours?
- Ravenstein’s Laws of Migration propose that men and adults are more likely to migrate than women and families, and most people migrate a short distance. Explain or show all work:
a. Write an exponential decay function f(x) for the value of your family after your father left three cities ago and you haven’t seen him since.
b. If men are the first to leave, why do families still beg their gods to have sons?
c. Where are we going?
