When in Rome....

Explain:

            As I read and explore the resources for this class I am excited to be back in Science after a long hiatus! Each module I read and each link I click on brings back a memory from my undergraduate studies of another time.  The review of this material reminds me how to recover the information in my brain that has been “out of mind” during my 10+ years of teaching Business, though it is never truly forgotten I have found.

Evaluate and Extend:

            While teaching business I was lucky to have a strong science background too.  As we discussed the economic resources and their impact on local production, science had to find its way into the lesson.  We would discuss the 4 p’s of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion and the local resources always led the way to an areas prosperity.  Where would you place an orange juice production plant?  Of course near the oranges! Why is a brewery one of the most successful product exports from Juneau?  It’s near some of the best water in the world and the other ingredients are light and easily shipped. And so on.

            My travels also enlightened me to economic development around the world.  While visiting Cairo, Egypt I witnessed a phenomenon in production I was not at all familiar with at the time.  Outside the window where I was living they were building a school.  It had been going on for two years and was not even a tenth of the way done.  It was a Saturday when I arrived and I could see 50 pieces of heavy equipment near the site.  When Monday came around I heard some soft construction noises, but nothing like I expected.  It was a couple men throwing bricks to the second floor after they carried them by wheelbarrow to that spot.  WHY?  They had a variety of equipment going unused and so much manual labor carrying bricks, mixing mortar and building this school one brick at a time.  The short answer is the goal of the local community and government was not to build the school, it was to keep men working. 

            Just as the land has shaped the economy and life of the people of Alaska.  The harsh landscape from plate tectonics in this area limited travel by land so the water just worked better.  The sea has many resources readily available to the people here (South East, AK) while the land and climate are not so good for farming.  This has led to a "sea based" subsistence, though some hunting and gathering on land helped sustain the people here.
            No matter your heritage, your ancestors lived off the land and resources of their local environment and those turned into trade which led to economic diversity in most places. Some more than others…. depending on the lands mineral deposits, oil deposits, geographic location and political connections; some places manage to hold on to more of the traditional ways and some loose them entirely...