John Green "Crash Course" on the Columbian Exchange

A Crash Course on the Columbian Exchange (note: this is one of his funniest videos as well as quite informative).


 

How to manage your time well

This is very good!

Published on Sep 22, 2015

Time management is often the kryptonite of college students. Use these tips to help stay on track and avoid procrastination

How to Manage Your Time Well

Cuba bracing for rough waters as leftist tide goes out

Yahoo News

Carlos Batista•May 20, 2016

Havana (AFP) - Cuba is bracing for rough waters ahead as it navigates a political sea change in Latin America, where the left is fighting an outgoing tide.

Venezuela is in a full-blown crisis, conservatives have taken the helm in Brazil, and Havana's leftist allies are losing ground in elections elsewhere in the region.

The government of President Raul Castro, which has enjoyed smooth sailing until recently, warned in April of a "strong and articulated imperialist counteroffensive" coinciding with the economic slowdown in Latin America.

Indeed, Cuba's communist regime can no longer count on the rhetorical support it has received in recent years from Latin governments, warns Michael Shifter, head of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank based in Washington.

"For Cuba, the region's changing political landscape is less hospitable than it was a few years ago," he said in an interview.

The changes mark the end of a favorable era for Cuba, one that began with Hugo Chavez's arrival in power in Venezuela in 1999, and reached a high point with the reconciliation with the United States at the end of 2014.

Taken in hand by the late Venezuelan leader, Havana emerged from isolation and economic disarray in which it was left after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990.

Friendly governments took office in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, El Salvador, Peru and Chile.

But after Chavez's death in 2013, political conditions in Latin America began to shift, although the region's new conservative direction has only recently come into focus.

This year, Venezuela's downward spiral entered a critical phase, Brazil's Dilma Rousseff was suspended to face an impeachment trial, Argentina turned its back on Nestor and Cristina Kirchner's 12 years in power, Bolivia's Evo Morales lost a referendum on extending his mandate and Ecuador is preparing to elect a successor to Rafael Correa.

And what's worse: the region has had to wave goodbye to the high commodities prices that underwrote the left's most appealing social programs.

"Even more than the political shifts, Cuba will be affected by the economic crises in Brazil, and particularly, Venezuela," Shifter said in an interview.

"At a moment when Cuba is hoping to bring in more investment and generate growth, the economic deterioration in both countries is of enormous concern," he said.

- US lifeline -

Besides being its principal trade partner, with nearly $7.3 billion in trade in 2014, Venezuela supplies Cuba with 95,000 barrels of oil a day on very favorable terms.

No other friend of Cuba "can supply oil under those terms," said Jorge Pinon, head of the energy program at the University of Texas' Jackson School of Geosciences.

The loss of cheap oil "would represent a negative impact for Cuba of approximately $1.3 billion," he said.

Brazil, for its part, is one of Cuba's main suppliers of food, a source of credit and a partner in tobacco and sugar companies.

Brazil and Venezuela together account for much of the $12 billion Cuba gets each year for supplying medical services to other countries, its top source of hard currency.

Even as it closed ranks behind Venezuela's embattled President Nicolas Maduro, the Castro government joined critics of the legislative process in Brazil that ended in Rousseff's suspension this month.

The interim government in Brasilia led by Michel Temer has responded to the Cuban criticism with a blunt reminder.

"The relationship is historic. We have interests in those countries and they have theirs here," a Brazilian foreign ministry official told AFP.

Jorge Duany, head of Florida International University's Cuban Research Institute, said, "Cuba will have to reorient its diplomatic and commercial relations in Latin America and the Caribbean beyond its main regional allies of the last decade."

Cuba may already be moving in that direction, according to Duany.

"It's possible to interpret Raul Castro's government's rapprochement with the United States, in part, as a preventive response to the continuous economic and political deterioration in Venezuela," he said.

Cuba reestablished diplomatic relations with the United States in July 2015 after a half century of Cold War enmity.

Even though a US embargo is still in place, the United States could play a growing role as a supplier of food and tourists to Cuba, two important lifelines.

"It is reasonable to expect Cuban imports from the United States to continue to grow, especially as restrictions are reduced and, eventually, the embargo is lifted," said Shifter.

Meanwhile, Cuba has settled its pending affairs with creditors in the Club of Paris, and signed a cooperation agreement with the European Union, which should translate into access to more markets and financing.

Cuba will need such a multi-dimensional strategy to weather the storm.

The Aztecs, Maya and Incas

Great documentary on the Aztecs, Maya and Incas ....

Published on Dec 4, 2013

The Aztecs, Maya and Incas

Florida sinkhole indicates that humans were in North America 14,000 years ago

To read the article, click here:

Knife, bone, and dung cast doubt on Bering Strait theory and indicate humans spread through Americas 1,500 years earlier than thought, researchers say

A stone knife, mastodon bones and fossilized dung found in an underwater sinkhole show that humans lived in north Florida about 14,500 years ago, according to new research that suggests the colonization of the Americas was far more complex than originally believed.

Archaeologists have known of the sinkhole in the Aucilla river, south of Tallahassee, for years. But they recently dived back into the hole to excavate what they call clear evidence that ancient mankind spread throughout the Americas about 1,500 years earlier than previously thought.

Almost 200ft wide and 35ft deep, the sinkhole was “as dark as the inside of a cow, literally no light at all”, according to Jessi Halligan, lead diving scientist and a professor at Florida State University at Tallahassee. Halligan dived into the hole 126 times over the course of her research, wearing a head lamp as well as diving gear.

In the hole, the divers found stone tools including an inch-wide, several inch-long stone knife and a “biface” – a stone flaked sharp on both sides. The artifacts were found near mastodon bones; re-examination of a tusk pulled from the hole confirmed that long grooves in the bone were made by people, probably when they removed it from the skull and pulled meat from its base.

“Each tusk this size would have had more than 15lbs of tender, nutritious tissue in its pulp cavity,” said Daniel Fisher, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan who was a member of a team that once removed a tusk from a mammoth preserved in Siberian permafrost.

Of the “biface” tool, Halligan told Smithsonian magazine: “There is absolutely no way it is not made by people. There is no way that’s a natural artifact in any shape or form.”

When ancient people butchered or scavenged the mastodon, the sinkhole was a shallow pond: a watering hole for men, mastodons, bison, bears and apparently dogs. The researchers found bones that appear to be canine, suggesting dogs trailed the humans, either as companions or competitors for scraps.

The discovery makes the sinkhole the earliest documented site for humans in the south-eastern United States. The researchers published their findings in the journal Science Advances on Friday, writing that the artifacts show “far better” evidence of early humans than previous work at the site.

“The evidence from the Page-Ladson site is a major leap forward in shaping a new view of the peopling of the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age,” said Mike Waters, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University.

“In the archeological community, there’s still a terrific amount of resistance to the idea that people were here before Clovis,” he added, referring to the so-called “Clovis people”, a group long thought the first band of humans in the Americas.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/may/14/archaeology-florida-sinkhole-ancient-humans-mastodon-knife-bones-bering-strait

How to Manage Your Time Well

This is very good!

Published on Sep 22, 2015

Time management is often the kryptonite of college students. Use these tips to help stay on track and avoid procrastination

How to Manage Your Time Well

5 Tips to Succeed in any College Class

only 2 minutes long, worth your time to watch!

https://youtu.be/hoAa8AiXj8M