Monday, November 20, 2006

Injecting Politics into Physical Geography

Much has been said about the Left-wing ideological bias on campus and how it seeps into subjects that have nothing to do with politics but the accounts are often about a quip here or there during a lecture. I would guess that few professors are so brazen as to put their biases in writing.

The following questions are from a study guide for a physical geography class at a major American university. The guide was prepared by the professor who must fancy himself a wit.

For overland flow to occur, what has to occur?
a. precipitation greater than infiltration
b. infiltration greater than precipitation
c. precipitation is greater than the water table
d. creep dominates slope transport
e. the American public has to actually believe that Al Qaida was connected to Iraq.

The most common explanation for glacial-interglacial cycles over the past 2.5 million years involves changes in what aspects of Earth's orbit?
a. obliquity
b. eccentricity
c. precession
d. a, b and c
e. Your church was right all along. The sun resolves (sic) around the Earth.

The load of this river is mostly
a. suspended load
b. dissolved load
c. bed load
d. none of the above
e. the equivalent of CIA intelligence reported to the American public

The Xs on this slide shows the formation of
a. tarns
b. deltas
c. oxbow lakes
d. point bars
e. where the weapons of mass destruction are now supposed to be

Look at the arrows. There is a boundary that is called:
a. sublimation line
b. nunatak
c. base level of the glacier
d. equilibrium line
e. the place where we put politicians that lie and try to deceive the American public

No comments: