This site is an effort to share some ideas on cartography. Most came about in the course of the work of Nemaha Inquiry, my geographic services business. None are the kind of things that belong in an academic journal. The items here are the kinds of things I would discuss with a colleague over coffee, or email to a couple of friends. They are presented here in that same spirit, as though we are chatting in the lunchroom.

The site is also a bit of a rant. There is an oft-cited law of geography, sometimes called "the first law of geography," though it is neither a law nor, probably, first. It's attributed to Waldo Tobler and is usually quoted or paraphrased as something like "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." For all its oversimplification, it's a good idea to keep in mind when telling geographic stories. And it raises the inevitable question: how do you know what's near and what's far? The obvious answer is: with a map.

It would seem, therefore that map-making would be an essential tool for geographers. Yet it is curiously absent from the curriculum of many departments, and geographers are granted PhDs without ever demonstrating the ability to make a map that can provide a spatial analysis or tell a spatial story. Some of the problem lies in the rise of geographic information system (GIS) software and classes over the last couple decades. GIS is a wonderful technology, and can be used to do powerful spatial analyses and to make compelling maps. Sadly, however, it can also be used to make maps that are confusing, ambiguous, or just plain pointless. Yet the popularity of GIS has displaced courses in cartography, and led to a distressing number of ineffective maps in publications by geographers.

So one goal for this site is to celebrate cartography, the enterprise of making maps that speak the scientific truth, tell a compelling story, and tell it in a way that the map-reader cannot misunderstand.

As an aside, if the whole idea of a first law of geography sparked any interest, take a look at some of the online discussion of Tobler and of second, third, etc. laws of geography. Or consider my personal favorite, from a presentation I heard many years ago about a group of folks working on early applications of computers to mapping. Sadly, I can't remember the name of the presenter or the person he was quoting, but this unnamed sage posited a zeroith law of geography, that everything is where it is, having come from somewhere else. As with Tobler's law, it should not be read too literally, but it makes the excellent point that an essential part of telling any geographic story is explaining the history of how things came to be where they are.