Shoals

In publishing the precise locations and names of all the permitted handgun owners in two New York Counties, the New York Journal-News has done a serious disservice to data journalists in particular. More broadly, they may have made things more difficult for the “Open Data” community at large. [Read More]

Can a state’s tendency toward racism determine it’s willingness to secede from Barack Obama’s America Maybe. There’s the short answer. The longer one follows, and please note the many qualifiers before you fire up the Troll-o-Matic 9000. [Read More]

AUTHOR’S NOTE, 2023: Heaven help those who revisit their decade-old writing. The piece below is over-the-top, post-apocalytic-zeitgeist-driven, and - worst of all - factually incorrect. At the time I was frankly guessing about the history of Mauretania Tingitana, I name-checked the wrong Ptolemey, and I referenced the Ostrogothic sack of... [Read More]

Now that the floodwaters have receded, it’s really important to document the extent of the water before the traces change. Emergency management agencies still have their hands full, but they’ve recommended we collect geolocated photos of high water marks around the state - these help with mapping the effects and... [Read More]

Herodotus laid down his world on parchment with ink. Samuel de Champlain traveled with paper and pencil. They - and every mapmaker in between and since - created map objects that were imbued with authority. [Read More]

A recent post from the world of crowdsourced mapping has me thinking about food availability and the nature of poverty in the United States. The Brooklyn Food Coalition has begun a community food survey, collecting location and stocking information for food stores throughout the borough. The aim is partly to... [Read More]

As the dust settles following the 2010 midterm elections, we’re back to agonizing over the political nature of spatial relationships. Both sides are gearing up for the state-level redistricting fights that will occur with the arrival of data from the most recent nationwide census. Gerrymandering is the oldest geostatistical art,... [Read More]

In the split second after the gunshot, I wasn’t sure if ducking was a sufficient response. [Read More]