Discussion: For map geeks

This looks fun has anyone read it?

http://ken-jennings.com/maphead.html

I heard him interviewed when the book came out, and although he started out by talking about how awesome maps are, he then fell back on the joys of getting around by GPS, and there was no indication that, despite all of the research that he presumably did, he had ever heard of orienteering.

He apparently loves geocaching. (I read the book.) It was a fun/quick read, despite the fact that he seems to have missed orienteering.

It was my first e-book on the iphone ...it seemed he managed to crack open my head and read all my deeply personal nerdy affection for map thoughts.

For some reason I think there are far more geologists in orienteering than geographers. Maybe there are more geologists, period. No doubt all the geographers on AP will prove me wrong.

Do we need a counter in AP for profession?

Up to 2 * geologists with you and me

Don't you guys already have secret clubs, where you get together once a month and talk about each others'....rocks?

Whoops, another thread in imminent danger of being hijacked...

Anti-geologist (I would have been a geographer had I gone to uni at 18).

So why don't the US APers contact Mr Jennings and offer to take him orienteering?

Geologist by training, and lots of success taking fellow geology grad students orienteering. Geographers? Bah. ;-)

I'm an accountant. I like maps.

I'm a map geek in a dept that merged geology and geography depts together. don't get me started on the stupidity and silliness of discipline wars. ;-) the book on the other hand looks interesting. Thanks for posting.

Yes, my geology school is now also geosciences, so we are plagued with geographers and ecologists. Fortunately they have their own building so we don't ever have to see them ;)

Our university orienteering club always tends to have more geoscientists than any other department, and can claim two world champions amongst its alumni.

In the UK there is also a high correlation with mathematicians and orienteering.

I guess I can notionally call myself a geographer on the grounds that climate lived within the geography department at ANU where I did my undergraduate degree. (I also suspect from the description of the book that it contains a few parallels to my quest to visit all 112 of the locations I use for long-term temperature monitoring in Australia).

The correlation between mathematicians and orienteering isn't confined to the UK either. I do wonder whether orienteering is the only sport which can lay claim to someone who's represented their country both in an academic Olympiad and in a world sporting championship (Rachel Effeney, who was in the Physics Olympiad a few years ago and made the WOC sprint final last year).

My sister-in-law is a Geography professor. From what I can tell, her work does not involve maps at all.

I'm not sure there's a massive correlation between maths and orienteering in the UK, but almost everyone in Oxford Uni OC was a scientist of some sort, with the odd classics weirdo ;) thrown in.

I reckon there is a definite enrichment for PhDs though in general in UK O'.

If you check out Ken Jenning's forum, you'll see that he has already been chided for neglecting orienteering, by a certain "Patrick", who just happens to know that there's orienteering in the Seattle area, not far from where he (Jennings) lives. He did respond, generably favorably. Maybe there's a way to encourage him to mention orienteering in a future blog post ...

@Blair, I know of a couple of other examples within orienteering, and would be quite surprised if there weren't in other sports too.

Yes, my geology school is now also geosciences, so we are plagued with geographers and ecologists.

I'm an ecologist in a life sciences department - where we have a geologist that we call "the abiotic guy."

My research area is actually one of the reasons I'm not particularly fast at orienteering - I'm a forest ecologist and I study disturbances, including past land-use. So I'm always walking through the woods looking for patterns in the vegetation. Stone walls are particularly interesting and I'm very good at finding vegetation boundaries! But I often go with a camera and come back with good photos and a slow time. Which I'm OK with. I have found some very cool plants while orienteering! :)

I recently attended a talk about history of land use mapping in UK, to a natural history society by a geographer who worked at Cambridge University Zoology Dept, on conservation topics. After the talk, I met with the geographer, having intrigued her by mentioning the potential use of orienteering maps in monitoring conservation areas. She had never seen an orienteering map before, despite being a keen outdoors person - and may soon make an appearance with Walton Chasers as she's just moved to Staffordshire Univeristy Geography Dept.

I consider myself a geographer (both my degrees are in geography), although I am a professional cartographer (a subset of geography, most geographers agree).
My graduate school department was Geography-Meteorology. The tornado machine was cool.

I read Maphead when it first came out, and although I loved it (and gave it as gifts to two people & recommended it all over) I was bummed by Jennings' lack of apparent awareness of orienteering. Glad PinkSocks has mentioned it to him.

I think all that would be needed was to point him at the WorldofO map trove.

A worrying trend here, ecologists looking at vegetation boundaries, geologists might muse about the origins of boulders, and mapheads could be so delighted by the cartography that time could run away. And we know how some orienteers feel about that..

I found this to be the most poignant sentence:

"But as I reflect on the map freaks I've met on my journey, one of the things they all share is this same urge: to make the Earth - the entire Earth, its meridians and parallels and antipodes - into a giant plaything"