Cannabis legalization at the state level in the U.S. continues to gain ground, even though federal law still classifies “marijuana” as a Schedule One drug, meaning that it is absolutely banned and has “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” The resulting discrepancy between state and federal law presents a highly curious situation. It makes a mockery of the supposedly fundamental principle that federal law trumps the state law, with ultimate sovereignty vested in the United States rather than in the individual states. How could a substance possibly have “no curre ..read more

This final GeoCurrents post offering free customizable maps provides maps of Europe, southern and eastern Asia, southwestern Asia and northeastern Africa, and the exclusive economic zones of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. Two versions of the Asia map are provided, one of which is superimposed on physical map. These customizable are available at the link at the bottom of the page. Most of these maps were made several years ago when I was still experimenting with this process. As a result the borders are rather crudely placed, especially on the Europe map.     As with previous off ..read more

Today’s GeoCurrents post offers free customizable maps of China and India. The India map, based on the country’s states,  lacks the union territories, which are either too small or too distantly located (the Andaman and Nicobar Islands) to make it on the map. The northern and western portions of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir that are occupied by Pakistan and China are indicated with a dashed borderline and grey shading. The China map ignores disputed territories, including Taiwan. The “province-level” divisions that the map is based on include regular provinces, autonomous areas, and ..read more

  Today’s GeoCurrents post offers free customizable maps of Venezuela, Yemen, and the United Kingdom. Those of Venezuela and Yemen are based on their main subdivisions, which are governorates in the case of Yemen and states in that of Venezuela. In regard to the United Kingdom, the situation is much more complicated. The UK’s main divisions are its “constituent countries”: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Making a map based on these large divisions would, however, be rather pointless. But the lower-order administrative divisions of the UK vary among its constituen ..read more

One of my favorite blogs is Weather West: California Weather and Climate Perspectives, run by meteorologist Daniel Swain. Posting once or twice a month, Swain focuses on current and upcoming weather events and conditions. He delves into meteorological complexities but writes in an accessible manner that can be easily understood by non-specialists. More important for the concerns of GeoCurrents, Swain’s posts are always illustrated with informative and often striking maps. For those who appreciate the aesthetic properties of cartography, it can be difficult to beat meteorological mapping. I of ..read more

As was promised earlier, GeoCurrents customizable base maps are now available for free downland in both Keynote and PowerPoint versions. Just click on the icon labeled “download customizable map” on the right-hand side of the homepage. Here you can find many outline political maps that I have made using Keynote (Apple) presentation software and then exported into PowerPoint. On these maps you can select a country and change its color or boundary marking, and you can easily add text and additional shapes and lines of your own. I made most of these maps years ago, and their resolution is not par ..read more

As was explored in the previous GeoCurrents post, Circassia often appeared on maps of Asia and of the world before the twentieth century. But how did the mapping of Circassia change over time? This has not been an easy question to answer, but advances in text recognition are now making it much more feasible. A collaboration between the Machines Reading Maps project and the David Rumsey Map Collection is currently pioneering such a program. Although it is still in the testing stage, the new “text on maps” search function should be both visible and editable by late 2023 through the LUNA vie ..read more

The conservative National Party of New Zealand scored a major victory in the country’s October 2023 general election, with the governing Labour Party suffering a historic defeat. As described by The Guardian, “New Zealand voters have delivered a forceful rejection of the Labour government as a surge in support for the National party delivered what analysts described as a ‘bloodbath, for the government and a new right-leaning era for politics in the country.” But just three years earlier, it was Labour in the victory circle, winning the 2020 election so overwhelmingly that it was able to govern ..read more

As noted in a recent post, maps of empires tend to exaggerate their territorial extents, and the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550-330 BCE) is no exception. Most maps of this important empire depict it as covering all or almost all the South Caucasus region, with its border extending to the crest of the Greater Caucasus range (see the top maps from a Google image search posted below). Some show it as pushing even further to the north, encompassing the historically Circassian lands to the north and west of the Caucasus and sometimes even extending completely around the Black Sea (see below). Ther ..read more

I have long been frustrated by the way that historical empires are conventionally mapped. It often seems that most maps of most empires exaggerate their size and solidity. This is typically done by portraying them when they reached their greatest territorial extent, even if their newly acquired gains were held for very short periods. Client kingdoms and vague zones of tribute exaction, moreover, are often depicted as intrinsic parts of the empire under consideration. The Roman Empire is a prime example of such cartographic exaggeration. I recently tested this assertion by doing a Google image ..read more