Hello geography fans! How good to see you here at the Blog of Funny Names, where we celebrate the great achievements of people with unusual names.
We’ve all recovered sufficiently from our post-Thanksgiving comas now to move back into regularly scheduled programming(ish) and today’s coverage continues with the great Dr. Waldo R. Tobler. Dr. Tobler is known as one of the most influential geographers of the past century, thanks in part to his coining of what is known as the “first law of geography”:
“Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related to each other.”
Waldo Tobler, with fine headgear.
This kind of sounds really obvious, but sometimes to get crackin’ in matters academic, obviousness is required. Regardless, geography nerds everywhere have this sentence etched on to their brains, much like some of the rest of us have images of pie, cockatoos, and jazz flute solos on ours.
The Swiss-American Mr. Tobler, who I really hope has a vanity license plate that reads “Tobler-One“, received his PhD in Geography at the University of Washington, which my geography skills help me place in Seattle. Or maybe that’s just map reading skills. Ge0-nerds, please educate me on the difference below. Wikipedia tells me he participated in the “William Garrison-led quantitative revolution of the late 1950s” at said institution, which sounds like a LOT of fun.
A map, of some sort, of something, some time.
Dr. Tobler is well known around the world for his achievements, which include pioneering work in the field of computer simulation in geographic research and a list of awards so long and illustrious I will only name the most intriguing here : the AAG Microcomputer Specialty Award. I gotta get me one of those. He is also an honorary fellow (and a fine fellow at that) at the American Geographical Society. He is now retired from teaching, but acts as Professor Emeritus at UC Santa Barbara, which is close enough to Funny Names HQ that perhaps one day we will go up and say hi. But only if our knowledge of geography allows us to find our way there.
Who better than a DAWG to specialized in geography? Go Huskies. I mean, great post Arto, very chocolate oriented. Wait, I meant, thanks for the quantitative revolution in funny names.
Oh, I give up. Too much holiday. Happy Monday. 😉
Thank you Fannie, I feel the post-holiday Monday myself. Very much needing some chocolate at the moment. Haha!
the hat makes the man
That is a lovely hat he’s wearing and your geography banter is as witty as can be. But what I’m doing cartwheels over is that chocolate pun. A Swiss candy bar chocolate pun. Ten points (on a scale of 1 to 10) for you, Arto 🙂
And did I hear mention of pie?
And the jazz flute! He gets points for the jazz flute, too. Stay classy, Arto 😉
that’ll learn me to not click on your links, Arto. Ron Burgundy is da’ man! Talk about class.
It’s easy to stay classy living in the city of Burgundy. Haha, gotta love that flute.
10 points! I’ve never got 10 points before. Who knew all I needed was a suitable airport chocolate pun 😉 <thank you Liz, the pie will be here soon.
I think my favorite part about this post is that ridiculous quote. I just love the idea of some dude sitting in an office spending hours coming up with that idea, and then being celebrated for it. WTF?
It’s a hard day’s work, but Waldo was up to it!
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