The notch is La Brèche de Roland, a 9,199 foot pass in the Pyrenees

I was wondering why Russia chose to hold its Winter Olympics in the Black Sea beach resort of Sochi, which is almost as far south as you can get in that notoriously northern land.

And that got me thinking about borders in general. African governments are always complaining that they inherited unnaturally straight national boundaries from colonial administrators who didn’t take into account the complicated ethnic realities on the ground. But does anybody know the ideal way to draw borders to maximize peace and prosperity?

It turns out that the locations for the Winter Olympics offer some insights into this long-standing question.

Read the whole thing there.

I've always been a topography nerd, but I'm becoming even more of one as Americans become more oblivious to the influence that the shape of the land has had upon them. The Founding Fathers, especially Washington who was a surveyor and real estate developer, were obsessed with geography.