diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 9dbbe7d..55ea74c 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,7 +1,28 @@
 tippecanoe
 ==========
 
-Build vector tilesets from large collections of GeoJSON features.
+Builds vector tilesets from large collections of GeoJSON features.
+
+Intent
+------
+
+The goal of Tippecanoe is to enable making a scale-independent view of your data,
+so that at any level from the entire world to a single building, you can see
+the density and texture of the data rather than a simplification from dropping
+supposedly unimportant features or clustering or aggregating them.
+
+If you give it all of OpenStreetMap and zoom out, it should give you back
+something that looks like "[All Streets](http://benfry.com/allstreets/map5.html)"
+rather than something that looks like an Interstate road atlas.
+
+If you give it all the building footprints in Los Angeles and zoom out
+far enough that most individual buildings are no longer discernable, you
+should still be able to see the extent and variety of development in every neighborhood,
+not just the largest downtown buildings.
+
+If you give it a collection of years of tweet locations, you should be able to
+see the shape and relative popularity of every point of interest and every
+significant travel corridor.
 
 Installation
 ------------
@@ -56,6 +77,10 @@ For point features, it drops 1/2.5 of the dots for each zoom level above the bas
 I don't know why 2.5 is the appropriate number, but the densities of many different
 data sets fall off at about this same rate. You can use -r to specify a different rate.
 
+You can use the gamma option to thin out especially dense clusters of points.
+For any area that is denser than one point per pixel (at whatever zoom level),
+a gamma of 3, for example, will reduce these clusters to 1/3 of their original density.
+
 For line features, it drops any features that are too small to draw at all.
 This still leaves the lower zooms too dark (and too dense for the 500K tile limit,
 in some places), so I need to figure out an equitable way to throw features away.
@@ -83,3 +108,8 @@ and sqlite3 (apt-get install libsqlite3-dev). To build:
 and perhaps
 
     make install
+
+Name
+----
+
+The name is [a joking reference](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tippecanoe_and_Tyler_Too) to making tiles.