Who reads Walt Whiteman's World?

Ed. here. An online comment to which I won't provide a link asked, "Who reads Walt Whiteman?" That bit of snark prompted me to check the analytics for the 9+ years we've been blogging, and I thought I'd share some of the stats with you, just FYI.

Here's a map showing where our readers live -- the top 10 countries at least.

Leading the list -- no surprise -- is the Excited States of America, 27.8%. Second place is something of a shocker, considering how little Walt writes in French or about France. Yes, France, at 23.6%. Russia is a solid third at 15.7%, and don't tell me it's all hackers trying to influence US elections! Canada's in fourth with 11.0% and Not-so-great Britain comes fifth at 10.0%.

Then there's a considerable gap until you get to number six, Germany, 2.9%, followed closely by Italy with 2.8%. The Italians are rising fast, though, with a lot of interest in Europe's migrant crisis. Brazil has eighth spot, with 2.3%. Belgium and Ukraine occupy the last two places, with 2.0% and 1.9% respectively.

As you might expect, the overwhelming majority of Walt's readers are running Windows (67%). 11% are Mac lovers, taking a break from designing and other graphic endeavours, no doubt. 8% are in the Linux world, and 3% use Unix. Yes, some folks are getting to us on their iPhones (3%) and iPads (1%). And there are still a few (less than 1%) using Blackberries.

When it comes to browsers, Chrome is the frontrunner, with 39% of WWW readers preferring the Google product. So do we. We switched from Internet Explorer (in third place with 18%) long ago, even before we made the leap from Windows XP to Win10. Firefox is in second place with 29%. Safari comes fourth with 6%, about the twice the number as users of Opera, 3%. Half a dozen other browsers follow, with 1% or less.

Getting back to our readers themselves, the stats give the lie to the canard that Walt Whiteman's World is only for white anglophones. We have readers of every race, in every corner of the world, except for perhaps Antarctica. Following on the top 10 come scads of hits from China (using a VPN, Agent 88 says), south Asia, Australia, sub-Saharan Africa (not just South Africa), parts of the Middle Eastern sandpit, and the Spanish-speaking parts of Latin America (including Texas). Truly, then, Walt Whiteman's World encompasses the whole world.

8 years and counting

Ed. here. Walt was too modest to say anything, but the fact is that WWW has been on the Net for just over eight (8) years, which I believe is way beyond the longevity of the average blog. Moreover, we've averaged just over 30 posts per month, for a total (not including perhaps 3 which were deleted for one reason or another) of 2961 counting this one. Walt, Poor Len Canayen [and Ed.! Ed.] are planning to get together on the weekend to bend elbows and pat each other on the back.

What does Walt read?

Ed. here. It's been a while since we dipped into the virtual mailbox to answer readers' questions. Chris P. Bacon, of Wynot NE poses a rather obvious question -- so obvious that no-one ever asked before. What blogs [Chris asks] does Walt read? Here's a half-dozen.

It should be rather obvious to regular readers of WWW that Walt follows internationally published author, free speech advocate and general curmudgeon Mark Steyn. Mr. Steyn's blog is called Steyn Online: The One-Man Global Content Provider. His writings have been the subject of numerous ill-founded complaints to various "human rights" tribunals, and have been quoted with approval right here on WWW. Steyn Online often has links to the author's radio interviews, worth listening to. And he's a fan of hockey and Frank Sinatra. What more recommendation do you need?

Another free speech advocate Walt admires is Ezra Levant, a Canadian lawyer, journalist political activist. (Not all activists are of the left!) As publisher of the now-defunct Western Standard magazine, he was hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Commission for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. Click here to check out his blog TheRebel.media. Lots of video here, including The Ezra Levant Show, featuring... well, DUH!

Another blog which features terrific video rants is The Remnant Newspaper, which actually began in 1967 as a newspaper for traditional Catholics appalled by the "reforms" of Vatican II. Under the editorship of Michael Matt, it has evolved into a fine online blog for faithful Catholics and others concerned about the demise of the Church and Christian values generally. The Remnant often features "The Mike and Chris Show", in which Mr. Matt and Catholic lawyer and author Christopher Ferrara dissect the latest follies of Pope Francis and other "religious leaders". Walt gave you a sample just last week: "Luther's Revenge: The Surrender of Pope Francis".

Speaking of Christian values, Walt recommends Blazing Cat Fur, which is not just about the Catholic Church, but about the interface between Christian values and geopolitics. The current landing page features articles on British Columbia First Nations (read: Indians), Muslim terrorism in Belgium, and a woman's warning to Missoula MT residents about the “civil unrest” they might be facing should the Obama administration’s plans to plant foreign migrants in the town go through. Warning: lots of advertising on this blog; use your pop-up blocker.

And speaking of fur... take a gander at Five Feet of Fury (geddit?), written by Kathy Shaidle. Ms Shaidle shares Walt's tendency to retweet good stuff from other sources, and repost interesting videos. Her blog covers much the same mix as WWW, without the religion. On February 4th she featured "What Mark Steyn said about Muslim migrants — months before Paris, Cologne".

Finally, and still speaking of fur, we have Small Dead Animals: the Roadkill Diaries, the very creative work of Catherine McMillan, a sometime photographer and artist from (it says here) Delisle, Saskatchewan. Lots of politics here with a nice admixture of arts, culture and criticism of the meeja, as in the following quote from "Captain Capitalism":

Perhaps I've been inoculated against political news coverage.
Perhaps I've just gotten older and, thus, wiser and can ID BS when I see it.
Or maybe my most recent book made me even more disdainful of what the commoners consume.
But as I watched Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer cover the recent kerfuffle between Trump and Cruz, Hillary and Bernie, not to mention their representative mouth pieces, my mouth dropped not because of what they were saying, but because all of them:
The politicians
The spokespersons
The interviewees and
The CNN staff
treat you people like genuine f*cking idiots.

If you're tired of reading the same old liberal bullshit, written by the same old liberal elites and published in the same old liberal lamestream media -- if you're tired of being treated like a genuine f*cking idiot -- read some or all of these blogs. And keep reading WWW too!