Why Ukraine matters

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has spurred Walt's agents -- Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian alike -- to send in material which the rest of the world should know. From Agent 6 comes a list of statistics showing why Ukraine matters, and deserves to be included in the European Union. 

1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores

2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in terms of titanium ore reserves

2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of the world's reserves)

2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons)

2nd place in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves

3rd place in Europe (13th place in the world) in shale gas reserves (22 trillion cubic meters)

4th in the world by the total value of natural resources

7th place in the world in coal reserves (33.9 billion tons)

Ukraine is an agricultural country.

1st in Europe in terms of arable land area

3rd place in the world by the area of black soil (25% of world's volume)

1st place in the world in exports of sunflower and sunflower oil

2nd place in the world in barley production and 4th place in barley exports

3rd largest producer and 4th largest exporter of corn in the world

4th largest producer of potatoes in the world

5th largest rye producer in the world

5th place in the world in bee production (75,000 tons)

8th place in the world in wheat exports

9th place in the world in the production of chicken eggs

16th place in the world in cheese exports

Ukraine can meet the food needs of 600 million people.

Ukraine is an industrialized country.

1st in Europe in ammonia production

2nd place in Europe and 4th largest natural gas pipeline system in the world (142.5 bln cubic meters of gas throughput capacity in the EU)

3rd largest in Europe and 8th largest in the world in terms of installed capacity of nuclear power plants 3rd place in Europe and 11th in the world in terms of rail network length (21,700 km)

3rd place in the world (after the U.S. and France) in production of locators and locating equipment

3rd largest iron exporter in the world

4th largest exporter of turbines for nuclear power plants in the world

4th largest manufacturer of rocket launchers in the world

4th place in the world in clay exports

4th place in the world in titanium exports

8th place in the world in exports of ores and concentrates

9th place in the world in exports of defence industry products

10th largest steel producer in the world (32.4 million tons)

No wonder Putin wants to get his blood-stained hands on Ukraine! He must be stopped!!!

Source: Andriy Futey, Ukrainian Congress Committee of America Ukrainian World Congress - Свiтовий Конґрес Українців

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.

Where have all the Russians gone?

Ed. here. One of my tasks is to have a look, every now and then, at WWW's readership statistics, just to see who's looking at -- and perhaps reading -- what. It doesn't matter, really, as we ended the experiment of allowing advertising some months ago. But Walt (and now Len) like to think that the pearls they cast are being picked up by the... well... you know.

Almost since Day One, and certainly since the Swazi girls first appeared on WWW, the top two countries in which our readers reside have been the USA and Russia, or the other way around. Since we write mostly in English, not Russian, we assume the Russians are looking at the National Geographic-style pix and videos. Checking the most-hit posts would seem to confirm this.

But yesterday, an amazing thing happened. The Russians completely disappeared from our readership tables! I don't mean they slipped into 5th or 10th place. They vanished completely!

As of this moment, Americans make up the greatest percentage of our visitors, by a very long shot. Next, way back there, comes Latvia. Latvia?! Whoda thunk it? Maybe all the Russians moved to Riga?

Rounding out the top ten (plus) we have (3) Canada, (4) France, (5) United Kingdom (tied with Poland and Ukraine), (8) China, (9) Germany, and (10) Sweden.

I can't understand what became of the Russians. When the Chinese aren't in our world, I assume WWW is on the wrong side of the Great Firewall of China because of something we said about the schismatic Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association or freedom of religion or one of the Three Terrible T's.*

So, is there now an Iron Firewall around Russia? Could it be that the KGB (the Russian version of the NSA) thinks Walt is promoting homosexuality? The Russians have a law against that now. If they think that, they haven't been reading very carefully. Or perhaps something is being lost in translation.

Anyone with an answer to this puzzlement is invited to post a comment below. Don't let Walt be the last to know!

* Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen Square. You're welcome.

Race and poverty by the numbers

Pocket World in Figures comes with Walt's subscription to the Economist. It's a great little fact book, very appealing to the kind of people who enjoy reading dictionaries and telephone books. [Do telephone books even exist any more? Ed.]

You might think tables of "the world's biggest", "the world's worst", "the world's and so on" would be boring, but the trick is to read between the lines. At the same time, keep asking yourself questions that begin with "why". Look for correlations.

Here are some stone truths that "progressive thinkers" in the West don't like to talk about, except of course when they're laying that old liberal guilt trip on the rest of us.

Rich and poor in black and white. One of the most common ways to measure a nation's wealth is in GDP (Gross Domestic Product). The 19 countries with the highest GDP are all (ahem) "white", if we count the Arabs in Qatar (#5) as honorary whites. Japan is #20, Canada #14, the USA #12 and Australia #9. Luxembourg is on top of the league table.

The other end of the list -- the countries with the lowest GDP per head -- begins with Somalia. No prizes for guessing that one. You go on through another 13 African countries until you get to Afghanistan and North Korea, tied for #15. Could a liberal intellectual please explain to us the link between race and poverty/prosperity? Or does it all come down to colonialism?

Where's a good place to live? There's more to life than money, right? [Really? Ed.] GDP and the quality of life aren't necessarily the same. To measure the latter, you use the Disunited Nations Human Development Index (HDI), which combines stats on income, life expectancy, education and all the things we include when we say "Have a nice life."

Let's see now... Isn't this amazing... The top 10 countries on the HDI are all, errr, white. Norway is #1, beating out Australia (#2), the USA (tied with the Netherlands for #3) and Canada (tied with Eire and New Zealand for #5). First Asian countries on the list are Japan (#11) and Hong Kong (tied with Iceland for #12).

At the very bottom of the HDI is Congo (the bigger one, formerly known as Zaire, formerly known as the Congo, etc), followed by Niger, Burundi, Mozambique and so on. All black African states right through to Walt's old stomping ground, Zimbabwe, in 15th place. Afghanistan comes in at #16. Then it's all black Africa again through #23 (Djibouti tied with Zambia), which is where the fecal roster ends.

Wow, Walt is only up to page 28 of the 2013 edition of the Economist's Pocket World in Figures. This should be good for another two posts, minimum. More anon.

Walt Whiteman's World year in review

It's the time of year when there's not a lot of news. Nothing happens between Christmas and New Year's. So the media (Phil Space, Prop.) have to fill space [geddit? Ed.] With retrospectives on the year that was. WWW is better than the lamestream media, but not that much better. So, over to Ed. for a look back at developments in Walt Whiteman's World.

Thanks, Walt. Here's a quick summary of your blog's readership for 2012. Let me throw some numbers at you. 35%. 55%. 80%. That's right! 80%!! Daily readership of WWW did not increase by 80%!! But it did increase.

Most popular post, again this year: "Where next? Swaziland next?" Can't figure out why people in places like Russia, Turkey and India keep hitting this. I also wonder why no-one ever comments. Perhaps typing with one hand is too difficult.

The video sequel, "Swazi girls doing the reed dance -- VIDEO!", has just now started getting a lot of hits. As nearly as I can see, no-one from Swaziland has ever looked at either of these posts.

New record for most hits in one day: "Learn this new Christmas song...and pass it along!",  which rode the crest of the wave of backlash against politically correct "Happy Holidays". Bookmark it for next year.

Most popular foreign language post: "Charles DeGaulle warns about Muslim immigration". As we ran the text of le Général's prescient prediction in French, we didn't think many people would read it, mais nous avons tort.

Related post that's being circulated in the USA, Canada and not-so-Great Britain: "How can we be silent in the face of Islamization of our country?"
Surprise of the year: the continuing popularity of "Death by cactus: a prickly situation", posted on 26 June. I figured this would be a one-day story, maybe a week at best, but it has been one of the top three most-viewed items for the last six months, sometimes beating even the Swazi girls. Why do people read this? Or are they just looking at the picture of the saguaro cactus?

Where you are: Walt has regular readers all over North America, Europe (including Russia), and parts of Asia (including Russia). South America and Africa, not so much. Top ten countries (as of today) are: USA, Russia, Turkey, Canada, India, UK, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, France, Australia.

How you look at us: The big three browers are the ones you'd expect, but the order of finish tells a story: Chrome (31%); Firefox (30%); Internet Explorer (25%). And Safari is now in fourth spot, Opera in fifth.

Your operating systems are: Windows (far and away the leader -- 78%), Linux (See? It still exists! -- 11%), with Macintosh, Android, iPad and iPhone not even at the three-quarter pole. Big question for the future: Will the advent of Windows 8 make any difference? Walt's prediction: No, because no-one's going to buy it if they don't have to. Lifetime pct .987.

Worst new technological development: Google's new and useless user interface for Blogger. Another proof of the old adage: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I keep thinking about changing platforms to WordPress but am just too lazy.

Coming soon, maybe even tomorrow: Walt's predictions for 2013.