More countries I had never heard of

Following my discovery of São Tomé and Príncipe - see my recent post on that - I thought it would be revealing to check out the list of UN member states to see if there were any others of which I was unaware. Turned out there were.

Comoros - a volcanic archipelago off Africa’s east coast

not many national flags have four colour stripes - in fact I could find only one other, that of Mauritius

Eswatini - a landlocked country in Southern Africa

an interesting flag

Kiribati - 32 atolls and one raised coral island in the Pacific Ocean. Two interesting facts:

• the International Date Line goes round Kiribati and swings far to the east, almost reaching the 150° W meridian. This brings Kiribati's easternmost islands, the southern Line Islands south of Hawaii, into the most advanced time zone on Earth: UTC+14
• Kiribati is one of the few countries in the world to be situated in all four hemispheres

(must have info for pub quizzes)

 a nice flag*

Palau - an archipelago of over 500 islands in the western Pacific Ocean

not such a good flag

Interestingly, Kiribati and Palau are two of a small group of countries with no reported Covid-19 cases, as of 16 November, according to statista.com

Timor-Leste - turns out this is East Timor (leste is Portuguese for east) so, as I knew of this, it doesn't count.

Check them out at https://www.un.org/en/member-states/ to see if there are others you didn't know. None of us should remain ignorant throughout our lives.

Here's an odd one: Bolivia (Plurinational State of). What does that mean? Wikipedia tells me "a plurinational state is the existence of multiple political communities and constitutional asymmetry". OK but that applies to pretty much every country in the world; why feel the need to state it in your nation's name?

I contacted the Bolivian Embassy in London. Yes I actually did; it's not one of my windups. Bloggers need facts (no offence, Mr Wiki). As of this moment, I have had no reply. If I get one, I'll post an update. [My Spanish O Level didn't prepare me well enough for a telephone conversation about plurinationality]

* on the subject of good national flags, check this out from the Seychelles:

 bold, yes? Very Mondrian.

Stiffrumps

Stiffrump is an 18th century word meaning an obstinate or haughty person. Thanks to Susie Dent on Twitter for that. It translates very obviously and literally into a modern, derogatory two syllable word, which I'll leave you to figure out.

Thanks also to Ann Treneman for quoting these from a book review of The Time Traveller's Guide to Regency Britain yesterday:

Windsucker - a bore
Gullgroper - a moneylender
Slubberdegullion - a dirty, nasty fellow

Next time you meet one of the these, you'll have a smile on your face!

Add your own as comments, please....

Is this the best website ever?

Do you like watching paint dry?

If so, you will love https://www.worldometers.info/

Check out that page and marvel at the live data flashing past your astonished eyes. You'll be bowled over (no folks, not about cricket)

Get over your sporting hangups!

Here is an example from today - emails sent today:

15:00 GMT: 166,600,000,000+ (I can't give an exact number as the numbers are changing too fast)

15:05 GMT: 167,500,000,000

That's over 900 million emails sent in five minutes; three million sent every second. That's insane! What are all these people saying?

How do they know? They're watching us........

I could watch this all day! Wait, there have been 4,610,789 blog posts written today. Here we go, there's one more!

São Tomé and Príncipe

I had never heard of São Tomé and Príncipe, until yesterday.

Turns out it is a small island nation off the west coast of Africa. São Tomé is one of the main islands, Príncipe the other. Population of 220,711 currently, according to my favourite site worldometers.info

The islands' economy is based on plantation agriculture and the main crop is

cacao, ready for your bedtime drink.

Colonised by the Portuguese in 1470 and previously uninhabited - at least by humans - they gained independence in 1975 and became a member of the United Nations in September of that year. They are included in the UN's Least Developed Country category, although scheduled to graduate to the next level in 2024. 

Another thing I didn't know! Least developed countries (LDCs) are low-income countries confronting severe structural impediments to sustainable development. They are highly vulnerable to economic and environmental shocks and have low levels of human assets.

There are currently 47 countries on the list of LDCs which is reviewed every three years by the Committee for Development (CDP).

LDCs have exclusive access to certain international support measures in particular in the areas of development assistance and trade. [source: un.org/development]

There is a triennial review of graduation thresholds, establishing minimum criteria for an LDC to graduate to a Developing Economy category. The next review is in 2021 and the thresholds for that are:

Gross National Income (GNI) per capita: $1,222 or above
(Income-only: $2,444 or above)
Human Assets Index (HAI): 66 or above
Economic Vulnerability Index (EVI): 32 or below

If anyone is still reading at this point, here are some of the other 46 LDCs at the moment and their scheduled graduation dates:

Vanuatu (2020)
Angola (2021)
Bhutan (2023)
Solomon Islands (2024)

There's so much more to this; I'm still learning.

So how did you come across São Tomé and Príncipe yesterday? I hear you ask.

It's about football. Isn't it always. I was looking for a long odds bet for the weekend and there they were, playing away to one of the strongest teams in African Cup of Nations, South Africa. At odds of 35/1.

Boa sorte meus amigos!

Dudes

Do you call anyone "dude"? Me neither. Of course not. I certainly don't think of my readers as dudes.

I thought it was a modern, American word, used by internet streamers and teenage drug dealers. However, Mr Wiki Pedia tells me it was a common nineteenth century word meaning a dandy or city slicker. Maybe derived from the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy, spelt by less educated Americans as Hinky Dude Led Andy to sing and dance. Maybe.

Much more recently, dude is commonly used by amongst the young, hip crowd. Whoever they are. Generation something or other. Originally referring uniquely to males it is now used for males and females. And others. I haven't heard dudette used in a while, probably because that's not the crowd I mix in. Obviously.

In Australia, the equivalent word is mate. It's ubiquitous. I've even heard married couples addressing each other as mate. No names, no pack-drill. I have no idea what a pack drill is - or indeed whether it should be hyphenated - but my military adviser Tony (RN retired) will surely know.

What do we Brits use? Mate, buddy, pal. For a certain class of Brit perhaps fellow, as in "hail fellow well met". Sounds Shakespearean but I couldn't find any instance of the use of it in the bard's output. Used in Jonathan Swift's poem My Lady's Lamentation:

Hail, fellow, well met,
All dirty and wet:
Find out, if you can,
Who's master, who's man;
Who makes the best figure,
The dean or the digger;
And which is the best
At cracking a jest.

The rhythm and cadence of this reminds me of the Interrupters' song Take Back The Power which I referred to in an earlier post:

What's your plan for tomorrow
Are you a leader or will you follow
Are you a fighter or will you cower
It's our time take back the power

Eighteenth century satirist meets twenty first century ska punk. Who knew?

Movie buffs amongst you will know the Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski, starring Jeff Bridges as "The Dude". I was going to include an image from it but I couldn't find anything copyright-free, so you'll either have to take my word for it, or check it out. It's a movie I haven't seen; perhaps I should. On the list.

OK my dudes, a coda:

On 23 July 2019 Boris Johnson popularized [among the chattering political classes] the word "dude" as an acronym for his Conservative Party leadership campaign. In his leadership speech he explained it as referring to Deliver Brexit – Unite the country – Defeat Jeremy Corbyn – Energize the country. Scorecard: 2/4.

Back to normal

I spent the last four days glued to CNN. I am an election junkie. Always have been. The joy of Clement Attlee in 1945.

Wait, Nigel. Weren't you just a year old at the time?

Ah yes, maybe it was Attlee in 1950, with a wafer thin majority.

When you were six.

A very precocious six.

(and so on...)

Anyway, four late nights (why can't the Americans use GMT?). Immersed in the minutiae of mail-in ballots, absentee voting, the effects of Venezuelan immigrants in Florida and a general geography lesson on American states (not forgetting that Pennsylvania is a Commonwealth not a state) and counties. Directed by the superbly professional CNN anchors, reporters and analysts - although with little pretence of balance in their anti-Trump stance.

It was gripping, waiting for the latest updates from Georgia: Trump's early lead (from on the day voting) shrinking as the mail-in ballots are counted later and eventually disappearing as Biden narrowly overtakes it. It was like watching the final day singles in the Ryder Cup - the to and fro as one side then the other is ahead and the tension when the camera zooms to a reporter in Clark County with the latest batch of votes in Nevada, or to the 17th green as Rory McIlroy lines up a vital putt.

Now I'm back to normal life. CNN will have to wait four years, perhaps for an all-female presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Ivanka Trump (you heard it here first). Back to football, computer gaming, catch ups with the latest episodes of The Mandalorian. The Starry Night jigsaw. And blogging.

Somehow British elections seem mundane. Certainly less drawn out: I can usually get to bed by 6am at the latest, confident of knowing the broad outcome, and that's it. No four day torture, no legal challenges, no town by town numbers. Guys, we need to spice it up!

I'm scouring the world for the next election. There's a Presidential election in Burkino Faso on 22 November. Do they have CNN in Burkino Faso? Ghana 7 December. Indonesian local elections 9 December. Nigeria 27 December (seriously? no Christmas?).

I'm getting the popcorn in. And doing my 30 seconds of Calm.