Horses to helicopters. That's evolution. Horses are, at least were, cavalry. Fast moving units.
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Elephants not so much. They evolved to tanks.
Pterodactyls to birds to Spitfires to drones. That's evolution.
Canoes to triremes to battleships to...the Millennium Falcon.
Mules to buses to bullet trains to teleporters.
Apes to humans to...Arnold Schwarzenegger. The archetypal cyborg.
We have a great deal to thank Charles Darwin for.
Where will it all end?
I recently gave some examples of national flags and commented on their attractiveness (to me). Also I enjoy listening to, and talking about, national anthems. I grew up in a post war generation which was beginning to question issues of patriotism and reverence. I was always amazed in the cinema when people stood up for the national anthem. That seems odd nowadays but the country had recently fought and won against a terrible enemy and there was much communal pride.
I can't recall ever standing up for the national anthem. A young man has to make a stand, yes? I know, always a rebel...
Anthems have two aspects - music and words. Who can fail to be stirred by the music to the Welsh anthem (Gwlad, Gwlad)? Or La Marseillaise? In comparison, God Save the Queen is turgid. No, I'll go further. It's a dirge. Imagine trudging through mud. Thomas Arne's Rule Britannia is at least uplifting.
But here's the thing. We come to the words. "Britannia, rule the waves" is so meaningless that it can't be sung with any conviction. We don't even patrol the English Channel effectively, let alone rule any waves. So are we hooked on nostalgia? Obviously yes; but maybe all countries are.
But no, there are examples where a nation's anthem looks to the future:
Sounds the call to come together,
And united we shall stand,
Let us live and strive for freedom,
In South Africa our land.
Or elysian glories, as in this from Bangladesh:
My golden Bengal, I love you.
Forever thy skies, thy air set my heart in tune as if it were a flute,
O mother! The aroma of the mango orchard in Falgun drives me crazy,
Ah, what a thrill!
O mother! In Ogrohayon time sees sweet smiles all through mature fields of paddy.
Spare a thought for the Spanish, whose anthem has no words. Aha, no hostage to future fortune, then. Do their athletes hum their way through it? I checked on YouTube; their footballers just look embarrassed.
Which leads us back to the tunes. How many of us have fidgeted for what seems like hours hoping for the end of the Italian anthem, a symphonic movement of nearly two minutes. Nothing beats the Uruguay anthem though (6 minutes). Thank goodness. At least God Save the Queen is over quickly.
But I digress; what about the flags? I previously lauded the flags of Kiribati
They are colourful and expressive of sunshine, expansiveness and hope.
To those I could add:
Belize
Brazil
South Korea
GuatemalaThey are at least interesting. Otherwise it's uninspiring stripes, crosses and blobs. I'll leave it to you to decide which you like best.
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 MauritiusEswatini - a landlocked country in Southern Africa
an interesting flagKiribati - 32 atolls and one raised coral island in the Pacific Ocean. Two interesting facts:
a nice flag*Palau - an archipelago of over 500 islands in the western Pacific Ocean
not such a good flagInterestingly, 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.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....
Do you like watching paint dry?
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)
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!
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
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!