Posted
on October 6, 2013
They are flying their flags at half-mast to remember the victims of an earthquake that happened on this date in 1948.
The 7.3 earthquake was one of the deadliest in human history and devastated the capital city of Ashgabat.
A
nation that was once part of the Soviet Union, that is next door to
Afghanistan, and that suffers from really high unemployment...you can
probably guess that life is not incredibly easy in Turkmenistan.
However, the nation has enjoyed recent economic growth because of its
large reserves of natural gas. It also has oil resources and grows
enough cotton to export some.
Turkmenistan
is a bit larger than my native state of California, but it doesn't
have quite as much good agricultural land as Cali does—because 80%
of the nation is covered by a black-sand desert!
I
noticed an “export treemap” diagram (above) in the Wikipedia article
about Turkmenistan. It shows how dependent the nation's economy is
on just three things (natural gas, oil, and cotton). It
would be great if the nation could diversify—which means build many
different industries instead of depending on just a few industries.
Compare the diagram to the U.S. export treemap below.
Is
diversity always good? I was thinking about how wonderful
biodiversity is (lots and lots of different creatures in a habitat,
instead of just a few), how wonderful cultural and ethnic diversity
is (many different types of music and food available, along with many
different holidays and traditions)...and of course a nation is much
stronger with economic diversity, too.
I
can't think of a kind of diversity that's bad...can you?
To
learn more about Turkmenistan, check out this earlier post.
Also
on this date:
National German-American Day
Plan
Ahead:
And
here are my Pinterest boards for November
holidays, November
birthdays,
and historical
anniversaries in November.
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