Started late today.  Sorry.  Not much to write about, so just picked this day, 27June2026.  Day 178 of the year, with 187 remaining.   Gazing at the Wikipedia page of today , nothing particularly important happened on this day.  The final entry 2024 – U.S. President Joe Biden debates former U.S. President Donald Trump . Biden's perceived poor performance leads to his withdrawal from the election on July 21. [ 17 ] That led to Donald Trump becoming president, so in a way, that was an extremely crucial day for Democracy in the USA. The top news of the day is that continued tit-for-tat relationship between Iran and the USA.  However, there has been progress on that MOU.  From Google AI: U.S. forces have conducted renewed strikes on Iranian military and drone facilities in the Persian Gulf in response to an Iranian drone attack on a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz . Meanwhile, Israel and Lebanon have signed a U.S.-mediated framework ...

Something about this trip to Las Vegas made me feel that I was getting out of touch with the lifestyle of today.  While the pandemic made travel difficult, we have been on three cruises during the past year or so, with a couple of international trips.  So what made this more recent experience particularly humbling? To begin, on the flight from Honolulu to San Francisco, everyone in business class seemed to be prepared with bluetooth earphones to listen to their TV screen.  Never occurred to me to bring something like that.  It took a couple of hours to gently inquire about the audio options.  The steward said, oh, here is an earphone, and this is where you connect.  Plus, they did not retrieve this ear plug device, so I had one for the next flight to Las Vegas, and back home. There were 100 channels linked to DIRECTV, close to being the equivalent of what is available at home.  There were also at least a hundred films available. When I got to the Circa...