My blog yesterday ended with some beautiful photos, indicating that these were sent to me by, for me, a relatively new informant, Gan Jing World.  Before I go into this mysterious organization, though, first, a question.  Do you want to be a billionaire? Turns out that the jackpot for the Powerball drawing tonight at 10:59 PM EDT is up to $1.8 billion. This is the second-highest grand prize in history, to the $2.04 billion jackpot won in November 2022. By the way, there is also Mega Millions, which had a $1.602 jackpot in August 2023.  Costs $5/ticket. But back to Powerball, say you match all five numbers.  Are you then a billionaire? Nope.  You have two options. Take a one-time cash payment, and while that is $1.8 billion, for the moment you are a billionaire.  However, the way this works, you only get $826.4 billion. Or, take 29 annual payments to get the full $1.8 billion.  But you still need to pay taxes and wait for 29 years to get it all. Either ...

My choice today is to overview the role that religion plays in China today.  But first, a  quick look at the country : Has 1.45 billion people, more than any country, although India has 1.42 billion.  The United Nations projects that  India will surpass China next year .   Incidentally, the world population is expected to reach 8 billion by November 15 of this year.  However, the global growth rate fell below 1% in 2020, the slowest growth pace since 1950.  Further, this same UN report said that life expectancy was 72.8 in 2020, but, because of the pandemic, dropped to 71 in 2021 There are 5% more males than females.  Why?  Males are more desired and there is sex-selective abortion. Is the third largest country in land mass.  #1 is Russia, #2 is Canada and #4 is the USA, with Brazil #5, Australia #6 and India #7.  I did not know that these countries were that large:  Argentina #8, Kazakhstan #9 and Algeria #10.  ...