As the USA will be 250 years old on July 4 this year, I asked Google AI, how old is China? Only 76 years old as the People's Republic of China, founded by Mao Zedong on October 1, 1949. As a Unified Imperial State, 2247 years old.  Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC unified the country. However, widely cited figures trace the roots of Chinese civilization back to the semi-mythical Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, starting with the Yellow Emperor around 2698 BC.  Or 2724 years. Dating back to the Shang Dynasty, between 3200 and 3700 years old. Analyzing archeological culture, sites like Liangzhu show complex societies and evidence of rice farming in the Yangtze River valley 8000 years ago.  This was perhaps 2000 years after very early evidence.  So, 10,000 years? Oxford University considers China to be the world's oldest continuous civilization. Watch a video  suggesting wars in ancient China going back to 10,000 BC.  Thus, perhaps 12,000 years old? Then, of c...

Yesterday was a big sports watching day on TV, with the Gonzaga win over UCLA the most exciting.  The Pac-10 did well this year.  For the first time in my memory, not one team East of the Mississippi River made the Final Four.  To solidify the return of the West, the two women's team in the championship game are Stanford and Arizona.  And, oh, in my ESPN Tournament Challenge I did predict Gonzaga against Baylor for the men's championship, which comes on tomorrow night: I also watched a lot of Major League Baseball, and the star no doubt was Yermin Mercedes, a rookie for the Chicago White Sox, who started his career with eight straight hits.  No one in the modern era, which means from 1900, has ever done that.  So impressed me that I picked him up on all four of my fantasy teams.  You can see him on ESPN after the women's NCAA basketball championship today.  About Mercedes, he is already 28 and has done nothing much in minor league baseball for th...