First of all, this is Friday, and if you are in the USA, it is a day off for our country's 249th birthday.  How much longer we'll have  a Democracy will be a challenge with Donald Trump as president. Greece is where Democracy was born. However,  Democracy in Athens 2500 years ago  was not quite what it is supposed to be.  First, only males who served in the militia could vote.  With all the ineligible men, women, children and foreigners, only around 15% could participate in the democracy of those days As best as I can determine,  modern Greece did not return to Democracy until 1974!   Joined the European Union in 1981, but elected a socialist government later that year.  The government continues through crises, sometimes with coalitions involving communists, other times just messed up and in scandal.  So is Greece a Democracy today.  I guess yes. San Marino claims to have been a Republic since the year 300, but its current constitut...

For the next few days I will focus on China, for Sunday, January 22, is Lunar Chinese New Year, and a whole lot of things are tormenting that country today.  To begin, is China the oldest civilization?  The answer is no. Well, then, shouldn't Africa be where early versions of us first settled?  This answer is yes, for  Australopithecus goes back perhaps 7 million years . and the  first  Homo sapiens  developed at least 300,000 years ago  on that continent, and maybe even several hundred thousand years earlier. However, if you do a thorough search for the oldest serious human settlement, Africa does not dominate.  It  all depends on what is really a civilization, or country . Historians seem to be in agreement that a true civilization/country needs to have a managed economy with infrastructure and political alliances.  A mere city is not good enough, for these have in history tended to disappear, sometimes by drought or armed conflic...

Well, the Tokyo Olympics will end today   (already Sunday Tokyo time ).  The Final Ceremonies air at 7AM EDT ( 1AM Hawaii time tonight ) tomorrow.   Left are the men's marathon in Sapporo and Japan vs USA in women's basketball.  Sure we won in men's basketball, and women's golf and water polo, but we lost to Japan in both the softball and baseball championship games.  Japan was strong, winning thirteen gold medals in judo and wrestling, the women especially, for they dominated in four of the six wrestling events.   So who won the most medals?  If it's only gold, then China.  Total?  USA.  On the other hand, using medals per million people, the leaders are: #1  San Marino:  88.4 #2  Bermuda:  16 #3  Grenada:  8.9 What about medals/million for the larger countries? New Zealand:  3.9 Australia:  1.7 Great Britain:  0.9 USA:  0.3 China:  0.06 Wasn't that surprising? What was th...