First a few newsworthy items: Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen by 16 percentage points . Biden had 4.5% more votes than Trump in 2020.   Mind you, the electoral votes determine who becomes president. If Biden had 45,000 fewer total votes in the right proportion in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, Trump would today be president.  This is a percentage of only 0.05%. Similarly, if Trump in 2016 had 78,000 fewer votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton would have won the presidency.  A percentage difference of only 0.06%. While you sometimes need to appreciate the context of what politicians and their aides say, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reported after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv that  Russia is failing . So on to my topic of the day, read this  Quora  entry to give you some hope about applying to and getting admitted into Stanford University: Ivy...

On 12 February 2019 I left for Bangkok.  To quote my posting of that day: I leave this morning for Bangkok.  A simple trip with five others has now been reduced to three because the others felt it was too dangerous because of the coronavirus epidemic that has spread to Thailand.  There has been a lot of concern expressed to me by residents of 15 Craigside, mostly for my welfare.  However, no doubt there is also a worry that I will return to infect them with some horrible tropical disease, like perhaps the Wuhan coronavirus, which, incidentally, now has an official name:    COVID-19 .  The 19 because it was discovered in 2019. When I left Honolulu China had reported the most number of COVID-19 cases and Thailand was #2.  I returned two weeks later.  Here were my  Thai highs .  In afterthought, I should have chickened out on my Bengal Tiger encounter, but glad I made that trip.  Phuket was hardly worth the effort, while Chiang Ma...

In one corner we have incumbent President of France Emmanuel Macron and in the other, Marine Le Pen, buddy of Vladimir Putin, and threat to destroy democracy and the European Union.  Is the free world in danger? Well, I don't think so.  While Pen is supposedly in a stronger position today than she was when she ran against Macron in 2017, the Ukraine War essentially destroyed her chances.  Not too many Putin fans in France.  Further,  Macron won the 2.5 hours presidential debate held on May 3, 63% to 34%.    Macron is still only 39 years old, and Pen is 48. Her father was founder of the National Front ( her supporting party ) and regularly tried to become president since 1974.  They are anti-Muslim and said to be creepily fascists.  However, she expelled her father from his party in 2015 for carrying extreme views. Marine is, in too many ways, a  female Donald Trump .  She and her father somehow avoid paying taxes, are anti-immi...