We are a few days away from our exciting adventure to the Orient.  One stop will be Taiwan.  However, Japan-China relations just deteriorated. Japan's first female Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on 31October2025.  All went well. But on November 7, Takaichi veered from Japan's policy of " strategic ambiguity " about Taiwan, suggesting that an attack on Taiwan could amount to a "survival-threatening situation" that would permit Japan to exercise collective self-defense. This drew the ire of China, which has maintained that Taiwan is part of China, and that they will someday, by force, if necessary, regain total control,  as was done with Hong Kong.  We also will visit that city, twice on this trip. Takaichi refused to retract her remarks. Usually, most of what happens is just tense talk, but this time, China urged their citizens to hold off on any trip to Japan this year. If the Chinese take this seriously, Japan will be si...

I arrived at my computer today, and could not figure out what to say.   This is Sunday, so something spiritual, maybe.   Yesterday was my 6536th posting, the first being on 29April2008. This is a daily blog. So I've been doing this for 17+ years. You know how long this is? Counting kindergarten as year one, you graduate from high school at the end of year 13. Then four years of college brings me up to year 17, I've been doing this daily.  Students have weekends, holidays and summer vacation. Have I run out of things to say? Well, no.  So today I'll go to the  World Population Review , and indicate various country rankings. Top 5 Most Populous Countries India   1,463,870,000 China   1,416,100,000 United States   347,276,000 Indonesia   285,721,000 Pakistan   255,220,000 Numbers stand for annual change:  India +0.89%, China -0.23%,  USA +0.54%,  Indonesia +0.79% and Pakistan +1.57%.  #6 is Nigeria with 237.5 m...