Too Much Junk On Television

Yesterday, I suffered in front of the television watching the Vikings ugly win over the lowly Lions. During the game, my eldest son made repeated requests to watch a video instead, which in hindsight would have been far more entertaining. I kept telling him to wait until after the football game was over. Once it was, I acceded to his demands and we fired up a movie which he has only viewed 137 times previously.

It turned out to be a fortunate decision as we were spared the post-game locker room shot of Visanthe's Shiancoe :

Tight end Visanthe Shiancoe was the Vikings leading receiver and had a go-ahead touchdown catch in the fourth quarter today.

Unfortunately, he also became the subject of an embarrassing mistake in the locker room afterward that caused Fox officials to issue an apology.

Shiancoe was inadvertently shown naked on television while a FOX camera crew taped owner Zygi Wilf's presentation of the game ball to coach Brad Childress' 19-year-old son Andrew, who is joining the Marine Corps on Monday.

Shiancoe was standing behind and to the side of Wilf with a towel partly covering his body. But not completely.

Anytime you bring a camera into a locker room you're running the risk of catching more than you bargained for. The most memorable locker room exposure that I can recall came during the North Stars 1981 Stanley Cup playoff run. After they defeated the Calgary Flames in Game Six of the conference finals to reach the Stanley Cup Finals, local television was covering the post-game locker room celebration and viewers were treated to a full frontal shot of one of the disrobed Stars walking through the room. I believe that it was Gordie Roberts, but could be mistaken. Search for the clip on You Tube at your own risk.

JB Says:

I believe that nekkid north star was actually Greg Smith.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Smith_(ice_hockey)

Hey Bartender

Eric Felten on the sorry state of American bartending in Saturday's Wall Street Journal (sub req):

The best hotel bartender I encountered in my travels didn't need any new training program to teach him how to make great cocktails. Gus Tassopulos, dean of the barmen at L.A.'s Hotel Bel-Air, has been mixing drinks for five decades. He started at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1959 and came to the Bel-Air in 1990. Mine wasn't the first request for an Americano, which he mixed right up. His Sidecar was a thing of beauty, made with fresh lime juice, and every ingredient carefully measured to make sure the drink would have the correct balance. Mr. Tassopulos was also a paradigm of dignified, old-school service -- friendly but formal, attentive without being intrusive.

Mr. Tassopulos laments that there aren't many good bartenders these days. Yes, there are men and women serious about the craft. But they are generally focused on becoming celebrity mixologists, cocktail consultants -- or, at the very least, they want to own their own high-end bars one day. More power to them. But otherwise, barmen tend to be waiters or waitresses who graduate to the better-paying spot behind the bar and stick it out long enough to finish school or get the acting job they've been chasing. "Bartending isn't what people want as a career now," Mr. Tassopulos says, which explains why I ran into so many people who didn't seem to care what they pushed across the mahogany.

Take the young man I found tending bar at Hollywood's brilliantly restored Roosevelt Hotel. He happily told me that he didn't know how to make many drinks at all. When needed, he could always just look something up in the bar book behind the counter. But most of the time he didn't bother to use the book: "If people ask for a drink I don't know," he explained, "I can always kind of make something with sour mix and vodka and they'll be happy." A more eloquent and concise expression of the state of bartending in America you couldn't hope to find.

Far too often these days, the simple act of trying to order a drink brings a response of ignorance, arrogance, or apathy from the bartender. They don't know, they don't have time for such menial things as serving a customer, or they simply don't care.

UPDATE-- Here are a couple of more observations on the matter, penned by JB and me Saint Paul back in the pre-blog days of Fraters Libertas:

Hey Bartender #1

Hey Bartender #2

The High Cost Of Low Crude

In you needed more proof that we live in times of dizzying economic change, consider that there is now concern being raised because of low oil prices. Yes, that's right low oil prices are now something to worry about while it was just a few months ago that we were fixated on high oil costs as the price per barrel approached the $150 mark. Today's WSJ has a story on the consequences of oil's slide (sub req):

Already in free fall, the price of oil could soon push much lower as the effects of a global recession take hold.

Crude fell $3.12, or 6.7%, to settle at $43.67 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Thursday. Many oil-industry insiders and traders now say prices could slump much lower, into the $30s, before supply cuts push prices back up, perhaps much later into next year. The changes come from a combustible mix of factors -- a rise in inventories, shifts in the quality of oil used by refiners, and severely deteriorating demand.

You don't hear much now from the folks who were complaining last summer when the all powerful oil companies were supposedly colluding to screw the American consumer.

I don't think we're through with the drop. I don't know where it stops, but I don't think we're through," said Steve Chazen, president and chief financial officer of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp.

Lower oil prices are a short-term gain for consumers and businesses, from carpooling parents to households using heating oil to airlines. But a sustained decline in the price of oil also has painful downsides. Energy-driven economies -- in areas from Texas and Alaska to Venezuela and Russia -- can face huge busts, with job losses affecting employment for engineers and roughnecks on rigs as well as the accountants, hotels and restaurants that support them.

Sinking oil prices also reduce the political will to push ahead with costly renewable-energy projects, and reduce the urgency to prioritize energy-policy debates on topics ranging from auto efficiency to offshore drilling. The danger is that when demand does bounce back, prices will boomerang far higher because the supply cushion has shrunk.

While many may take great solace and rejoice at falling oil prices, the reality is that in the long run we're going to be much better off if we prices would stabilize at a level that would support expanded exploration and recovery efforts. The first projects that will get scrapped and the first wells that will get capped are going to happen in places where we want to get more oil from. Places like Texas, North Dakota, and Canada among others.

I heard something earlier this week that the Saudis will be able to continue to extract oil for something like $9 a barrel. If oil prices fall even further, they won't make as much as they have in the past, but they will continue to make money. And, as the story notes, when the global economy does recover and demand for oil does increase, not having these alternative sources online will make prices climb even higher and put more dollars into the Saudi coffers.

Low prices aren't always all that they are cracked up to be.

In The Pit

Just in case you needed more proof that the best way to follow the Coleman-Franken recount is to not pay much attention to the day to day proceedings, consider the breathless headline from Tuesday's Star Tribune:

Senate recount: Pendulum swings to Franken

Wow, that's big news. Up until this point, Coleman has been ahead every step of the way. Something dramatic must have happened:

The U.S. Senate recount took two abrupt turns Tuesday, both boosting the prospects of DFLer Al Franken.

Franken unexpectedly picked up 37 votes due to a combined machine malfunction and human error on Election Day that left 171 Maplewood ballots safe, secure but uncounted until Tuesday's final day of recounting in Ramsey County.

Wow. An abrupt turn indeed. So where did that leave the margin at?

By the end of Tuesday, with 93 percent of the total vote recounted, the Republican's lead stood at 303 votes with the state Canvassing Board set to finalize results Dec. 16.

Which isn't much different than the lead that Coleman has enjoyed for at least the last week. And as of today, the margin is back to 316. I must have missed the Strib headline announcing "Pendulum swings back to Coleman."

Following up on Saint Paul's post yesterday, sometimes it's hard to tell if the Strib reporters are actually writing these stories themselves or just regurgitating what they're being told by officials and campaigns. Consider the matter of the second "abrupt turn" in the in the story headlined "Pendulum swings to Franken":

The day's other news -- which Franken's campaign quickly described as a "breakthrough" -- came when Ritchie's office asked local election officials to examine an estimated 12,000 rejected absentee ballots and determine whether their rejection fell under one of four reasons for rejection defined in state law. The Secretary of State's office asked that ballots that were rejected for something other than the four legal reasons be placed into a so-called "fifth category."

Later in the piece, we learned that the significance of this new development was up for debate:

The letter to local election officials comes as the Canvassing Board awaits a state attorney general's opinion on whether the board has the authority to count the ballots in the fifth pile, or if that is something that only can be ordered by a court.

Fritz Knaak, Coleman's lead recount attorney, minimized the impact of the move and said Ritchie's office was not asking local election officials to count any of the five categories of rejected absentee ballots, and had written those instructions in bold type in its letter. "They were not directing that those be counted, but they are being set aside. And, of course, we're not surprised, and that's fine," he said.

Franken's campaign heralded the news as a significant development, and said it came on a day when the campaign's own internal recount showed that Coleman's lead had dwindled to 50 votes. "[This] process is not complete until every vote is counted. And today's directive is an important step," said Andy Barr, Franken's communications director.

So let's recap. The Coleman campaign minimizes the impact of the move, while the Franken campaign "heralded" it as a "significant development" and a "breakthrough." Guess which way the Strib chose to characterize it? Hint: the headline for the story was "Pendulum swings to Franken." Our local objective, unbiased news source at its finest.

Remain Calm, All Is Well

Regarding the "lost" 171 ballots suddenly showing up in Maplewood, advancing Al Franken about 10% of the ground he needs to make up to catch Coleman, the government official in charge has these soothing words:

[Ramsey County Elections Director Joe Mansky] said the ballots were always secure and were not lost. When the votes were tallied, Al Franken gained 91 votes from the batch, and Norm Coleman picked up 54 votes.

From the front page Star Tribune article summarizing the situation:

Franken unexpectedly picked up 37 votes due to a combined machine malfunction and human error on Election Day that left 171 Maplewood ballots safe, secure but uncounted until Tuesday's final day of recounting in Ramsey County.

From the government's mouth directly to the first paragraph of the "objective" characterization of events in your monopoly newspaper. If nothing else, that is remarkable efficiency.

For the next ballot counting gaffe benefitting Franken, I suggest the press conference be conducted as a ventriloquist act. The Star Tribune reporter can sit on the government official's knee and move their jaws up and down while the official speaks in a squeaky voice behind him.

Granted, the official explanation for this case sounds plausible and the validation procedures in order. But ... where's the journalistic curiosity and natural distrust of government reporters are supposed to have? Do they really know the ballots were "safe and secure" before they immediately go out of their way to hose down any natural suspicions the citizens might have about this unusual event? Do they know these ballots are valid at all? If the judges in that precinct are grossly incomptent to this level, what does that say about what else might have been happening there that night?

Just once I'd like to see a modicum of that heroic skepticism and sleuthing I was sold on during All the Presidents Men as the mission of journalism. Rather, I'd like to once see it unleashed on an official story benefitting Democrats. You know, the kind of tenacity and unquenchable thirst for the truth exhibited when they were digging up Alan Fine's sealed divorce records or printing anonymous allegations and character assassination in order to run Rachel Paulose out of town.

Yes, yes, there's probably nothing to this latest lost ballot story. Once again machine malfunction plus human error equals Democrat party windfall. Why does it always work out that way!? Since the 700-some vote Coleman lead was tabulated on election night, a series of miraculous, once-in-a-lifetime, ballot counting gaffes has gone Franken's way to make this thing absurdly close. We haven't gotten ONE appalling election judge blunder to go Coleman's way and put a stake in Stuart Smalley once and for all. This pattern annoys me.

Not sure what emotion awaits if a few more of these bad vote counting miracles land in his lap to put him over the top.

UPDATE: Keep hope alive!

DFLer Al Franken's campaign lodged a protest over 133 votes that it said could not be accounted for during the recount of one of the city's precincts, at a possible cost to him of as many as 46 net votes in his race against Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

Note the point-of-view of the article though, uproar over disappearing mystery ballots, not the calm, cool assurances of a recount correction well done.

Static Cling

Stuart Rothenberg wonders if Anyone Can Bring America Together in an Era of Division? In the piece, he shows that Obama's election was not in fact a unifying event and that the country still remains deeply divided, especially among cultural lines:

The country's deepest and most-explosive division revolves around culture.

Four in 10 voters attend religious services at least weekly, and they went for John McCain, 55 percent to 43 percent. Almost an equal number of voters, 42 percent, said they attend religious services only occasionally, and they went for Obama, 57 percent to 42 percent. And among those voters who never attend religious services, Obama won by 37 points, 67 percent to 30 percent.

On guns, another longtime indicator of cultural values, divisions remain deep. A substantial 42 percent of Americans own guns, and they voted for McCain, 62 percent to 37 percent. Those voters who don't own a gun, 58 percent of all respondents in the exit poll, went for Obama by 32 points, 65 percent to 33 percent.

No word on how the "bitter" demographic voted. Those numbers are rather shocking and show that Obama did little to bridge the cultural chasm. Rothenberg also dismisses the notion that Obama's victory--while substantial in the electoral college--was a sweeping mandate for change.

Further, the size of Obama's victory and the nature of the problems that he will confront don't suggest the end of division.

Obama's 53 percent victory was a solid win, far more decisive than the last two presidential elections. But it was hardly a blowout.

His apparent margin of 6.8 points (based on near-final numbers from CNN) was well below the true landslide margins in Richard Nixon's and Ronald Reagan's re-elections (23.2 points and 18.2 points, respectively), but it also was below Bill Clinton's re-election (8.5 points). Maybe more importantly, it was significantly below Reagan's margin over Jimmy Carter (9.6 points) and slightly below George H.W. Bush's 7.8-point margin in the 1988 open-seat race.

In other words, America did not "come together" to elect Obama. The country was divided, and while most Americans now hope that he can solve the nation's problems, the new president's choices will invariably require him to make trade-offs -- trade-offs that are likely to anger some, maybe many, Americans.

Obama's campaign didn't do much to unite the country. It will be a tall order for his presidency to do any better at truly bringing Americans together.

Irrational Exuberance

I remember the period of late October 1987 for primarily one thing, the Twins winning the World Series. That is what dominated my thoughts day and night back then and it is still recalled as a time of great anticipation and happiness.

According to reports, on Monday October 19, 1987, the day after the Twins completed a sweep of the first two games over the Cardinals, something else happened. Black Monday, the largest one day drop in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In one day, 22.61% of its value disappeared. This is more than twice as large as any other one day percentage drop ever recorded. More than three times as large as any one day drop during the current spiral of stock value death.

During that time in '87, I do recall hearing about things about the stock market on the news. Lots of media people waking up the ghosts of the Great Depression. The "watch for falling stock brokers" signs popping up in the morbidly amused sectors of town. People "in the know" were generally spooked and bewildered.

On the other hand, I was decidedly "out of the know." Still an irrational post-adolescent enjoying my first year of college. If I did think about what people were saying, allowing the cold fingers of anxiety to start to grasp my internal organs, there were many, many other distractions available. Not the least of which was mentally going over the pitching match-ups and line-ups for the next World Series game. For me, the financial crisis of 1987 was soft background music. I didn't own any stocks, no one in my family really did, nobody's employment or individual retirement account depended on it. The causes and consequences were out of my control, so I largely dismissed it.

Time has proven my irresponsible disregard to be correct. There were no significant consequences of this event for the economy. In 1987, the Dow Jones actually finished higher on the year than it started (although the pre-crash levels weren't realized again for two years). Over the next 20 years, both the volume of the Dow Jones and the percentage of Americans owning stocks skyrocketed.

Recently, I was passed along a copy of the October 25, 1987 Star Tribune business section, published about a week after the crash. Its lead article was a reprint from the New York Times summarizing the economic state of the nation. (The extensive NY Times online archive has it here).

In hindsight, it reads as comedy. And a lesson on the herd mentality and reliability of the elite economic opinion makers, then and now. Excerpts:

Stock crash transforms economy from top to bottom
by William Glaberson
New York Times

The economy will never be the same. No matter where the stock market heads in coming months, the whole process of doing business, making a living, choosing investments - even buying a house - has been radically transformed. Last Monday's market collapse was one of those pivotal events that shape everything that comes afterward.

All last week, the collapse of the market and its breathtaking ups and downs, were the national obsession. There had been warnings about economic danger signs before, but Wall Street's free-fall delivered the message more clearly than all the talk: Good times can end. For two generations of Americans who know about economic disasters only from history books, the collapse of '87 marks the end of an era of economic optimism.

Even if the economy stays on a basically steady course, as most experts predict, the tumble was "a little like seeing the atom bomb go off," said Richard R. West, dean of New York University's Graduate School of Business. "Once you've seen it, you know it could happen again. The world has changed."

After the 235-point drop the previous week, said Robert L. Pelz, 33, a grain broker with his own firm in Leewood, Kan., he went home and said to his wife, "I think the world as you and I know it has changed."

Monday's debacle, Mr. Pelz said, shook him profoundly. "What people will say, I think, is that that day in October 1987 taught a lot of people in our generation that what is here today may be gone today."

But even before the market plunge, the long-running American psychology of affluence that has for so long been the foundation of the consumer-driven economy was beginning to erode, said the pollster Daniel Yankelovich. The sudden focus on the market's instability, he said, is likely to be the shock that snaps many people out of the optimism that made them believe troubling recessions and periods of sharp inflation would be mere temporary setbacks.

Many analysts predict that small investors, who have already left much of the market to big institutions, will abandon it in droves. "You don't shock small investors with a decline of this magnitude or with volatility of this dimension without badly damaging their confidence," said Hugh A. Johnson Jr., an economist and the chief investment officer of the First Albany Corporation. "It will take an enormous amount of time to restore that confidence." That will damage the economy, he said, because it may take huge amounts of money away from productive enterprises.

Because all of these people were wrong 20 years ago, that doesn't necessarily mean the doom and gloom of today's punditry can be casually dismissed. I believe the causes of the current financial crisis to be much more serious, and systemic, than in 1987. (Perhaps that's just because I don't have a World Series to distract me this time. I'm doing too much of that thinkin' Eric Bogosian warned me about.)

Lest you believe everything The New York Times wrote about the story in 1987 was bunk, they did include a contrary opinion at the end of this article, one with perhaps more relevant implications for us in 2008.

Among the country's sage minds, there are some who hope that this week will not bring too rapid a recovery from the crisis. "Our problem is not simply to put Wall Street in order, our problem is to put the economy in order," said Nobel economist Wassily Leontief.

Too quick a bounce-back, Mr. Leontief said, could compound the fundamental problems that he and others say still threaten the future: economic imbalances, the nation's drift away from productivity, its high consumption and low savings histories.

But even more serious, he said, was the attitude of invulnerability that made so many people believe that the bull market - and the economy - would climb, regardless of the warning signs." If we recover quickly now," Mr. Leontief said, "everybody will forget about it." Then, he said, the fear Americans felt briefly last week may only be a taste of what is to come.

Attitude of invulnerability you say? Gulp.

Reading Too Much Into It

On last week's NARN First Team radio show, John and Brian featured actor Eric Bogosian as the Loon of the Week for remarks he made at The 2008 National Book Awards. You can listen to the clip here. I must admit that I do enjoy watching Bogosian ply his trade on "Law & Order Criminal Intent," but the recognition of his looniness was much deserved.

Not only was his swooning over Barack Obama--describing him as a "reader," "virtually an intellectual," and "smart"--and the reports that Obama was using Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" for guidance in selecting his cabinet--describing that as "so cool" and "wonderful"--he also saw fit to run down President Bush for allegedly not reading and the American people for being "afraid of thinking." It was truly a bravura performance in left wing lunacy.

Had I been on the air last week, I would have offered these three observations on the matter:

1. There's an assumption that reading is always good and anyone who reads is smarter and therefore better than those who don't. The truth is that it's not that you read, but what you read. I run across a lot of people who like to talk about how much they read. But when you ask them they read, it's usually Stephen King, John Grisham, Grafton, Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, or the latest dysfunctional family offering from the Oprah book club. Nothing wrong with the product those folks turn out. There definitely is a place for them. However, if that's all you read, you're hardly lifting yourself up to a higher intellectual plane.

2. Doris Kearns Goodwin is what I would call a popular historian. Like Stephen Ambrose and David McCullough, she writes books that are open and approachable for most Americans (and like Ambrose, she's had plagiarism issues). I'm not knocking this type of work. Lord knows we need history presented in a way that will get more people interested. But it's silly to pretend that the fact that Obama read "Team of Rivals" somehow proves his intellectual chops. I'd be more impressed if I heard that he read an obscure but highly regarded work on some particular historical event.

3. The idea that Bush doesn't read is absurd. There have been many reports over the years of him reading books and then either sending letters to the authors or inviting him to meet him at the White House. Three examples right off the top of my heard are Natan Sharansky, Mark Steyn, and Bernard Lewis. More on that here.

And check out this sample reading list from a 2006 story.Yes, there are a couple of baseball books, but plenty of more serious works. Did you know that Lincoln was Bush's hero? Somehow the media didn't seem to get around to mentioning that much in the last eight years while Obama's admiration of Lincoln has been front and center ever since he started his campaign.

It's entirely possible that Barack Obama will turn out to be a more successful President than George W. Bush. But it won't be because he reads and is smart while Bush was ill-informed and stupid. Give Obama credit for what he's earned and deserves. Just don't try to make him out to be something special for doing the same things that his predecessors have.

Hil's Excellent Adventure

The adventure begins:

Sen. Hillary Clinton decided to join her one-time rival's team because she wanted to be part of the "greatest adventure of our century," she said Monday after President-elect Barack Obama named her as his nominee for secretary of state.

"President Kennedy once said that engaging the world to meet the threats we face was the greatest adventure of our century," Clinton said during a news conference in Chicago, Illinois, when Obama unveiled his national security team. "Well, Mr. President-elect, I am proud to join you on what will be a difficult and exciting adventure in this new century."

She then added that she hoped the peoples of the world would embrace the motto, "Be excellent to each other."

No, what she really added was this:

Clinton said she would work to restore America's position as "a force for positive change" in the world.

"America is a place founded on the idea that everyone should have the right to live up to his or her God-given potential. And it is that same ideal that must guide America's purpose in the world today," she said.

The list of "rights" that the country was supposedly founded upon continues to expand into ever more far-reaching and amorphous areas. In addition to freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, and the press we can know add "freedom of potential realization." Words sure to stir the hearts of liberty lovers everywhere.

Staying In For The Night

Jefffery Goldberg's tips on How to Stay Alive in a Terrorized Hotel include yet another reason to opt for room service:

2) If you can't help but stay at a behemoth, order room service whenever possible. This minimizes your exposure to restaurants located off the lobby. Obviously, the lobby is the most dangerous place in a hotel; it is akin to the security lines at American airports, which are prime targets for suicide bombers precisely because they're entirely insecure.

One of his other interesting tips is to make plans to both escape from your room and to survive a siege if necessary. The former is rather obvious advice, the latter isn't, but in light of recent events it seems a very wise course of action to follow.

We Can't Handle The Truth

Tired of all the downbeat talk about the economy from the dismal scientists who make it their profession to try to come up with creative new ways to measure the extent of our misery? Maybe we should take a hint from Latvia and start cracking down on these purveyors of pessimism (WSJ-sub req):

Hammered by economic woe, this former Soviet republic recently took a novel step to contain the crisis. Its counterespionage agency busted an economist for being too downbeat.

"All I did was say what everyone knows," says Dmitrijs Smirnovs, a 32-year-old university lecturer detained by Latvia's Security Police. The force is responsible for hunting down spies, terrorists and other threats to this Baltic nation of 2.3 million people and 26 banks.

Now free after two days of questioning, Mr. Smirnovs hasn't been charged. But he is still under investigation for bad-mouthing the stability of Latvia's banks and the national currency, the lat. Investigators suspect him of spreading "untruthful information." They've ordered him not to leave the country and seized his computer.

Remember, we're keeping our eyes on you Banaian.

UPDATE-- Bert e-mails to speculate:

Looking at the name of the economist detained by Latvia's security police, I have to wonder if it's a crackdown on rogue economists, or a crackdown onpeople who are ethnically Russian. Smirnov is not a Latvian name, so there may be something far more interesting going on here.

SP ADDS-- Yakov S. writes in with this comment:

In America, you look for ways to arrest bad economy

In Soviet Union, bad economy arrest you!

Parents Say The Darndest Things

A few years ago there was an e-mail making the rounds that featured a list of phrases that a mother of boys had uttered over the years. Phrases that she would never have imagined herself using before becoming a mother. It was a rather hilarious view of the trials and tribulations of life with small boys.

My wife and I could have complied a similar list based on our experiences over the last couple of years. On a fairly regular basis one of us will catch ourselves or hear the other say something that at the time seems deadly serious, but in hindsight is ridiculous for its sheer absurdity.

The most recent example was Saturday, when my wife addressed our eldest son with the admonition, "Don't eat Christmas ornaments!" This is just the latest in a long line of "Don't eat _____!" or "Don't chew on ______!" warnings with just about anything and everything you can imagine filling in the blanks.

Another one of my favorite fill in the blanks is "Don't use _____ as a weapon!" Again, you can hardly begin to imagine the infinite variety of things that fill the bill for toddlers in this area. Prisoners are often renowned for their imagination and innovation when it comes to weaponizing the most of innocent seeming items to use against the screws. But they can't hold a candle to a determined child looking for a way to tip the balance of power in the never-ending struggle for sibling supremacy. Anyone who still believes that humans are born pure of heart has never witnessed the obviously malicious intent as the most innocent-looking of children will take advantage of an opportunity to knock his brother upside the head with _____.