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President Obama is in Beijing this morning and we have been reading and hearing about how he will press the Chinese government for human rights reforms and how Chinese President Hu Jintao will seek reassurances that we will reduce our massive deficits. It's all part of a regularly scheduled mating dance that the American and Chinese leaders periodically engage in for purposes both domestic and international. This year's terpsichorean revels will be accompanied by saturation media coverage that will suggest that China is about to replace the United States as the world's greatest superpower,

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In a week in which we mark the 40th anniversary of the first broadcast of Sesame Street, I find myself thinking about how we perceive numbers. On that show "The Count" taught elementary math skills and many a chest swelled with pride the first time junior learned to count all the way to ten. The number ten itself holds a special significance, primarily because our decimal (or base ten) system was derived from the ten fingers that most of still use occasionally to tally things. As a result of our anatomy, ten is a number that we usually associate with superlatives as in "a perfect ten".
 
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There is a battle raging right now in kitchens and family rooms across America, one that is pitting parents against their own children and it’s beginning to get ugly. If you’ve got middle schoolers or younger I suspect you know what I’m talking about: Since Halloween the kids have been on a sugar-fueled rampage and it’s time to severely ration their trick or treat candy. All those young brains have been continuously bathed in glucose the last few days and they aren’t likely to be happy when Mom and Dad cut off the sweets. I think tomorrow night be a good one for calling the babysitter and

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