Etc...

Oh, yeah? Well, trump this!

For 17 years now, Joe Kaiser and Paul Allick have had a friendly rivalry going. No, not on the golf course. Or at darts or chess or sudoku. The two Minnesotans – Kaiser is an arts administrator from Minneapolis, Allick is an Episcopal clergyman in Wayzata – love to debate each other. And last Saturday night, they took their competitiveness to the ultimate level. Out of more than 500 entrants from around the nation, they were selected to oppose each other in the championship round of the Great American Think-Off. The event, held each year in New York Mills, Minn., is dedicated to expanding the cultural and creative horizons of rural Americans, and each year the competitors are asked to hold forth for the judges on a difficult question. In this case: Which should you trust more – your heart or your head? Kaiser's argument was that "the heart is going to be able to synthesize subconscious information." Intuition, he said, "comes from the heart." Not so, claimed Allick: "Intuition comes from the mind; it's the place we go to calm down, think ... and analyze." Each was so persuasive that the judges had a difficult time picking the winner. But, by fewer than 10 votes, the gold medal went to Kaiser, perhaps the more flamboyant of the two. As for the runner-up, he was gracious in defeat, especially since it came at the hands of his pal. He had only one lament, he told reporters covering the Think-Off. "I wish," he said, "these were going on all over the country."