STIR

Stir is a four letter word.

My two-year-old took my glass of lemonade with ice in it yesterday and started stirring it with the straw.  "Stir ice."  He was entertained by this for several minutes, which isn't much of a surprise, considering how much he used to giggle when we would stir ice in a glass to entertain him when he was much younger.

It made me ponder the James Bond line of "shaken, not stirred" martinis and President Bartlett's response to that (that it produces a watered-down drink).  Turns out - they're both right.  In Bond's time, martinis would generally be made with potato vodka, which had an oily taste that was reduced by shaking them.  Nowadays, grain is used to make vodka, and there isn't as oily a taste associated with them, so the need to shake the martini is reduced.  (And I wondered why martinis always made me think of lighter fluid - turns out I'm not too far off base.)

What does all this mean?  Don't mix cold-war action with modern politics and that its never too young to teach your kids to be a mixologist?  Something like that.