Coffee, Tea and TiVo September 4, 2002February 21, 2017 Hang on – the concluding Dick Davis tips are on their way. And who knows what other divertissinvestment and investmentia. But today: COFFEE Monty Goolsby: ‘The day after I read your coffee column I was at this grocery store and counted coffee from over 45 countries. There were more but my girlfriend made me quit looking. I wonder how many people get their livelihood from that one store.’ Dean Cardno: ‘You might also look at a couple of books by Margaret Visser, a South African anthropologist, called Rituals of Dinner and Much Depends on Dinner. In each, she describes a pretty ordinary dinner, then goes into painstaking detail on the ingredients, their history of cultivation, and their importance to the cultures that grew them along the way. Do you know why an olive branch is a symbol of peace? Because it takes an ungodly long time for an olive grove to become productive, and it is a long and tedious time for a raw olive to be made edible. So in the days when olives first became a cash crop, they represented a civilized peaceful location where people would be willing to commit to the years of planning to plant an olive grove and wait for it to mature. Really good books – not as scientific-technical as the James Burke books others have mentioned. (They are good, too, although I get a little tired of James Burke – all bouncing from one idea to the next, and not enough thought about each one as he goes by.) A SECOND CUP And speaking of a cup of coffee – ‘a cup of Joe’ – did you see the really charming little profile of my friend Joe Cherner, the tobacco industry’s worst nightmare, in Thursday’s New York Times? It will make you smile. TEA I suppose the end of summer is an odd time to be writing about iced tea, but as many of you know, I have a small stake (equi-Tea) in a company called Honest Tea, started two or three years ago by a Yale School of Management Professor and one of his students. Well, sales have been growing like crazy (easy to do from a small base), and the publicity has been amazing (for an iced tea). It’s even been featured in Oprah Magazine. On the latest Top Tea best-seller list, in the health-food category, Honest Tea has six of the top ten. But where I quibble is with which six. And with which varieties Barnes & Noble cafes (all of which carry Honest Tea) choose to stock. Yes, I can see why Moroccan Mint is #1. It’s got a little caffeine kick (one-fourth the caffeine of coffee), 34 calories a pint, and the ‘green tea’ health caché. I can buy that. But where is First Nation, the caffeine-free peppermint varie-Tea? Barnes & Noble leans heavily toward Black Forest Berry and Assam, Decaf Ceylon and Kashmiri Chai, which are okay, I suppose, but hardly the stuff of Web columns. Instead, they should carry Gold Rush Cinnamon and Jakarta Ginger, which positively zing with flavor and a clean, healthy feeling. [Note: No one likes ice more than me – I don’t care that the Diet Coke is cold, it must have an equal height of ice in the glass to be right – but, oddly, with Honest Tea it’s better to just drink it cold, right out of the bottle.] TIVO I am willing to grant that Honest Tea is not for everyone. There will be those who just need the sugar and the carbonation – or fermentation – of something else. Fine. But I cannot imagine someone who, once exposed to TiVo (in which I also own a few shares, but only out of wild enthusiasm for the product, not because it’s a good investment), could ever be happy again without it. Charles and I go nuts when we are watching TV the old way. Our thumbs instinctively click the replay button – what did he say? – or the pause button when the phone rings or the fast-forward button when a commercial comes on. Be honest: could you live without remote control? You could not. You will feel the same way about TiVo. It saves me 3,000 minutes a year on the Nightly News alone (which now takes a maximum of 20 minutes to watch instead of 30). And we never have to worry about missing a show we like. No, it’s not cheap, but this is why Santa Claus invented Christmas. And, no, it’s not completely simple to set up, but this is why God invented teenagers.
A Second Cup September 3, 2002February 21, 2017 Boy. Coffee really jolts you into action. Rarely have I gotten so much feedback. Thanks one and all. (And this is just a sampling.) If you’re pressed for time, skip to the end – it’s my favorite. CONNECTIONS Rob Sartain: ‘Check out James Burke. His ‘Connections’ televisions series on PBS is what you’re looking for. He’ll tell the story of how someone three centuries ago did something that, through an apparent chain of coincidences, results in supersonic jets today. His columns in Scientific American are very accessible by a non-technical reader.’ Jonathan Betz: ‘You may be interested in the VHS series ‘Connections,’ hosted by James Burke. Each video gives a history of a series of intertwined technological developments – I think I recall one that traced backwards through all the developments necessary before we could have an atom bomb. I first saw these in the eighth grade, so I think they’re about at the level you described.’ Scott Schumacher: ‘James Burke, the host of the mid 1990s PBS series ‘The Day the Universe Changed’ and current host of The Learning Channel’s ‘Connections 3’ is, in many ways, your man. Burke might best be described as a ‘thought historian.’ The title of his latest book (‘The Pinball Effect: How Renaissance Water Gardens made the Carburetor Possible‘) gives you some idea of the way that this strange and brilliant man thinks.’ ☞ I love it. But please: don’t all send me the e-mail about how the size of the space shuttle traces back to width of a horse’s ass. We know that determined the width of a Roman chariot, which determined the width of the ruts in the roads, which led to the width of the railroad, which led (I forget exactly how but don’t need to know right now) to the width of NASA’s rockets. ROMANS Russell Turpin: ‘Of course, the Romans had running water in their cities, supplied by the aqueducts, some of which still stand in Italy, France, Spain, and North Africa. They did not have taps; but you really don’t need a tap to get water for your cup of tea. It’s just fine if the water runs continuously through your house’s basins, without ever stopping. After all, if you stop the water, then you need huge tanks to store it. And pumps to get it up to those tanks. Those tanks are not as clean as you might think. A modern water tank has all sorts of grime and dead beasties in it. You don’t think about that, when you make your coffee. Because of the chlorine in the water, it doesn’t present a health hazard. In Roman times, though, it made much more sense just to let it flow.’ Alan Flippen: ‘I don’t think Ben Franklin had running water, but the ancient Romans did. They even had flush toilets of a sort: aqueduct water ran in a trough under the public toilets so it could wash the waste away into the sewers. It was all done by gravity. You can see these toilets at a number of major archeological sites, including Pompeii and/or Ostia, just outside Rome.’ ☞ See how fragile civilization is? If the Irish hadn’t saved it, we might still be living like the Visigoths. PENCILS Many of you linked me to the famous 1958 laissez-faire essay, ‘I, A Pencil.’ AND MORE! David Maymudes: ‘This book is similar to the one you want: Glass, Paper, Beans. It doesn’t get as far into the basic science as you suggested, but it really is along the same lines.’ Colin Robertson: ‘I don’t know if your precise premise has been done, though there are similar books on other topics. Coffee, though, is pretty clearly gone over in Uncommon Grounds, by Mark Prendergast. Also: The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop by Gregory Dicum and Nina Luttinger.’ Trisha: ‘Your book has pretty much already been written, but no one wants to read it. Most people cannot imagine early calculators, bigger than today’s laptops and most kids can’t imagine a life being ended trapped down a coal mine or in a mill machine. Or that these were common as little as 100 years ago. Once you begin on what goes into a cup of coffee, it becomes hard to know where to stop. How do you justify to a kid the conditions many people have to put up with in order for you to have coffee, or the impact on the land? And then of course there’s the sticky situation of what are you going to do about it – the challenge of teaching the model citizen to conform, to behave, yet to challenge injustice. Tricky balancing act that. In Britain, the issue is dealt with by giving students a rounded education, and it takes many years, and a non-zero length attention span.’ Keith Graham, Professor of Social and Political Philosophy, University of Bristol, UK: ‘Your column is reminiscent of the most eloquent statement of our interdependence, by Adam Smith, which I quote in my book, Practical Reasoning in a Social World (Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 45-6).’ Barry Bottger: ‘Sounds like you have just viewed Escape From Affluenza, a wonderful PBS special from a few years ago hosted by Wanda Urbanska. If you have not seen it, you’d be surprised to see your “simple cup of coffee” essay/analogy to be a highlight of the show.’ Steve Golder: ‘Re: your coffee essay; I suspect that you, like me, get up many days and thank Fate that you live in the 21st century, in America, have food, indoor plumbing, electricity, and hot water, rather than, by chance, having been born in some God-forsaken third world hell-hole that will enter the 21st century by the time we are in the 25th. The fools who think we ‘deserve’ to drive 14 mpg cars just don’t get it. America is a great place but it breeds arrogance.’ Elliott Wong, Manhasset High: ‘Thanks for the year-long 9th grade global history assignment. It may take until June, but the book will be written. I’ll send up the best parts of my kids’ work!’ Rick Mayhew: ‘Your column today reminded me of one of my favorite quotes: ‘If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.’ – Carl Sagan.‘