Why My Coffee Habit is a Very Good Thing

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Those of you who know me well can probably appreciate how happy this article – The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like – made me:

"What I tell patients is, if you like coffee, go ahead and drink as much as you want and can," says Dr. Peter Martin, director of the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University. He's even developed a metric for monitoring your dosage: If you are having trouble sleeping, cut back on your last cup of the day. From there, he says, "If you drink that much, it's not going to do you any harm, and it might actually help you. A lot."

Officially, the American Medical Association recommends conservatively that "moderate tea or coffee drinking likely has no negative effect on health, as long as you live an otherwise healthy lifestyle." That is a lackluster endorsement in light of so much recent glowing research. Not only have most of coffee's purported ill effects been disproven – the most recent review fails to link it the development of hypertension — but we have so, so much information about its benefits. We believe they extend from preventing Alzheimer's disease to protecting the liver. What we know goes beyond small-scale studies or limited observations. The past couple of years have seen findings, that, taken together, suggest that we should embrace coffee for reasons beyond the benefits of caffeine, and that we might go so far as to consider it a nutrient.

Reading this was literally like having angels sing in my ear. Oh happy days!

Fox News Tries to Demote Christianity

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Fox News' flagship personality, one Bill O'Reilly, has tried to demote Christianity from a religion to a philosophy – apparently in a battle fought in the War on Christmas. Jon Stewart, Comedy Central's flagship personality who happens to be Jewish, is there to set Fox and Bill straight:

 

 

Moravian Star Emergency

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Good friend Ruth Burcaw has an excellent post that ties together the topics of Moravian stars, Advent and being Moravian:

A Moravian star emergency is likely only to happen during Advent, the season of the church year leading up to Christmas. That is when Moravians (& others) display the Moravian star, beginning with the first Sunday in Advent and ending with Epiphany, the celebration of the wise men’s arrival on January 6. So, back to my pastor friend, for whom Advent is quickly approaching (three days!) and for whom the sanctuary’s 110-point Moravian star is not working! He has called all experts in the workings of Moravian stars, and as you can imagine, this is not a very long list. Having done all he can, he realizes with some anxiety, all he can do now is . . . wait.

Waiting. . . we all do it, though it seems in these days of immediate gratification that we are not content to wait long before we become frustrated and irritated by our waiting . . . for traffic to clear, the doctor to appear, for the web page to load, for dinner to arrive. Waiting frustrates us because we have so many expectations . . . expectations of clear roads, efficient service, quick internet speeds, fast food. We are impatient people, full of expectations. Our waiting is not peaceful or contemplative.

Yet Advent turns all this on its ear. During this holy season, we are required to be expectant, to wait. Waiting is an intentional part of Advent as we anticipate the coming of the Christ child. We hear in Jeremiah 33:14 the words of promise . . . “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” We wait.

 

Organized Chaos

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Amazon's operation is the epitome of organized chaos:

Chaotic storage is like organized confusion. It’s an organic shelving system without permanent areas or sections. That means there is no area just for books, or a place just for televisions (like you might expect in a retail store layout). The product’s characteristics and attributes are irrelevant. What’s important is the unique barcode associated with every product that enters the warehouse…

In this storage system a wide variety of products can be found located next to each other. A necklace could be located beside a DVD and underneath a set of power tools. This arbitrary placement can even help with accuracy as it makes mix-ups less likely when picking orders for shipment.

Overall it’s a fascinating system that at its core is powered by a complex database yet run by a simple philosophy. It’s Chaotic Storage. There’s no better way to put it 🙂

 

Sapolsky on Depression: Speakers Take Note – This Is How You Do It

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Joe called this "The best presentation I've ever seen. Not even close." I don't know if I'll go that far, but I will say that it's very, very good and it reinforces my belief that the best speakers/presenters forego PowerPoint presentations. Also, chalk boards/white boards are two of the most underrated communication tools in the universe. Finally, great presentations almost always result from a combination of genius, preparation, personality and "it" factor. Technology can enhance these elements, but it can't replace them or hide a speakers 

About the presentation itself: I've never, ever seen anyone take complex, medical/scientific information and break it down into layman's terms as well as Sapolsky does here. Phenomenal, and a must watch for anyone with an interest in depression.

Fugazi

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You'd think that a kid who grew up and went to high school in Arlington, VA in the '80s would have been into Fugazi, a "visceral, passionate, politically astute post-punk band that spurned music industry conventions, capping ticket prices at around $5 and insisting on playing for all-ages crowds." In my case I was too into the pop-music scene of the time – Prince's Purple Rain was pretty exotic as far as I was concerned – to really get into the independent/punk scene in the DC metro area, but as the years have passed my tastes have become more eclectic and reading this piece about Fugazi and it's "pay what you want" archive of live show recordings has given the opportunity to jam to Fugazi as I prepare a report to the board of directors at the day job. These folks might see the most radical spreadsheet they've seen in ages. From the article:

I'm drinking green tea with Ian MacKaye in the modest Arlington, Virginia, house where it all began—where Dischord, MacKaye's legendary do-it-yourself record label, took root more than 30 years ago. Back then, MacKaye was a pissed-off teenager whose straight-edge punk band, the Teen Idles, operated amid the musical wasteland of the nation's capital, a city too obsessed with dark money and happy hour to care about DIY ethics and $5 punk shows. But MacKaye cared, and he still does, even if Dischord's flagship acts have long since disbanded. This "is exactly how we started," he tells me. "For the first few years it was just all of us out of this house. We wanted to make records. Literally, make records. We would fold and cut and glue all the sleeves because that's what we needed to do to get it done."

By the mid-1980s, most of the early Dischord bands were kaput and the label was struggling financially, but it roared back in the late-'80s as MacKaye's new band, Fugazi, exploded onto the scene.

MacKaye, of course, isn't one to worry about what other people think of his label. He just wants to keep putting out mindful music that jibes with one of his personal philosophies, namely "caring…but not giving a fu**." 

Last year, hewing to its role as a documentarian, Dischord began releasing its extensive archive of live Fugazi shows in a pay-what-you-want format. MacKaye wanted to get the material out there, but without compromising the value of the art by giving it away: "There's a very good chance we'll never break even on it, but I don't care. It seemed crazy to have boxes and boxes of recordings that no one would ever hear," MacKaye says.

That line, "caring…but not giving a fu**," might just become one of my core operating principles.