Submitted For Your Perusal

From lifehack.org: “How to Defend Your Coffee Habit.”

From Wired comes an interesting article called “Drugs, Body Modifications May Create Second Enlightenment.”

This line jumped out at me: “Amphetamines are largely banned in the United States, though coffee, which acts in much the same way, is the second only to oil in global trade.”

(Via Kottke.)

(Related Reading: Jakob Norberg’s “No Coffee,” a wonderful article from a short while back which asks “What is it about coffee – and coffeehouses – that makes it so agreeable to the bourgeoisie?”)

“The conclusion was clear: Why would anyone want to feel like this? Although I never became a teetotaler, I knew — especially when I woke up the next morning with a hangover — that I would cast my lot with caffeine, not with alcohol. Why would I wish my senses to be dulled when they could be sharpened? Why would I wish to forget when I could remember? Why would I wish to mumble when I could scintillate? Of course, since even in those days I was a loquacious workaholic who liked to stay up late, you might think I’d pick a drug that would nudge me closer to the center of the bell curve instead of pushing me farther out on the edge — but of course I didn’t. Who does? Don’t we all just keep doing the things that make us even more like ourselves?” —Anne Fadiman

“In this caffeine junkie’s opinion, cup-for-cup, Starbucks serves better-tasting coffee than your typical ‘our tables are usually occupied by anti-corporate-chain-store hipsters who shower only once or twice a week’ indie coffeehouse.” —John Gruber