Pay a visit to Whole Foods, and you’ll find The David Lynch Signature Cup Coffee line, which includes three premier coffee blends, each taste-tested and selected by David Lynch himself. Last year, Lynch talked with Vice.com about the genesis of his coffee line and explained:
One day, a friend came over to me and said, “David, you drink so much coffee, you should have your own line,” and one thing led to another, and I blind tested many, many different coffees. Another friend of mine said, “I know these guys down in Long Beach who have the greatest coffee” but I tasted it, and it was terrible, so I kept tasting different coffees and different mixtures and kept coming back to this [blend] in blind tests over and over again.
Over the years, Lynch has released some unconventional ads (of course!) for his coffee products. Perhaps you recall this one from 2011, featuring a seemingly severed Barbie head. Or this almost epilepsy-inducing one fom 2012. Now comes the latest ad, created by director Andrew Parkhurst, reminding us that coffee is for people, not robots. Kind of like Trix are for kids.
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It’s not that I don’t appreciate good coffee—I consider it a delicacy. But at the end and the beginning of the day, coffee mostly functions as a caffeine delivery system. But not tea. Tea must be savored, and it must be good. Americans’ enthusiasm for tea does not come naturally. What passes for tea in the U.S. is best described by Christopher Hitchens as “a cup or pot of water, well off the boil, with the tea bags lying on an adjacent cold plate.” (See his January 2011 piece in Slate called “How to Make a Decent Cup of Tea.”) If this doesn’t sound wrong, he elaborates, setting up his endorsement of George Orwell’s methodical instructions for proper tea:
Then comes the ridiculous business of pouring the tepid water, dunking the bag until some change in color occurs, and eventually finding some way of disposing of the resulting and dispiriting tampon surrogate. The drink itself is then best thrown away, though if swallowed it will have about the same effect on morale as a reading of the memoirs of President James Earl Carter.
I like Jimmy Carter. I haven’t read his memoirs, and this does indeed sound awful. And before I had learned anything at all about drinking tea, it was all I knew. I tried. I cribbed a few notes here and there, wrote in tea shops, read the rough-hewn formalism of Sen no Rikyu, and looked to the East. I did not look to Britain and her former Commonwealth.
Perhaps I should. George Orwell would probably say so. Hitchens as well, though they don’t perfectly agree with each other. “Tea,” wrote Orwell in his famous 1946 essay “A Nice Cup of Tea,” “is one of the mainstays of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but… the manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes.” The only disagreement Hitchens musters against Orwell is that some of his rules, “(always use Indian or Ceylonese—i.e. Sri Lankan—tea; make tea only in small quantities; avoid silverware pots) may be considered optional or outmoded.”
Many old restraints may be loosened. But make no mistake, for Hitchens, as for Orwell, making a good cup of tea is not about mindfulness, patience, impermanence, or meditation. It is about rules. Orwell had 11. The “essential ones are easily committed to memory, and they are simple to put into practice.” What are they? Hitchens has his own succinct paraphrase, which you can read over at Slate. Orwell’s rather baroque list we reprint, in part, below for your edification. Read the complete essay here. Hitchens recommends you straighten out your next barista on some tea essentials. Imagine, however, presenting such an unfortunate person with this list of demands:
First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays — it is economical, and one can drink it without milk — but there is not much stimulation in it.…
Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities — that is, in a teapot.… The teapot should be made of china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware teapots produce inferior tea and enamel pots are worse.…
Thirdly, the pot should be warmed beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the usual method of swilling it out with hot water.
Fourthly, the tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right.… I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes.…
Fifthly, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to imprison the tea.…
Sixthly, one should take the teapot to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours.…
Seventhly, after making the tea, one should stir it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves to settle.
Eighthly, one should drink out of a good breakfast cup — that is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type.…
Ninthly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sickly taste.
Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk…
Lastly, tea — unless one is drinking it in the Russian style — should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tealover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt.…
Japanese scientists have developed a camera that confirms what we’ve long sensed: “wine glass shape has a very sophisticated functional design for tasting and enjoying wine.” That’s what Kohji Mitsubayashi, a researcher at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University, told Chemistry World.
It’s a little complicated, and I’d encourage you to read this Chemistry World article, but the upshot is this: Mitsubayashi’s team used a special camera to analyze “different wines, in different glasses – including different shaped wine glasses, a martini glass and a straight glass – at different temperatures.” And they found that “different glass shapes and temperatures can bring out completely different bouquets and finishes from the same wine.”
In the video above, you can see the new-fangled camera in action, demonstrating how wines at different temperatures (something that’s affected by the geometry of the glass) release different vapors. And those translate into different flavors. Get more on this at Chemistry World.
In this talk, artist Jae Rhim Lee models her Mushroom Death Suit, a kicky little snuggy designed to decompose and remediate toxins from corpses before they leech back into the soil or sky. Despite Björk’s fondness for outré fashion, I’m pretty sure this choice goes beyond the merely sartorial.
For more information, or to get in line for a mushroom suit of your own, see the Infinity Burial Project.
Continuing with the mushroom / fashion theme, Björk next turns to designer Suzanne Lee, who demonstrates how she grows sustainable textiles from kombucha mushrooms. The resulting material may variously resemble paper or flexible vegetable leather. It is extremely receptive to natural dyes, but not water repellent, so bring a non-kombucha-based change of clothes in case you get caught in the rain.
For more information on Lee’s homegrown, super green fabric, visit BioCouture.
Björk’s clearly got a soft spot for things that grow: mushrooms, mushroom-based fabric, and now…building materials? Professor of Experimental Architecture Rachel Armstrong’s plan for self-regenerating buildings involves protocols, or “little fatty bags” that behave like living things despite an absence of DNA. I’m still not sure how it works, but as long as the little fatty bags are not added to my own ever-growing edifice, I’m down.
For more information on what Dr. Armstrong refers to as bottom up construction (including a scheme to keep Venice from sinking) see Black Sky Thinking.
Björk’s next choice takes a turn for the serious… with games. Game Designer Brenda Romero began exploring the heavy duty emotional possibilities of the medium when her 9‑year-old daughter returned from school with a less than nuanced understanding of the Middle Passage. The success of that experiment inspired her to create games that spur players to engage on a deeper level with thorny historical subjects. (The Trail of Tears required 50,000 individual reddish-brown pieces).
Remember those 50,000 individual pieces? As photographer Aaron Huey documented life on Pine Ridge Reservation, he was humbled by hearing himself referred to as “wasichu,” a Lakota word that can be translated as “non-Indian.” Huey decided not to shy away from its more pointed translation: “the one who takes the best meat for himself.” His TED Talk is an impassioned history lesson that begins in 1824 with the creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and ends in an activist challenge.
Proof that Björk is not entirely about the quirk.
Björk opts to close things on a musical note with excerpts from composer Eric Whitacre’s “Lux Aurumque” and “Sleep” performed by a crowdsourced virtual choir. Its members—they swell to 1999 for “Sleep”—record their parts alone at home, then upload them to be mixed into something sonically and spiritually greater than the sum of its parts.
Some YouTuber posted online a pretty nice clip of an espresso shot being pulled from a La Marzocco FB80 espresso machine at 120 frames per second. They recommend muting the sound, then putting on your own music. I gave it a quick shot with the famous soundtrack for Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I’ll be damned, it syncs up pretty well. Have a better soundtrack to recommend? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
I think I speak for many of us when I say that coffee fuels our greatest intellectual efforts. And even as we get the jitters and leave brown rings on our desks, we can take comfort in the fact that so it also went with some of the most notable philosophers in the history of the discipline. As far back as the 18th century, no less a writer, thinker, and agitator than François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, “reportedly consumed somewhere between 40 and 50 cups of joe a day, apparently of a chocolate-coffee mixture. He lived into his eighties, though his doctor warned him that his beloved coffee would kill him.”
That comes from Amanda Scherker at The Huffington Post writing up “9 Famous Geniuses Who Were Also Huge Coffee Addicts.” Voltaire’s java habit also comes up on “10 Odd Obsessions of Famous Philosophers” by Virginia Muir at Listverse, who names his drinking venue of choice (the Café Procope in Paris) and indicates the extent of his enthusiasm by noting that “he even regularly paid exorbitant fees to have luxury coffee imported for his personal use” — which certainly doesn’t seem so eccentric today.
Later that century, Immanuel Kant took up coffee in his last days. Writing first-hand on the subject in the aptly titled The Last Days of Immanuel Kant, Thomas De Quincey (no stranger to life-changing habits himself) describes the philosopher’s “custom of taking, immediately after dinner, a cup of coffee,” a ritual he so came to relish that, whenever he sensed he may not get his new favorite beverage, there “commenced a scene of some interest. Coffee must be brought ‘upon the spot’ (a word he had constantly on his mouth during his latter days) ‘in a moment.’ ” Knowing this would happen, De Quincey made sure “the coffee was ground; the water was boiling; and the very moment the word was given, [Kant’s] servant shot in like an arrow and plunged the coffee into the water.… But this trifling delay seemed unendurable to Kant.”
In the 19th century, Søren Kierkegaard would also get into a coffee ritual. He “had his own quite peculiar way of having coffee,” writes biographer Joakim Garff. “Delightedly he seized hold of the bag containing the sugar and poured sugar into the coffee cup until it was piled up above the rim. Next came the incredibly strong, black coffee, which slowly dissolved the white pyramid.” I always drink it black myself, but who among us dares think ourselves too good for the teeth-aching preferred by the author of Fear and Trembling?
We must always bear in mind, too, that while coffee may constitute a necessary condition for our intellectual achievements, it never constitutes a sufficient one. Before pouring your next cup, whether your first of the day or your fiftieth, whether before or after dinner, and whether into a pyramid of sugar or not, ask yourself how much progress you’ve made on your own Candideor Critique of Pure Reason. A sobering question, to be sure — but after enough caffeine, you feel pretty sober anyway.
Beer, that favorite beverage of football fans, frat boys, and other macho stereotypes—at least according to the advertisers—actually has a very long, distinguished heritage. It’s older, in fact, than wine, older than whiskey, older perhaps even than bread (or so some scholars have thought). As soon as humans settled down and learned to cultivate grains, some 13,000 years ago, the possibility for fermentation—a naturally occurring phenomenon—presented itself. But it isn’t until the 5th century, B.C. that we have sources documenting the deliberate production of ale in ancient Sumeria. Nonetheless, beer has been described as the “midwife of civilization” due to its central role in agriculture, trade, urbanization, and medicine.
Beer became so important to ancient Mesopotamian culture that the Sumerians created a goddess of brewing and beer, Ninkasi, and one anonymous poet, smitten with her powers, penned a hymn to her in 1800 B.C.. A daughter of the powerful creator Enki and Ninti, “queen of the sacred lake,” Ninkasi is all the more poignant a deity given the role of women in ancient culture as respected brewers. The “Hymn to Ninkasi,” which you can read below, not only provides insight into the importance of this custom in Sumerian mythology, but it also gives us a recipe for brewing ancient Sumerian beer—the oldest beer recipe we have.
Translated from two clay tablets by Miguel Civil, Professor of Sumerology at the University of Chicago, the poem contains instructions precise enough that Fritz Maytag, founder of the Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco, took it upon himself to try them. He presented the results at the annual meeting of the American Association of Micro Brewers in 1991. The brewers, writes Civil, “were able to taste ‘Ninkasi Beer,’ sipping it from large jugs with drinking straws as they did four millennia ago. The beer had an alcohol concentration of 3.5%, very similar to modern beers, and had a ‘dry taste lacking in bitterness,’ ‘similar to hard apple cider.’” A challenge to all you home brewers out there.
Unfortunately, Maytag was unable to bottle and retail the recreation, since ancient Mesopotamian beer “was brewed for immediate consumption” and “did not keep very well.” But what Civil learned from the experiment was that his translation—in the hands of a master brewer “who saw through the difficult terminology and poetic metaphors”—produced results. Below, see the first part of the “Hymn to Ninkasi,” which describes “in poetic terms the step-by-step process of Sumerian beer brewing.” A second part of the hymn “celebrates the containers in which the beer is brewed and served” and “includes the toasts usual in tavern and drinking songs.” You can read that joyful text—which includes the line “With joy in the heat [and] a happy liver”—on page 4 of Professor Civil’s article on the Hymn.
Hymn to Ninkasi (Part I)
Borne of the flowing water,
Tenderly cared for by the Ninhursag,
Borne of the flowing water,
Tenderly cared for by the Ninhursag,
Having founded your town by the sacred lake,
She finished its great walls for you,
Ninkasi, having founded your town by the sacred lake,
She finished it’s walls for you,
Your father is Enki, Lord Nidimmud,
Your mother is Ninti, the queen of the sacred lake.
Ninkasi, your father is Enki, Lord Nidimmud,
Your mother is Ninti, the queen of the sacred lake.
You are the one who handles the dough [and] with a big shovel,
Mixing in a pit, the bappir with sweet aromatics,
Ninkasi, you are the one who handles the dough [and] with a big shovel,
Mixing in a pit, the bappir with [date] — honey,
You are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,
Ninkasi, you are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,
You are the one who waters the malt set on the ground,
The noble dogs keep away even the potentates,
Ninkasi, you are the one who waters the malt set on the ground,
The noble dogs keep away even the potentates,
You are the one who soaks the malt in a jar,
The waves rise, the waves fall.
Ninkasi, you are the one who soaks the malt in a jar,
The waves rise, the waves fall.
You are the one who spreads the cooked mash on large reed mats,
Coolness overcomes,
Ninkasi, you are the one who spreads the cooked mash on large reed mats,
Coolness overcomes,
You are the one who holds with both hands the great sweet wort,
Brewing [it] with honey [and] wine
(You the sweet wort to the vessel)
Ninkasi, (…)(You the sweet wort to the vessel)
The filtering vat, which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on a large collector vat.
Ninkasi, the filtering vat, which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on a large collector vat.
When you pour out the filtered beer of the collector vat,
It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.
Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the filtered beer of the collector vat,
It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.
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