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March 7, 2006

The War on Our Values

No, not the ones Todd posted about below, but an even more startling assault. Courtesy of Lindsay Beyerstein, I'm now informed that it's National Caffeine Awareness Month. But more importantly, she points to an article describing the Caffeine Awareness Alliance and their War on Coffee:

"Most caffeine addicts have no idea that they are addicts. But, with as little as 200 mg of caffeine, you can experience typical addictive symptoms such as irritability, restlessness, tension, insomnia, excitement, and gastrointestinal disturbance," says [CAA founder Marina] Kushner.
I don't know what she's talking about. I'm aware of everything she mentioned, and I'm not convinced in the least. Wait, what does that mean again?

Seriously, though, I'm all for awareness, especially of how much people consume. For example, a little research turned up a piece about a Universty of Florida coffee study on the caffeine content of commercial coffees. The upshot is just that it changest between weak and strong coffee (duh). So if you're trying to be conscious of your intake, you should be wary, watch out, and if you sell coffee, try to let people know how strong you make it. But the highlight of the piece is probably the opinion of Mark Gold, an addiction researcher:

“Caffeine dependence is a non-issue for me because people won’t leave their home for it, won’t mortgage their house for it, won’t choose caffeine over their wife,” said Gold, who recently co-authored a study on coffee’s caffeine content.
Anyway, all this is just bringing home to me the fact that I've been depriving myself of coffee for over a week because of the pathogen which I'm only now saying goodbye to. But my reunion is going to be sweet. Coffee, where have you been all my life?

Cross-posted at my tbnd.

Posted by tony at 11:32 PM

March 6, 2006

A Shout out to the Lazy Kids

Notice that I've resorted my link bar, with a new (and sadly much needed in my blogging circle) category for blogs which I didn't have the heart to remove but couldn't in good faith link to as a blog worth reading. Hence "Unlikely to be Updated" - it's kind of a graveyard of blogs I liked that have fallen by the wayside. Unfortunately, this also brings to light the sad fact that my list of friends who still blog (semi) regularly is down to 4 people, three of whom are also my cobloggers at tbnd. Clearly, I need to make new friends. Although who's to say my very friendship wouldn't kill their blogging habits as well?

I'm only half-joking. The Tufts Philosophy students' blog, seemingly a hotbed of debate throughout the last year, didn't show a spark of life from September onwards, coinciding precisely with my entrance into the program. Other blogs by people in the program seem to have dried up as well. Could I really be the physical manifestation of some kind of blog-curse, spreading my posting inertia wherever I go?

Clearly, the only way to beat this rap is to turn this blog around.

Posted by tony at 2:19 AM

Now 50% Less Broke-Ass!

Thanks to my finally getting even a rudimentary understanding of what's going on in my CSS file, my blog is now, at the very least, not painful to look at. This is the first in what I would like to think will be a long series of steps towards me getting my blog back online. Another will be, y'know, posting some times. We'll see how that one goes.

Posted by tony at 12:58 AM | Comments (2)