Posts Tagged ‘caffeine’
“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”*…
Which beverage can claim the world title for healthiest drink?…
Do you start your mornings with a potent dose of caffeine from a freshly brewed cup of Joe? Or do you prefer a slightly less caffeinated nudge from a warm and gentle cup of tea?
Whatever your preference, scientists have found that regularly drinking coffee or tea can provide a variety of health benefits. But how do coffee and tea compare in a head-to-head matchup? We took a look at the research, and here’s what we found…
A grudge match, with science as the referee: “Coffee vs. tea smackdown,” (gift article) from @washingtonpost.
* Abraham Lincoln
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As we parse potables, we might note that today is National Hot Tea Day. The Tea Council of the U.S.A. created the celebration in 2016– the year that the earliest known physical evidence of tea was discovered in the mausoleum of Emperor Jing of Han in Xi’an, indicating that tea, from the genus Camellia, was drunk by Han dynasty emperors, as early as the 2nd century B.C.
“I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake for the afternoon”*…
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U.S. coffee consumption peaked around 1950, then declined dramatically– displaced, largely, by soft drinks, 8 of the top ten selling of which are loaded with caffeine…
With protagonists like Monsanto and Coca Cola, it’s a tale with which to conjure.
Read more at “The buzz(kill) about caffeine.”
* Ronald Reagan
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As we top up our cups, we might recall that it was in this date in 1896 that the first pedestrian was killed by a motor car in Great Britain. A Benz automobile, being demonstrated on the grounds of the Crystal Place, struck Mrs. Bridgette Driscoll, who died minutes later of head injuries. Though the driver, Arthur James Edsall, was accused of tampering with the governor (which was meant to hold the car’s top speed to 4 miles per hour) and of being distracted as he drove by conversation with the young woman who was his passenger, a Coroner’s Inquest return a verdict of accidental death.
Hey Joe…
The milligrams of caffeine per ounce vary from chain to chain as wildly as the mood of someone hopped up on six cups from McDonalds… or one cup from the Death Wish Coffee Company.
[Data from the Center for Science in the Public Interest and EnergyFiend.com, via Thrillist]
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As we add a shot of espresso to that, we might recall that it was on this date in 1953, after a year of experimentation, that marine engineer and retired semi-pro baseball player David Mullany, Sr. invented the Wiffleball. (He patented it early the following year.) Watching his 13-year-old son play with a broomstick and a plastic golf ball ball in the confines of their backyard, Mullany worried that the effort to throw a curve would damage his young arm. So he fabricated a full- (baseball-)sized ball from the plastic used in perfume packaging, with oblong holes on one side… a ball that would naturally curve. The balls had the added advantage, given their light weight, that they’d not break windows.
David Jr. came up with the name: he was fond of saying that he had “whiffed” the batters that he struck out with his curves. The “h” was dropped, the name trademarked, and (after Woolworth’s adopted the item) a generation of young ballplayers– and their parents– converted.
Scoping scale…
On AndaBien, web designer Steve Rose pursues his extra-vocational enthusiasms… among them, evolution.
His Evolution Timeline is a marvelous evocation of the sheer temporal scale of our antecedents.
— From first life-forms to homo sapiens
* The background indicates inches and feet.
* 1/20th in. = roughly 100 thousand years. (108,000)
* 1 inch = about 2 million years. (2,160,000)
* 1 foot = about 26 million years. (25,920,000)
* The whole page is about 135 feet wide, almost half a football field, representing 3.5 billion years. (3,500,000,000)
The very beginning of the timeline (and of life on Earth)
So, be prepared to scroll… and scroll and scroll and scroll… And to learn. (By way of reinforcing one’s sense the extraordinary sweep of it all, readers might also appreciate Rose’s “Evolution, The Movie.”)
As we struggle with the recent revisions to the tree of life and the suggestion that humans are more closely related to fungus than to plants, we might recall that it was on this date in 1886 that Coca-Cola was first sold to the public at the soda fountain in Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia. It was formulated by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton, who mixed it in a 30-gallon brass kettle hung over a backyard fire. Pemberton’s recipe, which survived in use until 1905, was marketed as a “brain and nerve tonic,” and contained extracts of cocaine and (caffeine-rich) kola nut. The name, using two C’s from its ingredients, was suggested by his bookkeeper Frank Robinson, whose excellent penmanship provided the famous scripted “Coca-Cola” logo.
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