Return of the Links

Break out your umbrellas! After a dry December, the rain has returned to the Rose City—and how! We’re pushing record levels of precipitation over the last few days and the forecast is for a lot more over the next week. Meanwhile, I received an email from a friend in Orlando who said it was 82 degrees and sunny there today. Do you suppose there is good coffee down there? Might be worth taking a trip to find out.

Don’t let the gray get you down, though, there are plenty of things to do inside. Here are a few links to take your mind off the weather for a while:

This story about DD made me want start a campaign “Stop! America does not run on….well, you know.” The last thing this country needs is more opportunities to by more sugar, fat and mediocre coffee.

David Lynch, who produced Twin Peaks,  is obsessed with coffee, though he is down to only seven cups per day (from a high of twenty).

Headed to Seoul? Check this café out.

For the environment, which is worse—throwing nine billion (9,000,000,000!) K-cups into a landfill, or making coffee and not drinking all of it? This article from the Kansas City Star takes a look at that question.

The political philosopher Leo Strauss once wrote that democracies need apathetic populations to function properly. Apparently that’s true for dictatorships too. Coffee consumption has a history of scaring rulers bent on controlling their people, according to NPR. In some cultures in the past, coffee drinkers faced capital punishment for sipping up. Imagine what such a policy would do to the population of the Pacific Northwest.

The Northwest Barista Championship is coming up next week in Tacoma. Here’s the link to the competition’s site, where you can see the schedule of events and (soon, hopefully) the list of competitors (currently there’s a nice video from last year’s event on the site too, by the way!).

Stay dry (and out of low-lying areas)!