The sacrifice of human life for the sake of a cup of coffee is nothing new.

What is new, and new to the past two decades, is the huge rise in the quality of Anglo-American coffee represented by Starbucks et al, after decades of ersatz, instant and stewed coffee. For most of the twentieth century, British coffee wasn’t black gold; it was black dishwater. Coffee had been bad for a long time. The chunk of history which usually gets missed out from the story of coffee is the nineteenth century, the century par excellence of free trade and adulteration, which laid the groundwork for the willingness of the public to accept a pretty unpleasant beverage under the name of coffee.

... The average British consumer of coffee in 1850 was getting a terrible deal.

Now, we are still getting a terrible deal (two pounds for something that costs next to nothing to produce) but no one can claim they are being ripped off. If anything, the situation has become reversed. The consumer, assuming he or she has two pounds to burn, can buy themselves a cup of coffee which is wonderfully pure, pre-selected for taste by hundreds of nasal coffee-swillers, and brewed to perfection by a highly trained barista. Their two pounds will also buy them the use of a comfortable chair in a well-lit, air-conditioned room, for as long as they wish. We have moved from a nineteenth-century market in which the consumer was systematically ripped off to one where the consumer is king. If only the desires of this consumer could finally be made to collide with the needs of the coffee producers, we would be living in a kind of caffeinated paradise.

Smell the coffee

What should be done if one can-not accept the Byzantine system of power? Retreat into the catacombs? Wait until enough energy for another revolt has been accumulated? Try to hurry along revolt, thereby posing another "orange threat," which Putin and his allies have used, since the 2004 Ukrainian elections, to frighten the people and themselves? Attempt to focus on the demand for honest elections? Carry on painstaking educational work, in order to gradually change citizens' views?

Each person will have to decide in his or her own way. I imagine -- with both sorrow and certainty -- that the Byzantine system of power has triumphed for the foreseeable future in Russia. It's too late to remove it from power by a normal democratic process, for democratic mechanisms have been liquidated, transformed into pure imitation. I am afraid that few of us will live to see the reinstatement of freedom and democracy in Russia. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that "the mole of history burrows away unnoticed."

Why Putin Wins

Malcolm Gladwell is back on the beat.

Criminal profiling made easy.

It's like precrime in reverse.

Dept. of Criminology: Dangerous Minds | The New Yorker

It hasn't been all play.

Be sure to watch the video. (Photography by Frans Lanting, music by Philip Glass, video by Alexander V. Nichols.)

Celebrating Food, Feces, and 3 Billion Years of Evolution

I recently wrote:

I have long held the view that when alien space explorers assess Earth (or any planet) to determine its relative level of civilization, they will study fashion.

And, as if on cue, this post arrives. (Just click through.)

Cowboy Chachi Loves You Best

The “Gospel Temperance Railroad Map” is an example of an allegorical map. It was published in 1908 by G. E. Bula and looks very much like the typical American railroad map of its day. It presents the traveler with three main lines diverging from Decisionville in the State of Accountability at the left-hand side of the map. The routes of the lower two lines, the Way That Seemeth Right Division and the Great Destruction Way Route, pass at first through towns representing relatively minor vices and self-deceptions of alcohol use, but lead inevitably to more serious “states” of Depravity, Intemperance, and Bondage. A River of Salvation offers hope for some, but those who stubbornly remain on the path of drink and debauchery end, without escape, in the City of Destruction. The upper line from Decisionville, the Great Celestial Route, is not without its trials, represented by such station stops as Bearingcross, Abandonment, and Long Suffering; but the final destination, The Celestial City, is clearly more desirable than its counterpart.

See also "Mapping", Episode 110 of This American Life:

Five ways of mapping the world. One story about people who make maps the traditional way—by drawing things we can see. And other stories about people who map the world using smell, sound, touch, and taste. The world redrawn by the five senses.

In particular, see Act One, with Denis Wood and his maps, like this one:

On Halloween 1982, I walked around the neighborhood and photographed all the jack-o'-lanterns. In most cases, the photograph is of the pumpkin on the porch at that location, but where my photographs didn’t turn out, we duplicated an image from another porch.

What is a Map?

This is a sphere turning inside out.

Math is fun!

Outside In

Thus the second decade of the American Negro’s freedom was a period of conflict, of inspiration and doubt, of faith and vain questionings, of Sturm und Drang. The ideals of physical freedom, of political power, of school training, as separate all sufficient panaceas for social ills, became in the third decade dim and overcast. They were the vain dreams of credulous race childhood; not wrong, but incomplete and over simple. The training of the schools we need to-day more than ever,—the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defense, and as a guarantee of good faith. We may misuse it, but we can scarce do worse in this respect than our whilom masters. Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek;—the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think. Work, culture, and liberty—all these we need, not singly, but together; for today these ideals among the Negro people are gradually coalescing, and finding a higher meaning in the unifying ideal of race,—the ideal of fostering the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to, but in conformity with, the greater ideals of the American republic, in order that some day, on American soil, two world races may give each to each those characteristics which both so sadly lack.

This essay appears in The American Idea.

Strivings of the Negro People | W.E.B. Du Bois | August 1897 | The Atlantic

Start with this:

"It is an illusion to think you can sustain constitutionalism, democratization, without addressing its Islamic foundation."

"Because for Muslims you cannot say, 'I’m a Muslim, but—' That 'but' does not work."

Then rewind to the Lewis essay, from 1990:

"Enemies of God" -- this phrase must seem very strange to the modern outsider, whether religious or secular. The idea that God has enemies, and needs human help in order to identify and dispose of them, is a little difficult to assimilate. It is not, however, all that alien.

For vast numbers of Middle Easterners, Western-style economic methods brought poverty, Western-style political institutions brought tyranny, even Western-style warfare brought defeat. It is hardly surprising that so many were willing to listen to voices telling them that the old Islamic ways were best and that their only salvation was to throw aside the pagan innovations of the reformers and return to the True Path that God had prescribed for his people.

Ultimately, the struggle of the fundamentalists is against two enemies, secularism and modernism. The war against secularism is conscious and explicit, and there is by now a whole literature denouncing secularism as an evil neo-pagan force in the modern world and attributing it variously to the Jews, the West, and the United States. The war against modernity is for the most part neither conscious nor explicit, and is directed against the whole process of change that has taken place in the Islamic world in the past century or more and has transformed the political, economic, social, and even cultural structures of Muslim countries. Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the forces that have devalued their traditional values and loyalties and, in the final analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an increasing extent even their livelihood.

This is no less than a clash of civilizations -- the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both. It is crucially important that we on our side should not be provoked into an equally historic but also equally irrational reaction against that rival.

This essay appears in The American Idea. The full text of the original is available.

See also:

Islam in Europe | Timothy Garton Ash | NYRB
Islam's Imperial Dreams | OpinionJournal
The Philosopher of Islamic Terror | NYT Magazine

The Roots of Muslim Rage | Bernard Lewis | September 1990 | The Atlantic

It's just before noon on a Thursday morning as I saunter down pit row at Daytona International Speedway and slide into the supportive sport bucket seat of a 2008 Porsche 911 GT2. I fiddle a bit with the seat and steering column adjustments until I'm comfortable, then double-check that my seatbelt is secured. It's hot and humid, but that's not why I'm perspiring - this cold sweat is a sign that my body's survival instincts are on edge, and for good reason. Fortunately, I've received personalized instruction from a quartet of legendary drivers and a complete technical briefing courtesy of Porsche Motorsports engineers, and there's little left to be learned without actually driving the car. I depress the heavily-weighted clutch pedal, muscle the short-throw shifter into 1st gear, bring the revs up, and...

Pinch Us: Autoblog drives the 2008 Porsche GT2 - Autoblog