Coffee: you've won, damn you!

OK, as of 2 weeks ago, I officially gave in to one of my long-standing enemies: coffee.

For years, I fought the addiction. In college I would only drink coffee when I had to pull an all-nighter, and then I'd only need like 16 oz to keep me wired for 18 hours straight (since I never really drank pop or other caffeinated bevvies, coffee easily affected me). I was determined to be my own man... I didn't want to submit to coffee's siren lure, and be like everyone else on the planet: useless and cranky without a cuppa joe.

But... over the last few years of work, I'd slowly started to give in... a cup here to perk me up, a cup there as an excuse to socialize with co-workers. Usually, I'd order chai lattes in lieu of the demon brew, but the occasional mocha would slip in.

A year or 2 ago, I started to order cappucinos after dinner out at a nice restaurant. It seemed like a great companion to a slice of chocolate cake, or some palate-cleansing sorbet. I didn't realize that coffee's strategy had changed from the standard brute-force morning assault to this more insidious evening ploy.

But coffee was smart. With the occasional morning drink, and the ever-more-frequent daytime socialization cup, and the increasingly common after dinner cappucino treat, coffee was slowly insinuating itself into my life. A few weeks ago, it finally struck me: I've become a regular coffee drinker.

I swear I have no idea when I crossed that threshhold from casual user to regular abuser. Maybe it was when I started relying on coffee to help me stay awake at work in the mornings. Maybe it's when I read that 8 cups a day doesn't actually raise your blood pressure. Or maybe it was when I bought that grinder and french press for my house (better than a drip brewer; but I swear I bought them for guests to use!).

But once the realization hit, it was like a giant weight had lifted from my shoulders. The decades-long struggle was over... and I had lost. I feel a small sadness that I've conceded defeat... but as I sit here drinking a home-made mocha brewed in my Bosum french press, with beans I bought from Peet's... I'm really not sure I care.

This just in: Evil Death Flu Could Cost Us Money!

zomg! According to CNN, a severe flu pandemic could cause a 5.5% drop in US GDP, costing our economy roughly $683 billion! Who knew that the deaths of over 2 million people (and the sickening of another 90 million) could wreak so much havok! Oh, the humanity!! And that's not even including the losses in that elusive "core sphere" of economic activity!

So yeah... it seems profoundly stoopid to point out the economic costs of such a pandemic... as if millions of deaths would slide off the economy like water off a duck's back. Still, I guess it's good to quantify it. It gives us an opportunity cost against which to compare the cost of developing a robust vaccination infrastructure. So I suppose it's not all bad... just very silly, on the face of it.