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According to The National Coffee Association, 54% of American adults, roughly 150 million people, drink 3.3 cups of coffee every day. To whom do they owe a debt of gratitude for their daily drink?

Goats.

Coffee

As one legend goes, a Yemenite mystic saw a group of old goats of leaping with “exceptional vitality” after eating a particular berry. The mystic tried the berries and got to feeling frisky, too. In another tale called “Kaldi and The Dancing Goats”, an Arabian goatherd observes gamboling goats, tastes the food they’ve been eating, and starts frolicking, too. Kaldi tells some local monks about his discovery, they take the berries, cook them to create a stimulating brew, and mornings become a lot easier to deal with for everyone from then on.

Horned animals aside, physical evidence suggests that coffee plants were cultivated in Ethiopia as early as the 9th or 10th centuries, exported throughout Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and later to India and Indonesia. The first known coffeehouse appeared in Constantinople in 1475, from where the concept spread across Europe and on to colonial America, where they eventually turned into the Starbucks across the street from you now. Or is it in your building’s lobby?

But of the billions of cups consumed worldwide each year, what makes one better than the other? Is it the coffee bean’s provenance? Harvesting practices? Processing? How it’s roasted? Brewed? Read the rest of this entry »

Years ago I discovered an old-fashioned device that not only helps me pack up the car, but also makes adjustments and suggestions if I’m doing it wrong.

The device is known as my father-in-law. Read the rest of this entry »

When you build one of the fastest, most expensive cars in the world, there are really only two things you can do to improve it: make it faster, or take the top off.

In the case of the 253 mph Bugatti Veyron 16.4, the latter was deemed the appropriate choice. At first blush, it seems like the path of most resistance to achieving a new round of buzz for the 4-year-old supercar.

Ever since pretenders to the production car top speed throne started showing up on the scene, like the SSC Ultimate

Bugatti

Aero and Koenigsegg CCXR , car enthusiasts have waited anxiously for Bugatti to put the upstarts back in line by adding a couple of horses to the Veyron’s stable of 1,001 hp. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with this vehicle, that is not a typo. But just so you’re sure, I’ll spell it out like on a check: One Thousand and One.)

Surely, a small boost in output couldn’t be that difficult to achieve?

No, it wouldn’t, but for Bugatti to do so in answer to a challenge would be uncouth, and explicit recognition that any other vehicle on the planet deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the Veyron.

Consider for a moment what we are discussing: the Veyron has a 16-cylinder engine measuring 8 liters in displacement that is boosted by four turbochargers and directs its power through a twin-clutch 7-speed transmission to an all-wheel drive system. What Bugatti has created is nothing less than the ultimate expression of the pure, gasoline-fueled internal combustion era. Will there be faster, more complex vehicles created in the years to come? Certainly. But they will be hybridized and hydrogenated on some new technological plateau and, very likely, a few of them will carry the name Bugatti as well. Read the rest of this entry »