Thinking critically about... coffee?

Picture from Wikipedia Commons. Follow links below to see the article on Coffee.

This morning I resisted being rushed. For one reason or other we were late for church and I just stayed behind, finishing my freshly brewed cup of coffee. And enjoying it a lot more than listening to the priest paraphrase the current gospell reading.

Coffee cannot be rushed. It is to be savored and enjoyed. You can't leave it aside and keep on drinking: it has to be hot. All this got me thinking...

Coffee is a vice and an addiction. I find it helps me awaken in the morning, not being a morning person, and also keeps me productive in the early hours of the afternoon, when sleepiness creeps in after lunch. According to Wikipedia caffeine content in my cup of java may be in the range of 200-230 mg, which is enough for me to have addiction and withdrawal symptons. (Granted, these are only anecdotically recorded but...)

Coffee is an acquired taste. I drink coffee since I was very young (less than 5 probably) and I cannot get rid of it... On the other hand, my children were not accustomed to coffee when they were growing up and now that they are teenagers, they have little or no affection for my favorite concoction. Many of my friends who are not coffee drinkers (actually one of then is a coffee-t-totaler) did not get used to it when they were young and they find it distasteful.

Coffee is a social ritual. It is customary to offer coffee to visitors and talk about having a cup of coffee with friends in order to get together and socialize. In fact, I have used just that excuse to meet some fellow bloggers.

Coffee must be drunk hot. I keep remembering how Arthur C. Clarke used to have his space-faring characters complain about "tepid coffee". It makes perfect sense to me. As a result of my work, I know that 60-65 °C is about as hot as can be handled with your bare hands; above that, you tend to get first degree burns. However, for whatever reason, my mouth is able to handle higher temperatures, probably as high as 75°C and I have my coffee usually at a warm 60-65°C, which (I know) my hands cannot handle. In a spaceship you do not need the whole 15.6 psi of atmospheric pressure (sorry, I have never learned the kg per square centimeter units) since 80% of that is contributed by nitrogen and you can get by with 7-8 psi of an oxygen-rich atmosphere. At that low pressure you would not be able to heat coffee to the full 70-75°C without boiling it and you would have to drink it at 40°C or so... distastefully tepid. That is why in a normal atmosphere you should not neglect your cup of steaming java for long.

And coffee is such an important part of the world economy. The ups and downs of the market affect the livelihood of millions of people accross the world, especially in developing countries like mine, which is one of the top ten producers in the world (again, according to Wikipedia).
So coffee is a very important part of my life and that of many others.

A good subject to think about, in critical terms.

Magic? or science?

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

The video above shows an aluminum foil "boat" misteriously floating in the air. Magic? Supernatural powers? NO! The glass container is filled, at the beginning, with a gas that is denser than air and sufficiently dense to make the "boat" float. Check the Popular Science article here.

As Mr. Clarke indicated, any event whose explanation requires more knowledge than what we posses looks to us like magic. Imagine a Cro-Magnon or a Neanderthal coming into one of our houses! He would be scared to death by seeing our mysterious powers of producing light by pinching the wall (I doubt they would notice the switch and that still would be magical) - communicating at a distance just by talking into our hand (cell phones are so small that they would not recognize their significance) - being able to summon mysterious spirits and even dead people into a strange looking box (TV!) - things that are everyday events to us would be definitely magical and miraculous to a caveman.

So, next time you come up with something that looks mysterious, magical or miraculous consider the more practical possibility that there is a rational and scientifically sound explanation for that event. Solids can turn into liquids just by shaking (thixotropy) - strange shapes need not be miraculous representations of deity but rather our mind trying to find patterns into everything we see - an evolutionary advantage that works to the critical thinker's disadvantage...

Why skeptics like science fiction?

I have been following the skeptical movement for about two years now and I feel very identified with it because I have always been a skeptic at heart. And I feel more and more a part of this way of thinking when I realize that my passion for science fiction is shared with so many of my skeptical colleagues.

Maybe skeptics like science fiction because many of the best and best known SF writers of the 20th century were also skeptics. Arthur C. Clark lets readers clearly see his agnosticism/atheism; Isaac Asimov defends science and the scientific outlook in both his fiction and non-fiction writings; he was the original skeptic. And you can feel the skepticism in Heinlein's and Van Vogt's work. While you are at it, don't forget Gene Roddenberry and his Opus Magnum, Star Trek.

So, many good SF writers were (or probably were) skeptics. But what about our own mindset when we read (or watch) science fiction? Interestingly, us SF fans classify these works of art into "good SF" and "bad SF". How come? Most SF requires some suspension of disbelief in order to be enjoyed. Yeah, yeah, Dr. Krauss, I understand that beaming someone using a Star-Trek-type transporter would require so much information storage as to make it unpractical... but watching the special effects of Captain Kirk being "beamed up" and "down" does get us thinking how good a change to our daily conmute that would be and wouldn't it be good to have one of those at home. On the whole, Star Trek is regarded as good science fiction, warp drive non-withstanding. On the other hand I personally consider Star Wars a very low grade SF work... although many of my skeptically minded friends like the movies. What is the difference?

For me at least, the difference is that, while Star Trek at least tries to base some of the stories on some kind of science, Star Wars does not. When Captain Janeway asks for a "tachion beam", we already know that time disturbances are somehow linked to these "tachions" which, maybe, will now be discovered by the LHC. But "the Force" is so "mystical" and "religious" that I am personally turned off by it. It is like the Matrix - they do things that are impossible, only you know that "in the Matrix" they can be explained by manipulation of the "reality-producing" algorithms while there is no good explanation of how "the Force" works short of being a deist and considering a mysterious spiritual bonding of every atom of the universe... a concept I really shy away from.

So that most be the reason why Asimov and Clarke are considered among the top SF writers of the last century - two authors who consistently used good science and reasonable extrapolations of current knowledge throughout their stories, while some other writers (and I don't read them, so I don't want to name them) might best be classified as fantasy rather than SF authors.

And there is the "in-between" category. For instance, I am currently listening to J. C. Hutchins "7th. Son" trilogy. J.C.'s story has a wonderful flow that really grabs you and forces you to listen forsaking TV, sleep, sex and meals... well, maybe only TV. But I find that the need of suspension of disbelief is, at times, a little too much. For instance, J.C. postulates the existence of the mysterious "Aurora" aircraft and then narrates that it takes an Aurora 20 minutes from Virginia to the middle of Texas. OK, I think, maybe fly over Virginia and into Texas in 20 minutes... but landings and take-offs would easily consume an additional 10 minutes each considering the extreme heights at which such an aircraft would have to operate. And then you have the refueling problem (no refuelings occur...) and the Auroras, in the novel, seem to be kind of a flying 4X4, able to take off and land in almost any strip. It really strains my skepticism until I remind myself that "7th. Son" is a thriller more than a SF novel.

Maybe that is the reason I, as a skeptic, like SF. It flexes my critical thinking muscles and forces me to look beyond and try to see these things really happening... are they at all possible? If most of them are, in light of our current knowledge and a reasonable extrapolation into the future, then you are reading good SF.

J.C. Hutchins novel is available at Podiobooks.com. While you are there, be sure to check Mur Lafferty's excellent "Playing for keeps", which is now also in print and available at Amazon.com. I highly recommend both even if they are not all that "believable" but they are definitely enjoyable. Image above was found in this excellent blog, Trevize's computer.