Why do we drink so much coffee?

According to Wikipedia, citing the World Resource Institute, the five Nordic countries top the list of coffee consumption per capita.
(That Aruba figure so high in that list is a total fluke, it seems that it is a trans-shipping point and looking at the figures over a 30 year span Aruba's yearly "consumption" varies from 0 to 121 kg/capita. Bermuda's historical figures OTOH are more consistent.)

But why? Why do the Nordic countries drink so much coffee? And why does the trend even seem to hold for the Baltic states? The further north, the more coffee consumed. Perhaps because geographical "northern-ness" happens to be inversely proportional to "russian-ness"?

Perhaps the Nordic love of coffee is related to it being so dark half the year, and so light a quarter of the year? Perhaps we need to use lots caffeine to keep our diurnal rhytms from too closely mimicing the seasons? And perhaps the statistics also partly reflect the fact that we generally like our coffee strong?

Or perhaps it is somehow related to the generally "dry" official attitude of our countries? Seeing that the order is Finland, Iceland, Norway and then Denmark and Sweden (it is only since 1995 that the Danes have consistently consumed more than the Swedes) makes this a pretty tempting explanation.

Isn't the stereotypical picture of Finns, Icelanders and Norwegians one of guys that like to do things to extremes? A high use of stimulants would tend to fit nicely into that. Especially in conditions that make the availability of alcohol restricted and the booze quite expensive when you get it.

In this scenario the odd man out is Sweden. According to this theory (not to mention the geographical one above) Sweden should trounce Denmark thoroughly in the coffee-drinking championships. It might be that the statistics lie, and the fact that the switch in positions happened in 1995, the year both countries became EU members could point in that direction. But without knowing the price-levels of coffee in Sweden resp. Denmark it is very hard to say for sure if the increase in shopping trips over the border is responsible.

Or it could be that the stereo-typical view of Swedes as unusually susceptible to official health campaigns is an explanations. (Finnish media absolutely loooves to tout any and all scientific pro-coffee findings, Swedish media - not so much.)

And then we have the fact that Finland usually is a whole kg-per-person ahead of the rest (the slump in coffee prices in the early 90ies makes the statistics a bit unreliable - the world market price of coffee more than doubled between January 1994 and January 1995, and the dip that can be seen around 1995-1996 seems to be attributable to diminished imports because of stockpiling in early-mid 1994. The International Coffee Organisation, ICO, has some nice statistics.) - what are the explanations for that?

Most foreigners do note that Finns drink a lot of coffee, and that coffee is available at nearly every imaginable gathering. It is considered quite daring to omit coffee, or substitute some other drink, at any gathering, from funerals and weddings to quick work meetings.

But why? I have no idea. It might be that coffee somehow gained an exalted status as a luxury item early on, and gained almost mythical properties during the scarcity of the war years. And during better times the quality of coffee consumed in Finland has been evaluated as quite high - pre-roasted coffee probably came much later to the average Finnish coffee consumer than in most of Europe. Every small folkloristic museum has one or more "coffee-burners" (ranging in age from late 18th to early 20th century) for stovetop use on display.

But still, why Finland? In comparison to our Nordic neighbours our rise to prosperity (and our urbanisation) has been much more abrupt and quick, really only beginning after the war. Is perhaps the excessive coffee-drinking a rural hold-over? (Sweden again makes for an interesting comparison, I can't seem to find statistics older than 30 years, but Finland only passed Sweden in coffee consumption at the end of the 1970-ies.)

Shouldn't think so much

I've been thinking about posting my definitive views on why porn is so terminally boring for over a week now. Shouldn't think so much, should post things half-baked instead.

Buuut, since I still think I'd like to write about why porn is so boring (& about the interesting phenomenon of various "porntube" -sites, and what those may herald for the biggest industry of the web), I'll just update with a link to a weird, sweet and totally non-porny clip.

Disappointing custard

After reading people (mostly expat Brits I think) waxing lyrically about how Bird's Custard was the only right and true custard powder I was quite pleased to spy a tin of it at a so called "ethnic" food store.

But except for the colouring (very pleasant egg-yolk yellow) I don't think there is anything in that powder that I couldn't replicate, or improve on, with plain Maizena (cornstarch) and some vanilla extract. Even the method of preparing it is exactly like you would with Maizena. The only little thing that I have never thought of is that it contains salt.

Bah! Almost as much hassle as doing a proper custard with eggs, and definitely not easier than whipping up your own Maizena-based one.

"Words, words, words!

I am sick of words! I get words all day through, first from him, now from you!
Is that all you blighters can do?!"

Yes, Eliza, it probably is. Though unfortunately the text of My Fair Lady isn't free yet, so I can't check my memory against the text at Project Gutenberg. I could check the ur-text Pygmalion, but I already know that Shaw's Eliza would never have uttered such an emotional thing that late in the play.

I'm running out of things on my Treo to read. Most everything easy, weird or strange I loaded up on it more than a year ago is already read. And for some reason I can't seem to get my various computers sorted enough to re-install the bits and pieces needed to back-up, sync and install new stuff on my phone. Maybe it is some unconscious need for living dangerous that manifests itself in this way?

So being bored and unable to sleep late last night I thought it would be a good idea to surf to Gutenberg and see if I could maybe read something from there straight on my Treo. It turned out it was theoretically possible, but the Treo's tiny browser stuttered to a halt quickly. And Gutenberg's interface (like wikipedia's, unfortunately) turned out to be very small-screen unfriendly.

But it did look like it had evolved quite a bit since I last looked at it a few years ago. New-ish dedicated format for Palms, Torrents, a nice top-100 list to browse. So I simply had to take a better look. And it looks like I've added yet another page to the all too many in my standard opera-view.

What I didn't find was a list of links to other e-text projects. Which is rather weird, since Gutenberg is very English.
Luckily I happen to know of one other similar project, the Swedish Project Runeberg. And they have a rather comprehensive list of links. Unfortunately it is rather too broad, and seems to be quite out of date too.

This is getting annoying. I *happen* to know about both Gutenberg and Runeberg. I don't know about similar projects in German or French. One would have thought either Gutenberg or Runeberg could lead me to those?
But no. Luckily the parallell structure of wikipedia's different language editions once again proved very useful: Gutenberg-DE seems to be the closest thing in German. Unfortunately it really isn't comparable as it is severely crippled in texts only being browsable on-line.

I'm cold!

Downtown? See map
Originally uploaded by Aspsusa

I've been shivering almost constantly since yesterday when I woke up to snow on the ground, slush in the air and temperatures just below freezing.

And I'm lazy, this picture is actually from March, not current. But it captures the bleak, moist and c-c-c-cold somewhat. Though we do have more snow on the ground right now. Which is just wrong. More snow in November than in March? Nuh-uh, shouldn't be.

Guess I will just have to hunt up some winter clothes, remember to close the windows properly and try to get used to it.

The problem of avatars and profiles

I just finally managed to guess correctly what I had used 3+ years ago when I signed up for a blog (called "journal" then) at my.opera.com, and was faced with the need to update some stuff - the look and functionality of the portal/community/blogs/whole-shebang has changed considerably since 2004.

And once again I was reminded of how frustrating it is to be a fairly visual person with almost no skills, and less energy. The my.opera-templates all reserve a big chunk of space for a picture. It looks not only lame, but very, very boring. Especially as everyone else who comments, or visits (while logged in to my.opera), who also haven't uploaded any pic to represent themselves also get stuck with this no-image-image in the sidebar.

Lots of places reserve space for an avatar of some sort. The only place so far where I swiftly caved and cobbled together something has been Flickr. It sort of seemed obligatory on a photo-sharing site. But what I came up with there is not good.
On most boards I've ever registered I've just ignored the avatar-custom. Mostly because I just don't happen to have anything handy. And firing up even a bare-bones graphic app. just to play around and shrink some part of some images to the required dimension? Nah. Not going to happen at the time of registration. And then, not going to happen at all.
On one or two occasions, when the forum in question have had a ready made gallery to pick and choose from I've picked something. But nothing that seemed "me" enough for me to swipe it for further use.

Many people do take the easy and logical way out and just use a photo of themselves. The shy version of this is using a photo of the back of ones head, or a picture of oneself as a baby.
I guess I could just stop trying to be original and individual and go this route. But I photograph very badly. Like really ugly.
Not there yet, but it might still come to that.

Testing out this new space

Very pleased with the adress, and thanks to princessalex on TT for the sub-header. This is probably not the final look of this lame-and-boring blog.

Though the current look is rather lame, so that fits well. But the lameness is at least in part just a result of my wanting to be able to read my own blog on my Treo. Templates that specify a certain column width usually look fine on a real 'puter, but can wreck havoc with the sensitive nonstandardized little apps that try to render them on phones and other small screen-devices.
So until I learn more about what works and what doesn't on small screens, the the format will continue to be ugly on big ass screens.