A Good Cup of Coffee
There is only one thing I want from coffee – to enjoy it; this desire led me to amass no fewer than ten different gadgets and devices to help extract the flavor from the coffee bean – of which only three devices remain. Like some kind of medieval torturer, I’ve grounded, pounded, soaked, cut, chopped, crunched, roasted, drowned, boiled, and steamed, short of putting it on the rack, which believe me I thought about, I have done everything possible to find a way to extract the most amount of enjoyment from the coffee bean. In many cases the yield did not equate to the work poured into preparing a good cup of coffee, far from it. With each step I put between myself and a good cup of coffee my enjoyment of the drink seemed to decrease; the work-cost-enjoyment ratio just did not add up. As the ratio increased in terms of work and cost, the enjoyment I received remained about the same, or it increased but eventually plateaued. In economic terms, ...