Fun Facts

January 5th marked the perihelion: the day that the Earth is closest to the Sun. How close is close you ask, because it wasn't particularly warm yesterday. Yesterday the Earth was approximately 91,402,500 miles from the Sun which is about 3.1 million miles closer than we will be at the aphelion in early July. These are big numbers, but what does 3.1 million miles really mean? Turns out it is only 16.7 seconds when you're traveling at the speed of light. No big deal, engage hyper drive and let's go!

And in completely unrelated news:

Farmers harvest approximately 1 BILLION coffee trees each year for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.  Each tree produces 1 pound of coffee per year. Who is consuming a billion pounds of coffee? Turns out it is all of us. Second largest commodity in the world behind oil. Hawaii is the only state in the U.S. where coffee can be grown (I've had some and it is AMAZING) which means that we Americans are extermely dependent on foreign coffee growers. Likely more so than on oil considering the U.S. is able to produce 51% of the crude oil that is consumed domestically.

Imagine for a second if foreign suppliers turned off the flow of coffee and oil at the same time. Would you be willing to use half the oil you do now? That's not really that tough: plastic, gasoline, heating oil, etc. We would survive. What about living without ANY coffee? Whoaboy! Withdrawls, shakes, headaches, anger, violence. Riots in the streets! If the Iraq War was about oil, imagine what we would do to secure the coffee plantations of Brazil or Indonesia.