coffee and a run-in with an evil genius?

May 22, 2002 &bull uncategorized

I stumbled across a short essay about coffee on The Utne Reader web site today. It’s not the best article I’ve ever read (in fact, I’m not even sure I would call it “good”), but it did get me thinking about how much I like to drink coffee. I’ve always wanted to write a short little book about how wonderful coffee is, but I don’t think I ever will. As soon as I start to think about how I would do it, I quickly realize how boring it would turn out. Well, if I ever write a book I’ll definitely try to incorporate a lot of coffee drinking. (I’m currently reading “Murder on the Orient Express” by Agatha Christie. She must feel the same way about mineral water as I feel about coffee because there is a lot of mineral water drinking going on in that book.)

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In the 17th Century Rene Descartes was trying to find the bedrock of knowledge and certainty — something he could know without question. He constructed a couple of different methods to help him with this task. One of these methods had Descartes claiming that a person cannot trust his or her sense perceptions because it is possible that there is an “evil genius” in control of the world. This evil being’s main purpose is to provide us with false sense perceptions, which lead us astray in any sense-based conclusions we make. I’m not 100% certain, but I think I had a run-in with this evil genius yesterday.

It seems like every time I’m involved with a “car problem” an evil genius makes an entrance. I can’t count the number of times I’ve brought a vehicle in for repair (engine lights, mysterious noises, etc.) only to have these issues vanish as soon as the paper floormats were inserted. Yesterday is a prime example: we have been experiencing “steering noises” for the past week or so in our Subaru. We dropped it off at the repair shop, but the head mechanic didn’t hear anything. We even stopped by and took a drive with him, trying to prove that we heard “this strange noise.” No dice. Of course, as soon as we left the repair shop the noise came back and was louder than usual. I told Heidi it’s the little things in life which confuse me the most….

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