Welcome to TBO.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online

Welcome to Thinking Out Loud, a blog that contains postings from The Tampa Tribune’s Editorial Board and from various Tribune Community Columnists. Unlike the unsigned editorials that represent the newspaper’s institutional voice, the blog postings offer personal perspectives on the issues, personalities and events of Tampa Bay. We invite you to participate by posting your comments. We’ll do our best to respond.

Contributors:

Joe Guidry

Joe Guidry is the deputy editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune. He is a Tampa native and a graduate of the University of South Florida. He is married and has an adult son.

Jeff Stidham

Jeff Stidham grew up and lives in Bartow. He has been with the Tribune for nearly 22 years, the last 10 on the editorial board.

William Yelverton

William Yelverton is a Tribune editorial writer who has worked for the paper nearly 22 years. He lives in the Dade City area.

Jim Beamguard

Jim Beamguard is a Tribune editorial writer. He is a native of North Carolina and a graduate of Davidson College. He and his family live in Brandon.

Jackie Papandrew:

Jackie Papandrew is a freelance writer and editor. Her syndicated humor column appears in publications in the United States, Canada and India. She lives in Largo with her husband and children. Visit her website at www.jackiepapandrew.com.

Camille Beredjick

Camille Beredjick is a senior at Chamberlain High School, an avid musician and a scribbler with a quirky sense of humor. In the fall, she will be attending Northwestern University to study journalism, political science and music, and she plans to pursue a career in journalism.

Jim Harnish

Jim Harnish is in his 17th year as Senior Pastor at Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa. He and his wife, Marsha, have two daughters and two grandchildren. He is a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary and received the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Bethune-Cookman University. He is the author of six books and numerous articles and studies. He enjoys playing with his grandchildren and cheering for the Florida Gators.

Angela Hunt

Angela Hunt is a novelist living in Pinellas County with her husband and two 220-pound mastiffs.

Sheryl Young

Sheryl Young was a Tampa Tribune Community Columnist in 2005-2006. A freelance writer since 1997, including the Tampa Bay Business Journal, Tampa Style Magazines, St. Pete Times and nationally in Better Nutrition, Today’s Christian Woman and more. She’s received a First Place Amy Foundation national "Roaring Lambs" Writing Award, and has lived in Tampa Bay with her family for over 20 years.

Christie Gold

Christie Gold teaches English and journalism at Freedom High School in Tampa where she advises Revolution, the school newspaper. She has been both the Hillsborough County Teacher of the Year and Florida Journalism Teacher of the Year. She lives on a small farm in Wesley Chapel where she trains as a competitive equestrian.

Natalie D. Preston

Natalie D. Preston is a karaoke singing, only-child pouting, Seminole Tomahawk waving, newlywed bride blushing, 50-state traveling, girlie girl who loves to shop, read, run and jump up and down on her soapbox.

Fernando Figueroa

Fernando Figueroa is a researcher, educator and lives in Riverview.

Gary Beemer

Interests include humor, politics, economics, community and world affairs, finance, people, religion, music, sports, current events, the arts and education.

Nicole Yunger Halpern

Nicole Yunger Halpern is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, where she studies everything she can get her nerdy little hands on. Desired major: life. No, not necessarily biology. Life.

Kris DiGiovanni

Kris DiGiovanni is a Tribune Community Columnist, Huffington Post contributor, Daily Kos diarist, and teacher, who recently moved from NW Hillsborough to another planet - a small beach community in Pinellas County. She also blogs at www.sandscript.wordpress.com

H. David Braswell Jr.

H. David Braswell Jr. is an Information Systems Professional. He is a native New Yorker and a lifelong NY Giants fan. He attended college in California (Cal State Northridge) and moved to Tampa in 1998.

Sean Marcus

Sean Marcus teaches creative writing, journalism and reading at Chamberlain High School. He has one son and is expecting a daughter in early March. He can be reached at wuizabug@gmail.com

Most Recent Entries

Thinking Out Loud

Monthly Archives

Three Cups of Tay: Reflections about England’s favorite beverage and a parody of scientific articles

Posted Jun 7, 2012 by Nicole Yunger Halpern

Updated Jun 7, 2012 at 11:22 AM

Tea, known in the northern UK as “tay,” has received considerable attention in the literature recently. Flyers on the author’s campus [1,2] advertised a party that features “tea, scones, and everything British” in honor of the diamond-jubilee anniversary of the ascent of Queen Elizabeth II to the British throne. (Note that the strength of the author’s argument is independent of a party’s ability to feature “everything British.”) In 2007, Greg Mortensen published the bestselling nonfiction book Three Cups of Tea, whose title I have plundered to offset my writing’s dryness. Despite negative publicity during the 18th century (cf. the Boston Tea Party), tea has gained popularity in the United States among intellectuals, pseudo-intellectuals, and so-called “hipsters” and “artsy types.” This paper concerns characteristics of, habits associated with, and applications of tea in modern-day Britain.

Tea is a mixture of herb particles dissolved in boiling water. Drinking boiling water scalds the roof of one’s mouth, precluding one from tasting tea for approximately half a day, according to current estimates. Although this time scale has not been verified, it permits straightforward testing. The author retains confidence that experimentalists will soon investigate this prediction that theorists lack the resources (i.e., the tolerance for pain) to test. Tea is commonly measured in units of “cuppas” (e.g., “D’you want a cuppa tay?”). The quantum of tea is known as the “sip.”

Despite American stereotypes, not all Britons guzzle tea perpetually. Some guzzle coffee when not guzzling tea. Nevertheless, the kettle in the author’s office, which houses theoretical physicists, boils enough water per day “to drown half of Britain’s population,” according to a colleague. An order-of-magnitude estimate implies that the water could drown approximately three-fourths of Britain’s population, assuming that said population refrained from imbibing the threat. An inquiry into the kettle’s hyperactivity revealed that experiments have proven tea boosts intellectual capacities. That is, theorists behave as though experiments have proven tea boosts intellectual capacities. A correlation has been noted between drinking of tea and avoidance of nodding off during meetings. Future studies should probe this correlation with greater rigor. If proved causal, the correlation could raise the kettle’s daily output to levels sufficient to drown four-thirds times Britain’s population.

In conclusion, we have analyzed the mixture of water and scrumptiousness known as tea. By “we,” I mean “I,” but drawing attention to my subjectivity gives me hives. Discrepancies have been observed between predicted and actual tea-drinking habits. Applications of tea include possible enhancement of intellectual performance, facilitation of social interaction, and cake flavouring. Illustrations of all three graced the author’s recent birthday party, which featured tea and Earl Gray-flavored cake. (Regrettably, the party did not feature “everything British.”) The dearth of tea-flavored cakes in the baking literature (viz., cookbooks) strikes the author as a howling shame. Testing of tea-flavored cakes may prove arduous, but we urge the community to confront the challenge for the sake of science.

Acknowledgments: The author wishes to thank her officemates for teaching her to use our kettle, NASA Famelab participants for commiserating about scientific writing, and her flatmates for baking the cake and for offering a cuppa whenever boiling water.