A few years ago, I was preparing to move into my first apartment. My mom asked me if I wanted to take anything from home when I moved out.
"Take what?" I asked.
"Anything.
Maybe a coffee maker?" She held up a small but earnest plastic machine,
most likely purchased pre-internet. It would make two cups of coffee every morning or die
trying. I took it. If it broke I could always buy a new one.
Seven years later, the machine finally showed its first sign of wear. I
don't even know how to describe the broken part. It's where the
coffee comes out of the pot as it is poured. The lip? Anyway, this thing
is usually shaped like the bottom half of a bird's beak. After I dropped the pot in
May, 'the lip' is now shaped like the serrated edge of a dull knife.
The
next day, I tried to pour my coffee. Instead of falling
in a graceful arc into the mug, the coffee splashed all over the table. It looked like a passing thundercloud of light roast had just swept through my apartment. The 'broken lip' situation
was more serious than I thought (though I did like the smell left by the spilled coffee).
I tried several solutions for the problem (the details of those failures are withheld out of my consideration for you, dear reader). After a week of spilling coffee, it was time for a new pot, right?
Ha.
The puzzle was solved early one morning. I poured my coffee, cleaned up the spill, and sat down with the remainder steaming in my mug. I battled grogginess, took a small sip of my half-ration, and wrote yet another scintillating blog post.
This post described a story I read years ago in a book about soccer tactics. It was about the invention of catenaccio, the famous Italian tactical system. The key insight came when a manger
observed a fishing boat transfer its catch early one morning. In order to keep the fish falling out of the
net during the transfer from being lost in the harbor, the boat
had rigged a second net underneath the first. The fish falling out of
the first net were caught by this second net.
The next morning, I
poured half my coffee directly into my mug as usual. Then, I picked up the bowl I had
placed underneath it and poured the other half of coffee from the bowl into the mug.
It's not a perfect solution. But the cup is full so it'll do.
