(Disclaimer: I hate coffee. I’m one of the very few adults I’ve ever met that does. But I love this idea so much, and since the morning cup of coffee is one of the most popular delusions, at least here in America, I had to share it, in the hopes it will help. It also works for tea and hot chocolate, or [since I like my caffeine cold and carbonated] even soda!)

So you’ve decided, in these fun economic times, that you need to save some money. One of the first places that people mention when talking about cutting expenses is the morning cup of coffee. But how the heck do you ride the bus with one of those standard coffee cups? And why can’t the lidded cups at the grocery store have those nifty-keen lids that they have down at the local coffee shop? You might like to know that you’re not the only one — a lot of people have trouble with this, not because of the quality of the coffee or the ability to buy it between buses, but because they’ll miss those wonderful cups! (And for those trying to live the “Home Business Lifestyle:” Why should I have to leave home to get my coffee when all I’m really doing it for is the nifty cup?”)

Enter the I Am Not a Paper Cup; a double-walled ceramic cup in the same size and shape as the ones you throw away every day. It doesn’t need a paper sleeve, because it’s designed to keep your coffee hot and your fingers unburned; and the silicon lid is just exactly like the lids you’re used to! Make people at the bus stop wonder if there’s a new coffee shop in the neighborhood, or sit at home at your desk with the coffee cup you’re used to. (This one won’t slop all over your desk if you nudge it!) Fill it with anything you like, and take pride in keeping paper and plastic out of the landfills. About as expensive as a week’s worth of those coffee shop long-named drinks, this will save you money for as long as you use it; and no one will ever know — unless you tell them — that it’s not paper. Good for the environment; good for your wallet; good for your ego — a WIN all around!

I HIGHLY recommend taking a look at I Am Not a Paper Cup!

Technorati Tags: Coffee, Coffee Cups, Coffeeshops, Waste Reduction

In 1841, Charles Mackay published Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds; a three-volume work discussing everything from economic bubbles and alchemy to the influence of politics and religion on whether men wear beards. It’s fascinating reading, and available at Project Gutenberg in HTML or plain text format.

Although the book is now 150 years old, and talks about events that happened a long time before that, it still gives some highly relevant insights into human mobthink and just what people are willing to believe. It’s also a fun read for the historical snapshot. (I once read histories of New Amsterdam and San Francisco, written around the turn of the century; as much fun for the style as for the information. I can’t for the life of my find those books right now, though.)

So when the name Popular Delusions was suggested, and I found and read the book, I knew this was a great framework to hang my web site on. I knew that the people I wanted to attract to my site were the same people I like to hang out with – people with interesting viewpoints, unusual ways of seeing the world. As a Soul Hunter once put it on Babylon 5, “only the special ones, leaders, thinkers, poets, dreamers, blessed lunatics.” Nowadays, from my experience, the fun people are more easily found in “microcommunities;” SF conventions, SCA events, pagan gatherings, and Pride Days of various stripes, as examples.

You might even be able to say that the really nifty people are finding their own ways to Popular Delusions that they enjoyed, and enjoyed sharing with others. Whole subcultures, and web communities, have been built on the strength of a shared popular delusion: TheOneRing.Net, around Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth movies, or Starwars.com, around George Lucas’ corner of the multiverse, or those sites that let you post profiles for your pets. Does your poodle need its own MySpace page?

Of course, one person’s delusion is another’s fact; in fact, I’ve found that I believe in most of the things I’ve labeled delusions in my 2Do lists. And a lot of us seem to enjoy the same delusions; con-goers and pagans, to choose two groups at random, both tend to have cats as pets rather than dogs; lots of groups, for completely different reasons, are into costuming. There’s books, movies, music, and . . . an amazing veriety of topics. We’ll discover them together – and I’d love it if you’d let me know your favorites in the Comments!

Technorati Tags: microcommunities, popular delusions, subcultures