Once upon a time, I posted an account of my caffeine intake during a fairly typical day. The Chronicle took the idea and ran with it, asking four academics to keep caffeine diaries. Brad DeLong remains a piker at just over 373 mg in a day. Daniel Mendelsohn, on the other hand, clocks more than 1400 mg, which I only hit on a bad day. (Despite occasional attempts to cut back since I wrote the post linked to above, I remain at a steady 1000-1350 mg per weekday.) And NYU President John Sexton downs 850 mg before 10 am.
Sexton’s ten cups at the beginning of the day, followed by twenty-three cups of decaf spread through a day of nonstop meetings (many of which are 45 minutes or longer), does invite an obvious question. How many of those meetings can he make it through without, well, having to get up and leave?
UPDATE: For the record, today has been a little below average so far. Three cups of brewed coffee before I left for work; two triple espressos and three Diet Cokes during the day. c. 1050 mg.
I just found a picture of Mendelsohn, at the site for a Princeton conference on Jewish writers that had an appallingly spectacular line-up. (Scroll down.) It’s hard to tell from a head shot, but he looks like a pretty big guy. I’m guessing that his caffeine-to-body-weight ratio is lower than mine.
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