I really should be going to bed right now, because my mom and I are waking up early to go to Seattle for a shopping weekend, but I am just not sleepy. It’s like my brain just turns ON at about 11pm. Oh so nocturnal, am I.

Anyways. The thought reminded me of a university psychology study experience. At the beginning of my intro psychology class at the University of Toronto, we all had to fill out this huge questionnaire. It was to be used by grad students when evaluating potential research subjects, as 3% of our grade was given by participating in them (they’ve since quit that practice, I think). Anyways. I got called for all of mine, instead of choosing to volunteer, as I must have turned up at the tails of some normal distributions for a bunch of traits. They never tell you what’s its about until after the experiment is over, so you don’t mess up their trials. They were fun.

One of the calls went a little something like this:

Psych Grad Student: Hello, is that Anna Gosline?
Me: Why yes, it is.
PGS: I am calling to ask for your participation in a psychology study for my thesis. Are you interested?
Me: Sure, dude.
PGS: Okay, could you come to Sidney Smith Hall Rm XXX at 8am on Wednesday morning?
Me: Urrrrr...do you have anything, like, later? (My earliest class was 10am. I awoke promptly at 9:54)
PGS: 8:15am?
Me: Urrrrr...later?
PGS: 8:30?
Me: Okay, (giving up) whatever. I’ll be there.

So I arrive, bleary eyed, totally uncaffeinated and more than a wee bit grumpy. I was placed in a tiny computer room where I was shown 10 sets of 10 vocabulary words. After each set, I had to recall as many as possible. At the end, I had to try and remember as many as I could from the whole 100. Did I mention the uncaffeinated part?

At the debrief, where they tell you what they were actually studying, as opposed to the sometimes misleading directions they give you at the start, the grad student revealed to me that she was studying how people’s “peak” time of the day changes with age. At which point I immediately recalled that on my questionnaire I had filled out: I am a night owl! My peak time of day is about 2am! I love to stay up late! Getting up before noon is hell!

Essentially, this chic had ripped me out of bed at my weakest moment on purpose to see how badly my memory would suck. Add some constantly dripping water on my forehead and I think you could almost call that torture. 

So says The Vinegar Institute (I was surprised it existed but now it seems so obvious really. The url is: http://www.versatilevinegar.org - Duh!).

See, January is National Clean Up Your Computer Month (again, who knew. But yes, such a month does exist). And what better ordinary ingredient to use to clean up your computer than vinegar. In their eager press release The Vinegar Institute (I don’t think I can ever say that without snickering) quotes the step by step instructions found in the book Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Things:

Before you begin cleaning, make sure you have all pieces in the ‘off’ position.
Mix equal parts of white vinegar and water in a bucket.
Dampen a clean cloth in the solution and squeeze out the excess. Avoid spraying directly onto your hardware, as it could cause problems with your circuits.
Begin to wipe all pieces down (computer, keyboard, monitor).
Use cotton swabs to reach into those tight places, like between keys on the keyboard.

Now, I know my keyboard is filthy. Rather, underneath my keyboard is filthy what with a recent coffee spill (see: Laptop 911: how to save your computer from a coffee spill)and office cats who shed all over me and my desk. But I don’t know how I feel about using vinegar to clean my keyboard. Will there be a smell? So in search of the answer I poked around The Vinegar Institute’s website. And I was shocked by my vinegar ignorance.

(Also, I’m mentioning this now so you get ample warning. May, is National Vinegar month - don’t you forget it)

According to the Synovate White Distilled Vinegar Attitude and Usage Study from 2004 and 2005 there are three types of people in the world: Virgins, Visitors and Visionaries.

Virgins are the 33 million people who haven’t bought or used white distilled vinegar in the past year. Next we’ve got the Visitors, who make up the vast majority of Americans. Visitors are those who have purchased white distilled vinegar a maximum of two times a year and they’re “open to experimenting with various uses” once they hear about them. Now the Visionaries are real special. There are only 31 million of them in the US. These enlightened folks purchase white distilled vinegar three or more times a year and take it off the shelf monthly. They know to use vinegar to clean kitchen surfaces exposed to raw meat, clean house, get rid of unwanted grass (?), remove glass water rings on wood furniture (hello! I need to try this!! Apparently you rub the stain with equal parts white vinegar and olive oil which strangely sounds like a salad dressing… hmph), and get rid of funky smells. In addition to their varied employment of vinegar the true hallmark of a Visionary is that they “may even create their own new uses.” Whoa boy.

If this is all a big-time epiphany for you may I recommend the site’s ”Uses & Tips“ page.

(PHOTO: Walter Groesel)
Check out this story about a study on the predicted and then actual emotional distress suffered from relationship break-up published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The authors conclude that people are far more scared of the heart ache, and estimate it will be cataclysmic, but after following 69 people for about a year, they found that the break up was never as bad as they expected. Nice.

Only caveat being: these were UNIVERSITY FRESHMEN. Are you kidding? I mean seriously. Of course they think it’s going to be horrible - they are melodramatic teenagers living without parents and in close quarters to the opposite sex and mucho beer for the first time in their lives. And of course they aren’t really that upset because they probably started seeing someone else in like 12 minutes.

Undergrads are the bread and butter of psych research, and most times that’s okay. But come on. You want to generalize about relationship behavior from people who think making out at a kegger on a puke-stained sofa is the start of something beautiful?

This is a very short post to say that I’ve found the best icons ever. See?

For all those science geeks out there who miss the days of staring at beating cilia in high school bio labs, this is for you: Single Celled Icons from Icon Icon available for both Mac and PC. You’ve got your choice of amoeba (nine types) and paramecium type (another nine of these) critters.

For directions on how to welcome these beasts into your life and change your icons, check out these great instructions from Apple. 

When Anna came to visit me in Texas she sarcastically commented on how, like, EVERYONE had a white car. How [rolled eyes] conformist!

So when I told her it was because they attracted less heat from the sunshine she was reallllly embarrassed. Well, now it turns out that those white pickups are good for more than staying just a mite cooler. The recently completed Vehicle Colour Study, conducted by Monash University Accident Research Centre concludes that white cars are The Safest Of All. :

“Conversely, darker colours and colours with low contrast to the road environment, including silver, grey, green, red, blue and black, tend to be associated with a higher crash risk, particularly in daylight hours,” he said.

Dr Newstead said the link between car colour and crash risk was found to be weaker during twilight and night driving.

Compared to white cars, black cars had a 12 per cent higher crash risk, closely followed by grey cars with 11 per cent higher risk. Silver vehicles were next, with 10 per cent, then blue and red at 7 per cent.