Too much coffee...

As the official "Coffee Cow" of the Hotpads Team, I feel it is my responsibility to inform the general blogging public about some new information that has come to my attention.  According to a study by researchers at the University of Queensland, under the influence of caffeine, you are more easily swayed  by arguments.

In the experiments, the participants were made to drink an orange juice, some with caffeine in it, some without.  Presented with a persuasive message the attitudes of the participants were measured. It was found that the attitudes of participants under caffeine had changed more than that of the control participants. 

As the biggest coffee drinker here, this makes me wonder what I have been... persuaded to add to the site under the influence of coffee (perhaps some of the stranger color schemes?). Considering the search technology of Hotpads is built upon a (extremely) large foundation of coffee and espresso, this information could be used to explain some of the ... quirkier parts of Hotpads.  As you can see in the picture on the right, large doses of caffeine can sometimes have interesting effects.  Maybe I should scale back... yet according to the study, caffeine also lets you better see the strengths of good arguments.  Maybe wacky color schemes have some good reasoning behind them... maybe you can find apartments easier via the contrasting colors? Or maybe I am analyzing this way too much.          

Comments

[Douglas Pope]

Doug's official title at HotPads is Chief Java Engineer...

(for those not into computers... Java is a programming language.)

(for those not into coffee... Java is slang for coffee.)

Ok. I successfully killed all of the subtlty of this anecdote.