So, as promised, I’m following up on a hypothesis I decided to test out this weekend: whether wearing red would be more effective for gathering signatures for a political cause. (See: “Seeing Red: To Gather More Signatures for a Good Cause”; Also “Competence: An Informal Makeup Experiment”)

I must say I was quite pleased with the results. While I can’t verify anything I’m about to conjecture with hard numbers, I think this hypothesis holds promise.

So I chose a long-sleeved red shirt covered by a feminine-cut red hoodie with a simple, red girlie flower detail on the front to wear with some bell-bottomed jeans. What I noticed was that my charm was more effective with men for sure, in fact women walking by with male partners or pairs of two women tended to give me the competitive stink eye as a primal reaction before barely listening to what I was saying–not universally, some women did stop and talk with me–but I had better luck with men in pairs, and black men with or without a woman next to them (black men tend to find me more irresistible in general for some reason). The crowd heading to the concert in Stern Grove this weekend was more heavily black so this worked to my extra advantage.

All I had to do was say hello, and once a man (white or black) realized that a woman wearing red was saying hello to them, I could see something go off in their eyes for a split second that was drawing them to me, like I was reeling them in, and I had about 10 seconds to say something that would entice them to sign our postcards. I was getting at LEAST as many signatures as the other 3 in our group, and some people I connected with did stop at the last guy to sign his petition after connecting with me. We kind of operated as a unit because we were so close together.

The scenario was that people were walking down a hill quickly past us to get to the concert, so we had very little time to engage them. I was the only volunteer wearing a red shirt. There were two women, and two men; they were mostly in blue, green, or brown. One older, and one younger in each pair. Obviously we had to use the right words along with the right outfit to really snag our audience. I found a direct and personal approach worked best. Ask them right away to “Sign the postcard” use a couple key words “expose SUPER-PAC funding” of “political ads” and that we had “3 weeks left” to get the bill passed. Avoid the word “help” us. I noticed that that created confusion that we couldn’t fix in 3 seconds. “Do they want money? What kind of help? I don’t have time to help,” they seemed to be thinking. They did seem to notice I was there, which gave them a slight pause too. The red stood out against the trees in the background and at least made people wonder what we were doing.

Further evidence of the red appeal: Later when I was going to catch the train home, I made a mad-dash for a train I saw just sitting at the station. I was 3/4 the way up the ramp, thinking I’d get lucky, when the train took off. I saw the conductor’s blank face in the rear-view mirror and I jokingly pointed at him and mouthed the words “I know you saw me!” and he ACTUALLY stopped the train full of people and motioned for me to jump off the platform and run up to catch him and get on the train. I have to think my red top pulled at his heartstrings a little bit ;-) I then proceeded to sit next to and have a lovely conversation with a guy who had stayed up all night and was having a rough day “until he saw me.”

A couple days prior, I wore a red shirt out in downtown SF just for more data and was actually somewhat alarmed at the attention I was getting. I passed at least five men within five minutes who I felt looked me deeply in the eyes with an “I want to f*** you” message being strongly communicated. This level of attention was certainly above what I would consider to be normal, even for a decent-looking chick like me. So that was pretty strong confirmation of the red data I’ve seen on the internet as well.

I would definitely wear red again to collect signatures, I think this was a clear win this weekend.

What kind of fun have you been having with red?

I saw this chart a friend shared on Facebook, and I wondered if there was any link between how much leave a country mandates for its mothers versus how much social compassion exists in that country. To start answering this, I wanted to look at the economic disparities within the countries. I ended up making a chart of the number of weeks of mandatory paid maternity leave per country (as a percent of Canada’s 50 weeks) versus something I coined as the “Decision Makers Compassion Rating”, which is how much the average household makes per year compared to that country’s minimum wage. The idea being that if the average person makes double what a person on minimum wage makes, they are more likely to be a voter and a decision maker, and they are now so far removed from the less fortunate person’s circumstance that social care may lag. This, of course, assumes that wealthier people have more political sway.

The statistics are not perfectly researched (harder to find for South Africa and Pakistan, for example), but it is clear the the US ranks very very low (2nd only to Mexico on this chart) on the Compassion Rating as well as providing 0 weeks mandatory leave for mothers. The 48% Compassion Rating means the average US household takes in 52% more than the minimum wage earner.

Canada is not much better, showing the average Canadian household makes 40% more than a Canadian working minimum wage. So maybe its 50 weeks a year is a wonderful fluke!

Most of the other Compassionate countries on this chart do not have a wide income disparity between the average household and those making minimum wage. Surprisingly the numbers are above 90% in many cases. Exceptions are Mexico, Japan, and Spain.

A few countries got left off because apparently there is no minimum wage in a few countries. Wages there are determined through bargaining agreements. Learned something new…

Not sure if the evidence is conclusive, but it’s a start to a hypothesis…

Time for a new experiment! I’m on a team trying to get AB1648 passed in CA, the CA DISCLOSE ACT, which basically forces (shady) political ads to disclose who ACTUALLY funded the advertisement.

So I had this idea that if I’m going to help collect signatures, I could use SCIENCE to help us maximize our effectiveness. Up until now, the campaign has been wearing GREEN shirts when gathering signatures. My hypothesis is that wearing RED shirts will get us more signatures. What do you think?

Funny, as I gave the opposite advice to the SAVE the RAVE committee when we were preparing to appear at City Hall to speak as a group. I suppose I didn’t want the ravers to come off as aggressive people, as we were trying to plead the case that electronic dance music wasn’t a threat to youth nor law enforcement. I think it worked for us not to wear red in that case!

Red helps you stand out: 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/08/08/could-wearing-red-boost-your-earnings/

Men are friendlier to women who wear red: 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/9220356/Men-prefer-women-in-red-because-they-think-they-will-sleep-with-them-on-first-date.html

Women are more attracted to men who wear red: 
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20012387-501465.html

Red intimidates your competition or at least puts the judges in your favor: 
http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2012/08/does-color-olympians-clothing-affect-competition-outcomes

Results to come Sunday afternoon!

Having achieved a house to live in that met every criteria I asked for (near BART, in price range, 2nd story, 2 or more housemates, accepting of cat, hot tub, ability to decorate living room), I thought I would further test my manifestation abilities the other day:

I received in the mail a few weeks ago a car key, and a flyer from my credit union about a used car sale happening. The flyer announced that a winning key had been mailed out and that one only needed to show up at the used car sale and test the key in their lock box to see if it was a winner. So a week ago, the second/final day of the sale, I had stashed the key and flyer in my purse and headed off to church. I had allotted just enough time to get to church assuming a bus would come within 10 minutes. When I got to the stop, the scrolling screen announced more than a 30-minute wait. I glanced across the street and noticed a bus was coming for the opposite direction. That bus would take me toward the used car sale. I decided to run across the street and take that bus instead.

I stopped off at a coffee shop along the way, pondering my odds of winning the car, which was a 2012 Mercedes. I also considered my need for a car. I was soon to be moving to Berkeley, and between coaching and my businesses a car might really come in handy. I wondered to myself whether I could affect my luck by simply believing that I would win. A few months back, I had attended a summit where a coach’s name was drawn from a basket of names (of which mine was also included). When she won, she declared she just *knew* she was going to win. She had wanted it oh-so badly. I remember having felt somewhat indifferent about whether I would win. So I wondered if the desire to win could really impact the odds of one winning, and thought I might test this hypothesis.

It is said that to get what you desire, you must bring yourself to the frequency of whatever it is you desire. In this case, I imagined myself sitting in my new Mercedes, feeling not surprised that I won it, feeling like its owner. I tried to imagine myself winning it and feeling what that would feel like, but as if I had *known* I would win it all along. This was a difficult visualization! I wasn’t sure exactly what this energy should feel like, but I tried meditating on it as I finished my breakfast.

One thought that interrupted me was “What if someone already has won the car yesterday?” I knew this was within the realm of possibilities, yet I tried not to dwell on it so as to not have it affect the outcome! I also thought, “How could you change destiny now?” The keys had been chosen several weeks prior, so was there even a way to affect the outcome at this point by the power of my mind? Although the likely answer was “no”, I continued my “New Mercedes” energy and traveled on toward the used car sale.

When I arrived at the sale, the faces of the men sitting at the “Try your key here” table said it all. The car had been won the day before. I shrugged it off, tried the key in the box anyway for good measure, and went inside the lot to browse the vehicles. Immediately one car stood out to me: a used 2009 Smart car with a white exterior, sunroof, and a flashy red interior. I remarked what a funny-looking car it was, and the salesman asked me if I wanted to drive it. I did. I had been thinking about driving a Smart car ever since I started seeing them during my valet jobs. Everyone kept telling me how poorly they drive, how stupid they look, and how unsafe they must be, but I could only see the benefits: likely safer than a moped or motorcycle and could cart groceries and/or two people.

And with the convertible top open and the fun gear shift hand pedals, I just fell in love driving it! Before I knew it I was inside making the deal happen and had papers in hand. I decided to have my law firm review the papers, which annoyed the sales guys, who wanted to finalize the sale same-day. At that point I was in a hurry to leave to my next appointment. The sales guy asked me if I wanted to put down a deposit, but I decided to play my bets that it wouldn’t sell and told him no, that I’d just get back to him the next day.

Around 4pm the next day I had finalized insurance quotes and had an attorney review the contract with me, but by the time I called in, the salesperson let me know with as much empathy as he could muster that they had sold my car the night before. “Well, I took that risk,” I told him, and he mentioned I could look online for similar cars at their Fremont dealership. I decided then to pay the local SF Smart car dealership a visit, to see what they had in stock. After speaking with the sales lady there, she mentioned the terrific lease deal they had going for new Smart cars. I told her about the model I had tried out and she candidly mentioned that they had improved a lot since then (transmissions especially) and stopped just short of saying that she wouldn’t recommend the used version anyway.

So in the end, I may end up with a brand new 2012 Mercedes after all, and for less money than the used version would have cost me. Was it the power of my mind? Did I just manifest a car? Did I want it so strongly that it made itself happen, albeit in the most unexpected way? I’ll give this experiment a solid *maybe*. :)

I had a step-change in my vision this week which was really exciting and actually pretty emotional.

I discovered the important concept of “trying” to see without straining. It was important to make an effort to have distant objects come into focus. The eyes are used to being passive and letting the glasses/contacts focus the image so they aren’t used to working. The key point here is, however, that healthy eyes don’t FEEL like they’re working when they are working. It FEELS effortless and yet there is focus involved.

It kind of reminds me of what I thought at the time was a kind of hippie, bullshit pamphlet I paid for at a health fair several years ago that described a system of “exercise without effort”. The guy was so nice and sincere and the concept was so wacky I felt it was worth paying for it, if only for entertainment value.

Turns out restoring your vision involves exercise without effort, or at least without strain. Thinking about it another way, why would you want to have to strain all the time to see normally? You don’t want to practice feeling that way if you don’t want it to be a permanent condition.

What is happening when I practice seeing distant objects without strain is that my eyes water more and I blink more frequently. I also feel the need to stretch out my jaw more. Sometimes that leads to yawning, which waters my eyes more. Somehow my jaw tension is related. Once it is more relaxed, I see better. My dentist tells me every 6 months that my jaw muscles are too tight and I’m grinding my teeth. I also get better results when smiling and imagining that distant objects are easy to see, counteracting the info my brain is telling me that they are blurry.

Anyway it’s pretty exciting. I’ve noticed the most change first thing in the morning. I can see things across the room slightly sharper, almost like a double image, where before they’d just be a blur.

But it is full time work to blink frequently and not let distant objects register as blurry. I can see why it is recommended to take several days off for every few days of work.

If you think women don’t need to wear makeup, ask yourself one question: where would Oprah Winfrey be today without makeup?

A Harvard study came out last year showing that makeup made a woman appear more competent at work. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/fashion/makeup-makes-women-appear-more-competent-study.html

I decided to throw on some cherry red lipstick before work two days ago, mostly to balance out my nerdy brown glasses, and I was pleasantly rewarded with lots of smiles from the event’s patrons and the largest tip payout of the year so far. I hadn’t made the link until a fellow female valet pointed out a study that showed waitresses received higher tips when wearing red lipstick.

So I thought i’d keep it up another night. Studies have also shown that women in clubs wear more makeup during ovulation, presumably due to its attractive properties (come hither and multiply!). So being past ovulation for the month, I put on the lipstick anyway and some eyeliner/mascara for good measure and went to work.

I did get an extra long stare from the company owner, who I smiled at upon arrival. I interpreted his look as saying “I’m not sure red lipstick is the professional look I want for my valets, but fuck it I’m too busy to deal with that right now.”

I was greeted by the manager, who gave me additional responsibilities upon arrival: “you know how to work a walkie-talkie, right?” Yes, sir! And was given a cushy garage attendant job. Later, another manager indicated that I would be one of three valets (out of 30) responsible for returning the highest-luxury cars to the patrons at the end of the night, and would I have any problems with those responsibilities? “No, sir. I’m a very safe driver, sir.” And later, “how long have you worked at this company?” I was hired a year ago in June. “I thought you’d been around much longer than that. “Thank you, sir.”

Lipstick, baby.

Here’s the protocol I plan to use over the next 40 days:

1. 15-minutes full body yoga stretches in the morning

2. Exercises in morning when eyes are relaxed, keep them relaxed (Good posture, smile, breathe deeply, flutter blink after each set):
a. UP-DOWN x 8
b. LEFT-RIGHT x 8
c. LEFT-STRAIGHT-RIGHT-STRAIGHT x 4
d. CIRCLES 8-10 each
e. CIRCLES, head tilted up 8-10 each
f. CIRCLES, eyes closed, 8-10 each
g. TILTED CIRCLES, eyes closed 8-10 each
h. Top LEFT-Bottom LEFT-Top Right-Bottom Right, x4 then opposite x4
i. Horizontal 8’s – x8
j. Vertical 8’s – x8
k. Nose-Peripheral, Bridge-Peripheral, 3rd Eye-Peripheral x 4 cycles
l. Total relaxation, blinking, slowly open blinking eyes fully relaxed
m. Cover eyes in darkness 4 minutes, 1 minute to relax arms down then open
n. Close eyes, fingers point toward eyes, 1-2 mins, thumbs point 1-2 mins
o. Solarizing at sunrise and/or sunset
p. 100 near/far fully relaxed

3. 1-2 Times Throughout day
a. Close eyes for 20 seconds, artificially lift mood, look at distant object, remember sharpness, repeat
b. Play blinking game for 5-10 minutes

4. Every hour on the computer, look UP-DOWN-LEFT-RIGHT-NEAR-FAR, then palm eyes

5. Night
a. Steam & eucalyptus vapor for 1-2 minutes followed by cold wet paper towels on eyes before bed

6. 4 days on, 3 days off eye exercises

Details, inspired by:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4958881/Eye-Exercises-to-Natural-Vision-Correction-FREE
http://www.collaboration.org/centers/bureaucentral/Departments/eye_clinic.htm

So I’m now super stoked to try my eye experiment again. Back in August of last year I tried to restore my -3.5/-1.25 vision back to 20/20, with zero success. But I realized afterward that I had done it all wrong. I had focused on EXERCISING my way back to good vision, rather than RELAXING my way back to good vision.

http://www.eachlittlemystery.com/eyesight-improvement-test-round-2/

I have a feeling that learning to RELAX and doing this experiment correctly will also help me with my “Achieve orgasm within 5 minutes” experiment as well ;-)

I imagine the energy of RELAXATION will also help me with my “Stop pulling out and breaking my hair” 2012 Mission/Resolution.

EXCITED!!

I’m going to do some eye relaxation exercises tonight before bed, then start a routine tomorrow, which also involves not wearing glasses/contacts for another month (except while driving, of course).

Will refine the “routine” as I go so that I can offer it to you later as something that works. Will set my eye appointment for the end of April so I can verify the results.

So with my dairy-free, sugar-free, gluten-free experiment behind me, I’ve got about three experiments ongoing…and one in the pipeline.

1)No more aluminum anti-perspirant or cooking with aluminum foil. I made baked sweet potatoes slices last night without foil, and whaddya know they turned out fantastic (and probably got some extra iron from the pan). Just sprayed a little extra Pam on the baking sheet and everything came off just fine. Not wearing aluminum-based deodorant has been my biggest resistance so-far. But in the spirit of eliminating heavy metals, it’s gotta go eventually. I’m using lavender Crystal Essence spray this week. So far, smelling fine. I just have to put up with the actually perspiring part. Like an animal. ;-)

2) Natural “birth control” lunaception, lining up periods with moon cycles using mother nature and light. I barely had any period last month, and prior to that it came right with the full moon. A bit concerning, but, hooray! It came this week, and closer to the new moon this time. I hope by next month it will come right on the new moon, so that peak fertility will line up with the full moon, which should make it much easier to practice not getting pregnant without the use of hormones.

3) Orgasm within 5 minutes of sex. TMI warning, again, you probably should have stopped reading at the last paragraph to be honest if you were worried about that! I realized that this outrageous goal I made for myself on a whim a couple months ago should be acccomplished via G-spot orgasm, not clitoral, which is kind of cheating and much easier in my opinion. So, step one is first having a vaginal orgasm. Why I put this off for nearly 32 years I don’t know. The first step was googling it and getting some pointers (Oh! It’s *supposed* to feel like you’re going to pee! Headslap), then experimenting. Yes, I could have gone to see a therapist or done some paid group work but I suppose I still am, at the core, too cheap and independent for that right now. It may resort to that, I’ll give it another couple of weeks ;-) Suffice it to say this is one of my more fun experiments. And, yes, I have enough free help with this one. Thanks for asking. ;-p

Finally, I will probably begin my 20/20 without glasses vision experiment again soon. If, for no other reason than that I’m wearing 2-week contacts that are 3-4 months old and they’re starting to get uncomfortable. Heh.