Before you reach for your next cup of coffee, you might want to read this.

Researchers have found that a moderate dose of caffeine - found these days in coffee, tea, cola and energy drinks - can increase your willingness to be persuaded. That is, provided you aren't distracted too much, you can be convinced of something more easily after a jolt of java.

The study has some very interesting implications. For example, it explains why junk email still flows into our inboxes every day. SOME of you must be drinking coffee when you read your email in the morning, whereupon you are convinced that mail order liver transplant kits are a good idea. You buy twenty, which only encourages the emailer to send out more messages.

The research also means that sales pitches are going to become more interesting. Sales people familiar with the study will ply their prospects with caffeinated beverages; people who wish to retain some skepticism will have to find ways to avoid such drinks. I can see many a potted plant in meeting rooms across the nation coming down with a bad case of the jitters.

Superbowl ads will no longer be hot properties. Instead, advertisers will pay top dollar to get their message on to your coffee cup - after all, what better time would there be to present an ad? I can also foresee major advances in coffee cup technology as a result of this. Forget boring old paper or Styrofoam cups; within a decade, we'll have interactive, multimedia mugs that can download commercial content from the Internet via a wireless connection tucked away in the cup handle. (You laugh - ten years ago, did you think your telephone would play World Cup video highlights?)

I also predict that wives will start bringing fresh, hot coffee to their husbands without being asked. The husbands, ever clueless about such things, won't make the connection between the appearance of a cup of joe and the following discussion. They will simply be convinced that the living room does, in fact, need repainting and that the lawn needs mowing, and further that a dishwasher would be a really good buy.

Loan applicants will start bringing strong coffee to meetings with their bank manager. Students will forego an apple in favour of bringing a caffeinated energy drink to their teacher - especially if they're just about to hand in an expository essay.

In-car coffee machines might make a comeback. Busted for speeding? Offer the nice constable a well-deserved hot drink as you explain how you didn't realize you were going too fast. Failing that, bring a really good cup of espresso to the judge just before your lawyer presents your defense statement.

I think I'd also like to see this research expanded. Will machines and electronics work better if plied with caffeine? I know I'd try anything to get my printer to work properly the first time, even if it meant plugging a USB cable into my coffee pot.

I can also see coffee-laced appeals for donations becoming a trend. Indeed, let's try it now:

1. Go get a big mug of your favourite brew.

2. Come back, sit down, and enjoy it.

3. You think it's a really good idea to send me half a week's pay.

No, huh?

Well, I bet I've convinced you of at least one thing with this week's column.

And that's that you really, really, really want a cup of coffee, right now.

Ah, spring. [Cue the music from Beethoven's Pastorale.] The snow is melting, the birds are chirping and [cue the horrible sound of a symphony grinding to a halt] your taxes are due.

Here in Canada, we are being inundated with cheery television advertisements showing us how easy and fun (fun!) it is to file our taxes. According to these ads, all you need to be able to complete your return is:

1) A shiny new computer, which you will not be allowed to deduct.
2) A super fast Internet connection to the government web site, which, if you live outside metro Toronto, you won't have until the government uses some of your tax money to provide one for you.
3) A cute 9-year-old daughter who will sit on your lap to demonstrate both family values in Canadian society and also explain the Internet to you.

Okay, really, for most people, filing taxes is fairly easy, mainly because their employers do most of the work. Deductions are taken off your paycheque all year 'round, and then at the end of the year you take the papers the employer hands you to an accountant and they figure out the rest.

For the self-employed though, there is just one word that accurately describes the tax process, and it is: AARGH!

This is because it is one of those immutable laws of the universe that tax law can never be simple. Historically, any country that has ever attempted to enact a simple "tell us what you made and send us X percent" rule was immediately invaded and stomped out of existence by hordes of marauding tax specialists bearing WMD (weapons of mass deduction).

Indeed, speaking of laws of the universe, there are an astonishing number of similarities between tax laws and our theories of how the universe began. (Which means that theoretical astrophysicists are just tax specialists gone horribly wrong). Consider:

Big Bang: What we think our universe started with. Also the noise your brain makes when you find out how much you owe the government.

Inflationary theory: Theorists believe that our universe is expanding, and that the stars and planets are moving farther and farther apart. Your tax bill typically expands, when the government denies that deduction for the wild toga party, and your target retirement age will seem farther and farther away.

Big Crunch: Some theorists speculate that the universe will end in a big crunch, when everything collapses in on itself. Your tax bill will also lead to a big crunch, as you attempt to pay it and your regular bills off.

Assuming you have a rudimentary knowledge of quantum mechanics then, it is possible for the self-employed person to work out his or her own tax return. However, even following the letter of the tax law precisely can get you into trouble.

For example, where I live, self-employed people have until June to file their return. However, your actual taxes are due in April. This means that the minute you work out what you owe, you're already two months late and now owe even more, thanks to a concept called "interest." [Cue the big bang noise in the brain.] That is, the government takes a great deal of interest in someone who is late in paying their taxes.

Even worse, the government here has taken to sending out notices to self-employed people that say, "We notice you made X of dollars last year, and that your current tax bill is Y. If you think you're going to make X again next year, you must also start paying Y again. Now."

To which I always want to reply that I'm probably not going to make X next year, because I'm too busy trying to pay off Y. Unfortunately, it is one of those great cruelties of life that taxes are not, in fact, tax deductible.

Yes, they say that taxes are the price of civilization, and if that's the case, things are going to be very, very civilized here this year.

Mainly because we can't afford any more of those toga parties.

Once again I feel short-changed by my public school education.

In between learning the swear words that will really freak out their parents, and figuring out how to trade the healthy yoghurt in their lunches for a stack of cookies, all kids in North America learn that bears hibernate in the winter. This is always presented as just one of those things that bears do; nobody ever points out that this is a pretty cool trick.

Big deal, I bet you're thinking, bears sleep all winter. But consider the following questions:

1) Could you eat your way to 40% body fat before winter sets in and not keel over from a heart attack or diabetes? (My answer: No, but I'd sure enjoy the chocolate feast along the way.)
2) Could you sleep for six months and not get a nasty blood clot or even so much as a bed sore? (My answer: No. Most nights I can't stay comfy for six hours, much less six months.)
3) Could you snooze for six months and not lose bone or muscle mass? (My answer: Heck no. I lose muscle mass if I skip just one trip to the gym.)

Bears do this and a great deal more, apparently, and scientists are trying to figure out how. This is so we can achieve that holy grail of science: bioengineered superhumans capable of watching the entire NHL playoffs in one sitting, while consuming twice their weight in beer and pizza.

Okay, really we want to know because learning how bears hibernate will shed light on human diseases and problems. But what we've already learned about bears begs the question: just what else can we learn if we take another look at the special abilities of other animals? Things like:

Bees: When a bee finds a new source of pollen it goes back to the hive and does a special wiggly bum dance to tell the other bees where to find the source. If we can find a way to translate that, we may be able to figure out what some young male humans think they're trying to say when they dance at the nightclub.

Birds: Bird do not have opposable thumbs, or even hands and arms. Yet somehow they are able to construct nests that look better than a lot of the $30 wicker baskets you can buy at the local store. Learning how they do this may help thousands of parents improve their Christmas morning "some assembly required" skills.

Deer: If we could only figure out why these animals freeze in the headlights of an oncoming car, we could capture bad guys faster. This would quickly end all those dangerous police car chases that make great television viewing but tend to be a bit hard on pedestrians.

Frogs and Toads: Once we figure out why these creatures are so dumb that they don't hop away when you're about to step on them, we will have the key to preventing stupidity in humans. Of course, manufacturers of extreme sports equipment may be working to suppress this knowledge already.

Hummingbirds: These tiny birds can flap their wings up to 70 times per second. Computer users everywhere want to know how they can do this and not get carpal wing tunnel syndrome.

Dandelion: Truly one of Earth's most indestructible creatures. It knows how to survive repeated exposure to toxic chemicals, how to put down roots so deep you need an excavator to completely remove the weed, and when to duck an oncoming lawnmower (making it brighter than most toads and frogs).

Elephants: I was going to say we could learn something from this species, but I've forgotten what it was.

Octopi: An octopus has no backbone and will squirt ink indiscriminately if threatened. We could- no wait, never mind. Members of the press have these abilities already.

Bears: Getting back to bears and muscle tone, I'd really like to know how they can snooze all winter and still have non-flabby appendages strong enough to bring down a small tree with a single blow.

Indeed, like most women, I'd like the right to bear arms.

We've known for a while that pet ownership can be influenced by the latest trend as much as anything else. Remember when Jack Russell terriers were everywhere, thanks to the TV show Frasier? Ferrets were very popular for a long time, and it wasn't so long ago that iguanas were the hottest cold-blooded thing around.

Owning exotic or unusual animals has been a human obsession for centuries. What has changed in recent years is the ability of moderately wealthy middle-class Westerners to own 'designer' pets - something that would only have been available to royalty in the past.

What do I mean by designer pets? Well, by now you've probably heard of the Allerca GD Cat; where GD is not the usual thing associated with cats ("That GD cat left a dead mouse on my pillow again!"), but Genetic Divergences. These cats have been bred to be hypoallergenic, so you can have a kitten without a Kleenex, or a Siamese without the sneeze.

Allerca's got nothing on Judy Sugden, however. Sugden is the inventor of something destined to become America's next must-have feline: The toyger.

The toyger is a housecat bred to look like its jungle-born cousin, from the distinctive striping right down to the way it prowls around, stalking a fierce, formidable ... rubber squeakie mouse.

Although some cat fanciers are already sniffing in disdain about the toyger's un-catlike behaviour (for starters, it's affectionate), experts predict that single toyger kitten will command a price of around $4000 US. This is because people will love being able to bring a little wilderness into the suburbs, in spite of having moved there precisely to escape the wilder aspects of the inner cities.

Now I bet some of you are already eyeing your tabby cat with dollar signs in your eyes. My advice? Forget it. Cat breeding is not for the faint of heart. For one thing, if you thought giving your cat a pill was hard, consider the difficulties associated with artificial insemination.

Even natural cat breeding is difficult. Owners have to help their charges with elaborate courtship rituals, often involving poetry (T. S. Eliot, William Wordsworth and especially Edward Lear), music (Cat Stevens, Cat Scratch Fever, What's New Pussycat?), and theatre (What else? Cats). The bills can really add up.

Sugden has an advantage over you anyway: Her mother was the inventor of the vastly popular domestic Bengal cat. Sugden bred a tabby with a particularly tigrish looking Bengal with so-so results, and then bred the offspring with a street cat from Kashmir. The resulting kittens were good enough to become the basis for the breed as it is today. (Meanwhile, the Kashmiri cat, hoping to cash in on the fame his paternity will bring, is writing his memoirs. The working title is "The Cat's Meow - The untold story of one punk cat's rise from the streets to a life of cream and canaries.")

While designer cats may sound frivolous, they are not entirely so. The domestic Bengal was invented in the hopes that fewer people would buy leopard stoles if they looked too much like the coat of a beloved family pet. Sugden claims that breeding toygers helps preserve the look and characteristics of a disappearing wild animal. And it's quite possible that many people who might otherwise be silly enough to try their hand at (in?) a real tiger would go for one of these instead. Indeed, since the toyger doesn't require an entire deer for dinner, and does not have the unfortunate ability to bite off your head, it might be a very attractive alternative for some.

As for me, if I had $4000 to spend on felines, I'd adopt one from the humane society for free and donate the cash to a wildlife federation.

No really, I couldn't do one without doing the other - it's a cat 22, you know.

So, I've been very busy, working on things like house renovations, keeping the laundry at bay, and of course, solving the world's energy problems.

For the latter, I believe I've hit upon a solution. All we need to do is come up with a device that can tap into hobbyist power.

I say this because I was recently taken (read: dragged) to the National Train Show. An event put on by the US National Model Railroad Association, it was a huge display of model trains, Lego, layouts, accessories and more. And because I'm married to, and have apparently given birth to, train enthusiasts (darn defective genes!), we visited all 188,000 square feet. Twice. Slowly.

It's not that I didn't enjoy myself. Indeed, I learned rather a lot about what is modestly dubbed "the world's greatest hobby." For example, I learned that a proper train "layout" (read: play area), includes not just a track and a train, but model buildings and houses, model people, simulated topography, signals, switches, software, sounds and controllers. Given the amount of excited gawking and pointing my eldest did, I also learned that anything I would consider "disposable income" has already been disposed of, well in advance.

I discovered that model trains come in different scales. "N" scale, for example, looks just as painful to step on and as easy to lose as Lego bricks. "G" scale trains are for the backyard, just in case your resident enthusiast(s) feel the need to take over both the entire house and the whole garden.

It also turns out that when train model manufacturers say they build authentic pieces, they really mean it. I am still trying to wash the smell of oil and smoke out of our clothes.

Finally, I realized that I have a new business and marketing god: whoever the genius was at Lego who decided to launch both train and Star Wars-related product lines. Lego already had a cult-like following, so putting it together with other cultish pursuits was like creating a license to print money. Indeed, in the display at the show, just one skyscraper had more pieces in it than I've owned in my entire life (although I sense that's about to change).

This brings me to my point. The entire building was practically crackling with enthusiasm and creative energy. As I listened to two men talking very earnestly about the best methods for creating a realistic granite cliff, I realized that train layouts involved a lot of thought, effort and care. Each one of them must have 1000s of micro-inventions and clever ideas to solve problems. The same can be said about many hobbies, crafts and pursuits.

I don't know what compels us to devote this much of our time to such things, but I think if we could manage to siphon off even one percent of that personal energy from hobbyists, we'd have enough to power the entire eastern seaboard in North America.

Or at the very least, enough power to keep all those model trains running on time.