Bathroom creativity

Why is it that bathrooms seem to be so conducive to thinking interesting thoughts? From the fabled "Eureka!" moment in the bathtub, to the common notion that showers are a good opportunity to contemplate life, to books designed to be read on the toilet, to the two times in recent memory I've had flashes of insight about my research while brushing my teeth, there seems to be something about the place that fosters creativity. Is it the reflective surfaces? The vulnerability and openness that comes with being naked (not so much for the teeth brushing)? The mere fact that it's a little bit of time when you aren't thinking about anything in particular? Something in the water, so to speak?

I did a quick search on Google Scholar to see if any psychologists had tackled the question, but didn't come up with anything. Does anybody know a psych major looking for a research topic?

The geographer's dog

It seems our dog, Othello, has rather acute spatial awareness. Several months ago, when he was just a puppy (not that he isn't still a puppy), he was playing with a toy in the kitchen. Before putting in a built-in pantry, we used to have a strange "hallway" from the kitchen into the main hallway of the house. The "hallway" was about 3 feet by 3 feet, and was little more than dead space behind the coat closet. At the time, we had a stand-alone cabinet in the space, which didn't quite fill it. His toy rolled behind the cabinet. He couldn't fit through to get at the toy, so he went out of the kitchen, around the other side of the coat closet, and to the other side of the "hallway" to look for it.

More recently, we were playing "tuggies." Essentially a mini tug-of-war between his mouth and my hand. I was letting him win the territorial part of the war, so he was going backward, with all of his visual attention focused forward on the toy and me. He backed out the door of a room, into the hallway, and knew exactly when to turn so his butt didn't run into the opposite wall of the hallway.

Othello is the first dog I've ever had, so I don't know how remarkable this ability is, but it seems pretty amazing to me.

Literally?

One of my pet peeves is the misuse of "literally." "Literally" has a very specific meaning, it indicates that, while an expression you have used is typically meant figuratively, in this case you mean exactly what the words say, the literal meaning. For example, when I say I literally have a ton of apples my backyard, I mean I have not just some unspecified large amount (a figurative "ton") but 2,000 pounds (a literal ton) of apples in my backyard. Unfortunately, it seems to have come to be used just to provide emphasis.

In his speech announcing his naming as Obama's running mate, Joe Biden said "literally" at least half a dozen times. In his case, it wasn't quite so grating because most of the time the expression he was referring to wasn't typically figurative. So, in the narrow sense, he was speaking literally.

What was worse was the NBC commentator on men's platform diving last night who stated that one of the divers "literally fell to pieces." Yucky! Was the man decomposing in the pool? Did he have severe leprosy, fingers and toes plunking into the water from the platform? Since they were still diving and not draining the pool for a thorough cleaning I somehow doubt that she actually meant it literally.