Smells Blog

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2009-06-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

Time for a whiff of fresh air,
I'm corresponding from the plush bucket seat of a luxury coach, somewhere between Hartford, Connecticut and Boston. Yes, friends, we can now coddle our laptops as we cross state lines at 55 mph, all for a paltry $10 thanks to the Bolt Bus!

I'm three hours into the trip, and we just took a break at a truck stop/Burger King for some stretching and snacks. I didn't buy anything, even after spacing out at an ad tacked above the urinal for "2 for $2 Cheez-Its or Meat Stix" Well, now I'm paying the price 'cause the whole bus smells like fries. Steve just called them "devil's fingers" to try and cheer me up but all I can do is sit here and miserably pine for BK while steeping in the smug self-satisfaction of having "will power."

Upstairs/Downstairs

2009-05-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

1. Cigarette smoke wafting in from the downstairs fire escape
2. Fried chicken grease/MSG from the Take-Out Chinese Joint next door
3. Turmeric from the kitchen
4. Pot Smoke from under the door on the second floor
5. Fried chicken grease/MSG from under the door on the second floor
6. Home-grown cilantro!

Mashups

2009-04-23T21:38:00.000-07:00

For all of my local readers, I present the New York City Subway Smell Map, courtesy of Gawker. Don't be fooled by the "no maps here" writing all over the image. Simply click out of "subway" mode and into "hybrid," then scroll over any subway stop to view reported odors at that station.

Pretty gross.

The Smell of Coffee Tables in the Morning?

2009-04-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

Last night, while walking in circles on Powers Street, I had an idea for a Coffee Table Book. It will be about 12" x 12" and an inch and a half thick, with a posh leatherbound cover: something that Indiana Jones or Dumbledore could be proud to have on top of his coffee table. Inside the book, every page will be blank. They'll all be sprayed with a different fragrance, with a sheet of fancy wax paper separating each one (the same kind of wax paper that is unnecessarily inserted into wedding invitations). Fragrances will range from the ordinary such as glossy x-men cards and tile cleaner to rarities like historical colognes and out-of-production perfumes. Don't you wish you could smell Elizabeth Taylor in the 70s?

In the back, there will be the solutions, as a Magic Eye.

Preorder at half.com.

Pizza Signs

2009-02-19T14:50:00.000-08:00

It has been approximately three years since I have enrolled in an English Literature course, and I sometimes find myself making up little assignment prompts in order to better understand language and meaning. As I was walking past Danny's Pizza II on the way home from the corner grocery today, the doughy smells coming out of the place were intoxicating as usual. I asked Alisha whether she thought the smell of pizza could be considered a symbol, which seems absurd until we agree on one key point:

the smell of pizza is not pizza-in-itself

Now lets throw some definitions up on the board (courtesy of cedarseed.com):

Sign: Signs are events or things that direct attention or are indicative of other events or things.

Symbol: A symbol represents something in a completely arbitrary relationship. The connection between signifier and signified depends entirely on the observer, or more exactly, what the observer was taught.

These are fairly close in meaning, but I'm sure as hell nobody taught me to love the smell of pizza. So it's official: pizza smell is a sign, which points to pizza. Please feel free to comment with supporting/debunking evidence.

Just so you don't think I'm taking credit for anything.

Sharks!

2008-12-25T14:18:00.000-08:00

My good friend Mr. Dylan McKeever recently posted a comment regarding SHARKS. Now, as any real child will tell you, sharks can smell a drop of blood from miles away (you'll be able to spot the nerds--they'll say that sharks can detect "one part per million"). Sharks possess nature's most deadly nostrils, but it gets better. Just like our ears can detect the general location of a sound source, i.e. you turn your head when you hear your name called from over there, sharks' "nares" (noses) can do the same. They have STEREO smell!

Let's consider stereoscopic sensing for a second. We can see in 3D because of our brain's understanding of the differences between the two images received from our two eyes. We hear in stereo because our ears are spaced six or so inches apart and rotated away from each other, which leads to slightly different sounds entering each ear. Now let's pretend I just received a new boombox for Christmas. If I place the two speakers right next to each other, the sound all seems to come from one place, and all the instruments seem squashed together, packed into a narrow corridor of sound. But if I space them twenty feet apart from each other, it sounds like the band is spread out really wide! It's easy to tell where each instrument is coming from within the stereo "image." NOW, lets apply this concept to our favorite swim team mascot, the Hammerhead Shark. What at first seems like merely a good aesthetic decision becomes a hell of a tool. Because the nares are spread to the tips of the hammer (up to a meter wide), they create a more pronounced image of the smell, and they are able to track their prey with great accuracy. Don't you wish you could smell in stereo?!

ACTIVITY: Hammerhead Kids
"Smell in Stereo!"

materials:
bike helmet
wooden dowel, 1 meter long
aquarium filter tubing ~1.5 meters
electrical tape

1. Attach wooden dowel to bike helmet using electrical tape

2. Cut aquarium tubing in half, attach the end of each half to the ends of the dowel, tape thoroughly

3. Insert free ends of tubing into nostrils.

4. Explore your new world!

First In a Series: The Seven African Powers

2008-12-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

Name: The Seven African Powers

Cost: 50 cents for 22 sticks
Verdict: B+

As Xmas approaches lets not forget that two out of three of the original gifts were smells. Frankincense and Myrrh are two sappy resins and the main ingredient of certain high-quality perfumes and incense. In Ancient Rome, Myrrh was worth more than its weight in gold (it can now be found in mouthwash and "gargles"). Although I would like to review these two luxury scents, I don't have the means. But I won't let simple poverty stop me from giving the gift of smell!

I crossed the street to my neighborhood 99 cent store and picked up a box of "The Seven African Powers" incense. The purple bilingual package features an image of Jesus on the cross, surrounded by seven catholic patron saints. A smorgasbord of symbolic imagery is littered at his feet, although I could only make out a few of the more prominent items including a spear, a ladder balanced on air, and a chicken on a pedestal.

The sticks are a brilliant purple color, matching the box. In the bag, they smell soapy, crisp, and clean. Once lit, the burning wood combines with the aromatics to form a surprisingly palatable log-cabin-fireplace meets old-man's-aftershave blend. The ash takes forever to drop and ends up in a Chinese snake banana. It leaves a nice little aftersmell: when I left the room and came back a few minutes later I was pleasantly surprised. It is certainly not of highest quality, but an inoffensive incense is rare in itself and it is a bang for the buck. B+.

The Speed of Smell

2008-12-15T13:13:00.000-08:00

We all remember Hippolyte Fizeau's famous 1849 speed-of-light experiment from sixth-grade science lessons. Through some byzantine combination of a mirror, a cigarette lighter, and a zoetrope he calculated that light must travel at 313,000 kilometers per second, remarkably close to the accepted measurement of 299,792.458 kmps. William Derham calculated the speed of sound in the early 1700's using a shotgun and a stopwatch (343 meters per second). But smells seem to be difficult measurement subjects. Children's television host Bill Nye attempts to explain:

The speed with which a smell travels depends on how fast the molecules are going, how massive they are, the relative temperature of the molecules making the smell, and how many molecules there are in a given volume, their density. We express all this mathematically as a gas's temperature and pressure.

Not good enough, Mr. Nye! I want numbers! PSI's vs. FPS's PDQ! Over at Yahoo Answers we find a more convincing explanation:

Smells are just chemicals. The speed that chemicals diffuse in the air is predicted by Graham's Law when you compare two gases.

Use oxygen as your standard gas.

The ratio of the speed of diffusion on the smell compared to oxygen is equal to the square root of the inverse of the mass of the oxygen molecule divided by the mass of the molecule of the smell.

The molecule of sulfur has 8 atoms of sulfur in each molecule, oxygen has two atoms per molecule. The mass of sulfur is 32 and oxygen is 16. The mass of their respective molecules are 8x32 and 2x16 or 256 and 32. Take the ratio of the two, oxygen over sulfur is 32/ 256 or 2^5/2^8 or 1/8. Take the square root of 1/8 is 0.354.
smell is about 1/3rd of the average speed of the molecules of oxygen in the air.
the speed of smell is smell is about 1/3rd of the average speed of the molecules of oxygen in the air.

YES! I'm generally willing to hedge my bets on the reliability of Yahoo Answers, typos and all, but what is the average speed of oxygen molecules in the air? I traipsed over to http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov to investigate:

There's a really neat mathematical equation based on a theorem called the "equipartition theorem" which states that the energy of a gas system (equal to 1/2*mv^2) is equal to the temperature of the gas (equal to 3/2*kT). If we rewrite this equation to solve for velocity we get:

sqrt(3*T*k/m) = v

where T is the temperature in Kelvin, k is the Boltzman constant = 1.3805*10^-23 J/K and m is the mass of the gas particle.

If we assume that the average mass of air (since it is a mixture of different gases) is 28.9 g/mol (or each gas particle is around 4.799*10^-26), and room-temperature is 27C or 300K, we find that the average velocity of a single air particle is around 500 m/s or 1100 miles per hour!

So, if we take a 27° C room (a balmy 80.6° Fahrenheit), with air molecules moving at 500 m/s, the smell of a rotten egg travels at 166.66 meters a second! Is that FAST or WHAT!

Apples to Apples

2008-09-09T22:09:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody,

As you may or may not know, I recently moved to New York City, and I have some exciting news to report: New York City smells great - all the time! Whether you are strutting down Avenue A, hopping on the Fung Wah in Chinatown, or just plain hiding behind a garbage can ogling sunbathing girls in Central Park, an offensive smell is nowhere to be found. Clear to the horizon, no foul odor, as far as the nose can smell. It's really incredible!

nope, still good!

PS. Do you ever think about how at any given time, the smells you smell represent a rough chemical approximation of the sphere of air around you, about how your nose sucks up all these tiny particles of everything and like, nostril-licks them to see what they smell like, and then sends off the lab results to your brain?

Smells vs. Tastes

2008-07-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

Many readers have asked me about the relationship between smell and taste. It's true that a connection can be drawn between the two, which I have illustrated in the following graph:

I hope this clears things up.

Outdated science

2008-07-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

When I told my friend Tyler that I had been keeping a blog about smells, he pointed to an African talking drum sitting in the corner of his living room and said, "You should smell that drum." These drums have a compelling history: because one is able to alter the pitch with ease, a range of tones is available to the player. Speech-like tones and phrases can mimic those used in some African languages, and in certain cases, a drum can communicate language nearly as well as a human! Here's a snippet from a 1942 article on the subject:

The Bulu dialect of the African Bantu language can be drummed almost as well as spoken. Reason: it is even more a language of tones than official Chinese. Where the Chinese use four tones, the Bulus have five—two high, two low and one in the middle. So distinct are the pitches and rhythms of the language that sometimes a couple of people "too far apart to hear actual words call back and forth using only the syllables kiki in the tones of the words they would employ in ordinary conversation."

Whoa! Here's another:

A hungry man returning from a hunt may stop at a village four miles from home, send a message to his wife to come in from her garden in the jungle and feed him. Message in drum code: "She is better than the daughter of other tribes, she who stands there. Oyono must not join the fighting, I don't want Oyono to die. Come walk quickly, quickly, I feel hunger not small." Dinner will be waiting when he gets home.

All pretty neat stuff, except the drum smelled awful! Talk about old milk on your telephone mouthpiece!

In all fairness, the drum is partially carcass. I needed to know more about this nasty skinflap, so I read an article called "How to Buy a Goat Skin for your D'jembe." I was wary at first, as the title seemed to be the result of a "how to buy a ___ for your ____" Mad Lib. It was the real deal, however. Turns out that "Skins from Africa tend to smell, especially male skins." So there you have it, Tyler, stick to those X chromosomes the next time you are in the market for a new D'jembe skin.

Note to Consumers! pt. 2

2008-06-24T22:09:00.001-07:00

Relief has finally arrived for all of us who would like to cash in on the much-regarded benefits of Omega-3 fish oil, but recoil at the thought of a dead herring crawling back up the rathole ten minutes later. Target Brand Origins Omega-3 Odorless Fish Oil Capsules will deliver the same dose of Docosahexaenoic acid without the unpleasantness! For those not in the know, Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is the active ingredient in fish oil, which may as well be snake oil for the ailments it claims to cure: it supposedly reduces the effects of Alzheimer's, shrinks cancerous tumors, and it "has recently gained attention as a supplement for pregnant women, ... [with] improved attention and visual acuity" in infants.

Target knows they have a potential goldmine with this one, as is clear from the catchphrase in the cartoon bubble usually reserved for the "TNT" on a box of Roman Candles:

NOTE: Snake oil is also an actual Chinese remedy for joint pain.

the Sleeping Bag Challenge

2008-05-21T14:42:00.000-07:00

I used to challenge my friends to the Sleeping Bag Challenge. The object was to enter the sleeping bag headfirst, then, when you reach the bottom, to turn around inside and make it back out headfirst. First one to fresh air was the winner. I remember thrashing around at the bottom of the sack, claustrophobic as hell, the air and skin becoming hot and moist with the creeping fear of getting stuck, which, as I grew older became a real threat*.

We've been in the middle of a two-week-long heat wave, or, in Austin, "May." It's 95 degrees outside (but it feels like 97). Last night, a sulfuric smell drifted down our street. I thought at first a sewer line had burst, but it was a bit too "eggy" and it didn't smell inside of the house. The night was breezy and the stink kept drifting in from the east. The cause is yet unsolved.

*The Sleeping Bag Challenge is not intended for mummy-style bags.

Note to Consumers!

2008-05-01T16:19:00.000-07:00

Watch out for OFF! brand "Smooth & Dry Feels Comfortable Powder Dry Formula" bug repellent! Upon application, this stuff creates a dense sphere of extra-potent rubbing alcohol vapor. You might as well keep an open canister of tear gas in your breast pocket.

It smells pretty good when it dries, though.

Good Things Come in Groups of Three (legs)

2008-04-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

Above the top-lefthand corner of my front door is a light. It's the low-wattage kind, the one that looks like it oozed out of a soft-serve ice cream machine. The light does a great job at deterring would-be burglars from acting out the following scenario:

1. break in
2. discover we own no gold, jewelry, tvs, dvds
3. not much in the fridge, either
4. punch holes in the walls out of spite

On top of keeping the security deposit safe, the light also acts as a watering hole for a smorgasbord of strange, huge, bugs. At any given moment one can walk outside at night and spy a giant locust, a grasshopper, a cockroach the size of a silver dollar, mosquitos, mosquito-eaters, june bugs, cicadas, moths, and the green anole lizards that feast on these delightful creatures. The other weekend we found this guy perched on the inside of the door frame:

As I proceeded to capture this insect using the "jar and postcard" method, I noticed a fresh cinnamon-like smell in the air. I gently nudged it into the jar (minding the antennae), carried the jar-with-bug into the kitchen, where my live-in girlfriend Alisha was, and asked if she was chewing Big Red. Negative. A whiff of the top of the jar and it was clear that this bug smells great.

Our first hypothesis was that it was a giant cockroach with the legs of a grasshopper. It was surprisingly hard to pinpoint the exact genus and species, even with internet searches such as "central texas cinnamon insect." Finally, we came across the profile of the Leaf-Footed Pine Seed bug (Leptoglossus corculus), a relatively harmless beast, considered a pest but not a threat in the Midwestern United States. They obtain their scent from the pine trees that they feed on, and reportedly smell terrible, spraying a foul stench of pine-tar on their attacker. This one must have been dwelling in my grandmother's potpourri cabinet, as I would gladly give it a home in a little dish in the bathroom.

Note: Cinnamon oil is a natural insect repellant, so perhaps this bug considered us potentially harmful insects.

Alisha and I were supposed to meet some friends at a nearby bar/coffeeshop/all-around-hangout, so we covered the top of our new friend's jar with wax paper, poked some holes, and took him along. We all sat in a circle, passed the bug-jar around to the left, and took hits off the top. If there was such thing as a smells-bong (working on it) I would gladly pack a bowl of this guy.

Here is the Leaf-Footed Pine Seed Bug at the Rio Rita Lounge, next to Texas's favorite, cheapest, beer, the Lone Star:

Austin, Tx

2008-02-29T10:22:00.000-08:00

My city is this kind of city:

This city is my kind of city!

the Daily Special

2008-02-26T15:31:00.001-08:00

I thought I would provide the reader with a brief report of my daily fragrances:

8:45 Breakfast. User-defined.

9:25 Walk to bus stop, pass construction site two houses down. Pine dust, usually. A rounded aroma, like being wrapped inside of the tree itself.

9:26 Next block, corpse-rot. Coming from the garbage can? Buried in the yard? Inside of the house, God forbid?

9:37-9:48 The "'Dillo" is Austin's free downtown shuttle, which conveniently operates in a straight line from my street to the front stoop of the restaurant in which I work. Being free, emissions from clientele typically swing from one end of the palette to the other. Depending on one's location within the tram, one may encounter the sickly residue of a night spent behind a dumpster, or the test-tubed, panel-approved cologne of a young professional. Tarred in bile and feathered in Toucan Sam's plumage, staring out the window.

9:49 The front of the restaurant typically smells great. Customers' plates steam like isolated little volcanic vents of maple syrup, egg, and hashed brown. I walk past, through the swinging steel door, and into

9:50 the back of the restaurant, which smells exactly like the cocktail that one would expect when combining those plates of food, plus a 5-gallon bucket of coleslaw, pickles, and ranch dressing, plus a multitude of cleaning detergents and topped with a dripping tube of hanging salami.

2:00 pm. Repeat process in reverse.

Of course this list is highly truncated, as a full report would take ages to compose.
Am looking forward to yours,
-ed

MagicLoon

2008-02-16T17:55:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, a chilly cold front combined with a brief yet convictive thunder-and-lightning storm made today less than ideal for outdoor scentsmelling. However, the indoors time allowed me to catch up on a few of my favorite emerging technologies. Simulated aroma, a notion which laid its roots almost a century ago, has been all but dormant since its introduction. The practice enjoyed a brief moment in the limelight with 1960's Scent of Mystery, the first and only film to ever make use of "Smell-O-Vision," a system that synced with the movie and released corresponding odors into the audience (the killer smokes a pipe). Its execution was filled with flaws, however, and its lackluster first impression sealed its fate. Thankfully, a few companies are now wielding the tiny torch left behind.

One of these companies is ScentTv. Giving a winked nod to every sci-fi movie in the"dystopian future" genre, they've adopted the slogan, "making you healthier, happier, and smarter." When you sign up with ScentTv ($27.95/mo), they will send you their Scent DomeTM and provide you with complimentary Scent DomeTM cartridge replacements and tech support, not to mention access to their three channels of Scent Enabled Content. Under the "MagicLoon" channel, a show titled "Don_t Touch My Bone" (sic) is available. The check is in the mail, friends!

Another fine company, DigiScents, is currently pursuing a blog-only business model powered by Google AdSense. However, their ownership of the DigiScents.com domain name will surely prove to be a wise investment.

| |
(0_0),
-ed

Unfastidious Sedentation

2008-02-15T14:07:00.001-08:00

I was thrilled to come across this passage while reading on the way to work today. It exhibits a shared passion for the unadulterated scents of humanity. Its Masculinity is stolen from Eden, before corrupted even by pachouli and Nag Champa. Within its precedent, pheromones act not as messengers from a future sexual act, but as seeds in one's own guilty conscience.

The temperature began to rise Monday. On Tuesday, the night, the darkness after the hot day, is close, still, oppressive, as soon as Byron enters the house he feels the corners of his nostrils whiten and tauten with the thick smell of the stale, mankept house. And when Hightower approaches, the smell of plump unwashed flesh and unfresh clothing--that odor of unfastidious sedentation, of static overflesh not often enough bathed--is well nigh overpowering. Entering, Byron thinks as he has thought before: 'That is his right. It may not be my way, but it is his way and his right.' And he remembers how once he had seemed to find the answer, as though by inspiration, divination: 'It is the odor of goodness. Of course it would smell bad to us that are bad and sinful.'

- William Faulkner, from Light in August
(pgs. 298-299)

A Farewell to Mouth-Breathing

2008-02-13T07:06:00.000-08:00

Well, friends, the time of year has finally passed when icy respiration is necessarily detoured through the mouth, when aromatic data is lost, either trapped outside of the impenetrable wall of frozen mucus lining our nasal cavities, or forced to endure the recycled, humid, humanbiosphere inside of a scarf. We can once again allow our collective sinus to thaw and balloon our nostrils like two parachutes opening in unison.

With Valentine's Day just around the corner we can all expect the typical barrage of saccharine "pop smells" sweating out from the backrooms of our neighborhood markets and panaderías. In fact, just last night I found myself in one such shop that was producing treats at such a pace that one was able to SEE THE SMELL IN THE AIR. A fine mist of sugary perfume hung, a thin veil of imitation-synesthesia. Over the past days and weeks, vacant lots have secreted flower-stands in a desperate frenzy of boomtown logic, frothing at the mouth, escalating into tomorrow's nectareous climax. But let's not constrain our attention to the hackneyed topics of flora and pastry counters!

Some of our most beloved and important smells are those which go unnoticed to all but the most astute proboscis. While "wet cement after a rain" and "right outside of the laundromat" are clearly well-balanced and favorable "heritage odors," I encourage my readers to conduct their own field experiments. One must not become discouraged simply because they do not possess an expert whiffer, or even a Nasal Ranger. No, the pleasures of smelling are open to all, and, as one practices and develops their sense, one is bound to find greater and greater enjoyment in the activity. I would like to extend a warm and sincere welcome to all, and will now provide the reader with a fun and informative list of trivia:

Olfactoids:

In some prosimians, such as the Red-bellied Lemur, scent glands occur atop the head.

In women, the sense of olfaction is strongest around the time of ovulation, significantly stronger than during other phases of the menstrual cycle and also stronger than the sense in males.

As of yet, there is no theory that explains olfactory perception completely.

For more on the Nasal Ranger, please visit their website.