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Post by coldmercurywitch on Feb 21, 2003 11:50:25 GMT -5
So anyway....Mum brought this guy home for coffee tonight, at 2am. He seems cool enough, but I'm gonna stay wary of him for a while. I can't sus him out properly because my nose is blocked. His verdict will have to wait until I can smell better again.
I had this horrible feeling when I woke up this morning. I didn't know hy, but I just did. A bit later on we found one of our puppies, dead. Our other rather stupid and clumsy dog, Bear, must have taken it away to play with, cos it was right up the other end of the yard, and cos he's so big he broke it's neck. I hope it died instantly. I can't stand the thought of one of those puppies having to laying there in pain till the pain was too much for it to fight anymore. It already happened to one. The mum rolled on it and broke it's ribs, puncturing it's lung.
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Post by Robin_Sprouts on Feb 26, 2003 10:28:28 GMT -5
So I was driving home from work last night, listening to NPR (National Public Radio) and there was this fascinating article on smell.
'Emperor of Scent'
Luca Turin is a scientist who loves perfume. That love led him to wonder how humans smell, a mystery that has not been solved to his satisfaction. Melissa speaks with Chandler Burr, author of a book that tells the story of Luca Turin and his quest. The book is called The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Obsession, Perfume, and the Last Mystery of the Senses. It's from Random House.
You can listen to the article at this address:
discover.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.jhtml?prgId=2&prgDate=current
It was incredibly interesting and it made me think about the people here who "smell things". Traditionally, the belief has been that different smells are caused by differently shaped molecules. Turin, however, has come to believe that smells differ from one another in their vibrations. This made SO much sense to me, especially concerning our "smellers". The people who are able to smell things about people or their enviroment or whatever, are probably just more attuned to the vibrations that the person (or weather, or whatever) gives off. Go listen to the article, I think you all will find it interesting.
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Post by En on Feb 26, 2003 12:05:15 GMT -5
Yeah, the differently shaped molecule thing always smacked of simulacra to me. That was an early Roman idea of the movement of atoms in the universe and the means of human perception. The gist was, unpleasant or bad things had pointy atoms and pleasant or good things had smooth atoms. Pointy atoms of an ugly thing bumped up against atoms of air between the ugly thing and your eye, and you received an impression of ugliness because of the fact that pointy things cause more bumping than smooth pretty atoms would. If you look at something pretty, you know it's pretty because the little atoms don't bump your eyeballs as much.
I guess I always thought that the membrane on your adenoids has receptor thingys that identify different molecules by their shapes, though. Shapes or vibrations or something. Because you know how you can tell organic smells from metallic ones really easily? I always figured that was because organic molecules are shaped so differently from metallic ones. But yeah, I have no real idea.
The thing I was going to bring up when I got in today? I was just rereading a bit of the Tale of Genji. Nierme, you'd love that. It's got more smell descriptions per sentence than any other work of literature except maybe Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. ;D
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Post by Motley the Mercenary on Mar 11, 2003 20:24:55 GMT -5
ooo, honey, your simulacra give my eyeballs little round bumps ;D
that so would not work as a pick-up.
i wonder if smell is cued by the other senses, is that what you're saying robin? like we perceive that someone is nervous so we smell their sweat, but we might be more attuned to sweat smells because we can see their armpits are wet and they're shaking or biting their nails or something? i kind of see based on what i hear, like, if a person has a really scratchy ugly voice i tend to notice the flaws in their appearance. or if they say stupid racist things i really notice how ugly they look
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Mar 19, 2003 20:11:55 GMT -5
I know that smell and taste are really closely linked. You sense of taste is what helps you smell things and be able to sense subtle differences. So amybe when you have a sensative nose it's not the nose but the tongue that is sensative. Hmmm....
I do get what you mean about your other sense influencing each other and your opinion on someone affecting how your senses take them in. For example, of late my mum has been getting on my nerves more than usual. Why, I don't really know, other than the fact she's just becoming more and more unbearable to live with. It's gone to the point where I can't stand to have to hear her voice. But I've also noticed that of late the way my mum smells to me has changed. Like, to me she smells bad. Not like a BO bad, just.... I can't really describe it properly, but it's like it repells me.
This got me thinking. What if you reach a certain point in life where you are finally ready to leave your parents and as a result your senses alter to try and repell you from your parents. It sounded kinda ridiculous to me when I first thoguth of it, but I think your opinion of your parents and how you feel around them influences it as well. And it would explain why animals in the wild know when to leave their parents. They probably don't have as much emotion and such infulencing them so they all tend to leave at around the same age, where as we humans are different and are able to form our own opinions of our parents and our emotions and feelings towards them get in the way.
Then again I could be reading this all wrong and I'm just too independant for my own good and can't stand to be around my mother. If you had to live with her for 19 years you'd understand why.
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Post by En on Mar 20, 2003 11:56:50 GMT -5
Maybe this is because I'm a history Druid instead of a superpower Druid but I always rather thought that people or animals leave home when the cycle of time is right. Animals, who generally have shorter lives or at least shorter childhoods, go by seasons. People go by cultural cycles. Ever notice how approximately every 20 years, a completely different cultural ideology controls the nation and its politics and art? And when the kids in the nation get looped back around to the part of the cycle where they were born, they cut loose and start trying to assert their own ideas, because although their ideas are different, their place in the cultural cycle is fixed.
*wanders off thinking about that for a long time*
Eh. Aren't taste buds actually different for different types of tastes? Man, it's been a long time since bio...
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Post by KoNeko on Mar 20, 2003 21:40:43 GMT -5
Yeah, actually, all taste buds start out the same (you shed your taste buds every few months) but depending on where they are on your tongue, they pick up different tastes. So, sweet is right up the front, and bitter is in the back, and on the sides are salty and... one other one I can't remember.
Hey, but if the cultural cycle is based on human action, won't it change over time? I mean, surely little disrepancies in the cycle would mean that culture is relative to the individual and can be adapted? I might be wrong on this- I'm a real fan of the Darwinian theories.
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Post by En on Mar 22, 2003 10:48:48 GMT -5
But... if they all start the same, how do they taste different things? *needs help here*
Oh, no question that the human cycle changes. I was reading a book called The Body Project a while back (great, great book, by the way, Koko. It's about how femininity in the western world has changed in the last century or so) and it noted how girls are now physically maturing as much as six years sooner than they were just a century ago.
In case anyone worries that a few committed humans can't change the world... if it only takes a century to completely change the manifestation of adolescence in women by six years... then surely there is hope that if enough of us try to do something good, it will make a difference somewhere.
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Post by KoNeko on Mar 26, 2003 6:35:33 GMT -5
I don't know how they do that, En. I'll have to check. I think it's because not all your taste buds slough off at the same time, so every day maybe a few will go, and others will replace them. And because the surrounding tastebuds are picking up a particular taste, they just do as well. *scratches ears* I don't know. That one is a bit weird, come to think of it. I think I need to read that university biology textbook I uh, borrowed from my high school (for 6 years now... :
Hmmm, with the girls maturing thing, was that a product of social revolution that somehow turned evolutionary? How do such social influences manifest themselves biologically?
Oh, having said that, females that live in communal residncies (such as boarding houses, or even flatmates) are more likely to have their periods around the same time.
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Post by En on Mar 26, 2003 12:13:04 GMT -5
Yeah... that was in that book too, and that's Number 3 on the Top Ten Things Nialle Can't Believe Evolved. Exactly what is the biological point of having a building full of women who all have PMS at the same time?!
Actually social factors dramatically influence biology, at least cause different traits to manifest, if not actually create selection conditions for different sets of traits. Ex. grat., our social structure has enabled us to make sure that a very large number of babies get prenatal and neonatal health care, then good food and multivitamins and fluoridated water. So their genes are like, "Hey, we're in a time of surplus and safety! So that means there must be room for more babies! Let's make this girl mature faster so she can start having them!" Or something like that
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Mar 26, 2003 19:33:44 GMT -5
The phenomenon of girls who live altogether having their period at the same time is, in fact, due to pheremones again. There's generally one girl at least who gives off the scent strronger than the other girls and being surrounded by it all the time somehow affects all the girls menstrual cycles until they are all in sync.
There were some scientists who had a girl walk around without deodurant for a week and had her tape cotton pads under them to collect the sweat and scent of her. then they extracted it with alchol and had sever girls who had never met her to put a little bit of this solution they had made from this girls armpit sweat on their upper lip every day. Within 2 months their menstrual cycles were in sync with the girl whos sweat they had been smelling.
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Post by Rue on Mar 26, 2003 23:15:48 GMT -5
That is so funny. Um, so, currently the people living in my house are all female. That's not the way it's been for the past week with my mom gone, but she's coming back tomorrow night, so everything will go back to normal.
And I thought the being in sync thing was in our genes somehow, because it's completely weird when we run out of pads or something and everyone in the house is like, ''How about we go to the store tonight because I could only find one extra in my room.''
Nierme, since it's all about pheremones, can you smell that too?
So... could people use this to make their cycles either slow down or speed up, if they choose the right crowd to stick around?
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Mar 26, 2003 23:54:43 GMT -5
So... could people use this to make their cycles either slow down or speed up, if they choose the right crowd to stick around? *gets a mental image of lots of girls and omen running around asking other girls and women how long their period goes for then sniffing the armpits of the one with the shortest*
Sorry, my mind works in the strangest ways....
Yeah, I can smell it, but I don't actually feel it altering my cycle if that's what you mean. I'm on the pill now anyway cos my cycle was haywire and all over the place. 28 to 40 days apart.
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Post by Rue on Mar 27, 2003 10:27:48 GMT -5
Do pheremones just smell like sweat to you, but you can distinguish what the slightly different scents mean?
'Cause I just noticed last night, that maybe I've been really smelly because I have my period. I'd figured it was due to spring and I'm running around more and wearing short sleeves more often, but even though I wear deodorant and take a shower every morning, my armpits stink soon afterward.
Then I was thinking about it, either at the same time I was reading a book or while I was falling asleep, and it reminded me of the hospital smell I hated so much. 'Cause that smell wasn't of disenfectant or anything, but sweat, because I'd been stuck in one set of clothes with no showers and a high fever for two or three days straight.
So was I smelling pheremones all of that time, I just didn't know it and I can't distinguish between the different types?
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Mar 27, 2003 19:57:29 GMT -5
Hmmm.....I don't really know if you can smell them or not. I kinda smell both the sweat and the pheremones. Like there's a subtle difference. And the pheremones make my mouth go all watery. The sweat doesn't.
So I dunno. You probably can smell them , like not just smell them but detect them. Next time you notice that kind of smell maybe try seeing if you can pick out something different in the smell.
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