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Sense of smell
#1
Sense of smell
Article from New Science on smell that's pretty interesting:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21...128301.800

Quote:The power of smell will be no news to estate agents, who often advocate the smell of baking bread or brewing coffee to promote the sale of a house. But there are more subtle and surprising effects too. For instance, when Hendrick Schifferstein from Delft University of Technology and colleagues pumped the smell of orange, seawater or peppermint into a nightclub, the revellers partied harder - they danced more, rated their night as more enjoyable, and even thought the music was better - than when there was no added scent (Chemosensory Perception, vol 4, p 55). Rob Holland and colleagues at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, meanwhile, have found that the hint of aroma wafting out of a hidden bucket of citrus-scented cleaner was enough to persuade students to clean up after themselves - even though the vast majority of them hadn't actually registered the smell (Psychological Science, vol 16, p 689).

I've been interested in scents and perfumes since I was in 8th grade and had to do a project for French class - I chose the history of perfumery as it stood in France. National Geographic had incidentally done a nice spread on perfume and included scratch and sniffs of things Cleopatra and Napoleon might have worn.

What are some of your favorite smells?

Mine are:

Coffee (duh) There's a coffee factory just down the street from us...addicts cry when they pass it.

Honeysuckle on a warm summer night

The shavings from Prismacolor pencils

hint of bleach (I'm obsessive about bleaching my whites and some surfaces - smells very clean to me)

pumpkin

dirt - potting soil, moist and crumbling loam, thick wet clay, warm seedling mixes when I being planting seeds in Feb...the smell gives me an indescribable happiness.

roses, grown at home.

my herb garden in the rain - it smells like possibility of dishes in the future, and satisfaction of hard work

The scent that occurs right at the base of my erstwhile king's hairline


For anyone interested, I get my perfumes from here: http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/welcome.html

It's a sort of gothy site and they have the most wonderful collection of perfume oils I've ever seen. The two I get the most are "Anne Bonny," and "Bewitched" (for the record, I've not met a man yet who wasn't absolutely bewitched by that perfume), both found on the Bewitching Brews page. I'm highly impressed by BPAL: when they set out with an inspiration, they really make a scent to match it. "Burial" smelled like dry leaves and frost earth. "The Lady of Shalott" smelled like damp lilies. "Voodoo" smelled like dying flowers and incense. "Kill-devil" (another name for rum) smelled like the gingerbread and burnt sugar smell of spiced rum. They're well worth the price, for you only need a tiny bit and the bottles last a long time. They even have a section suggesting some of them for men - a guy friend of mine indulged me with samples once and ended up getting "Black Forest" in place of his cologne.
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#2
RE: Sense of smell
I've always practiced the art of lighting and scents at a party.

You want a great party --- Scent and Lighting are everything. Music and location are a distant runner up.

Good post.
[Image: Evolution.png]

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#3
RE: Sense of smell
With a sort of obsession with smells thanks to plant-love and cooking (the yeasty smell of beer or bread makes me swoon) and a roommate who co-manages a Bath & Bodyworks (and takes her job seriously), our house never lacks for the right smells for any occasion. Christmas time is a riot.
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#4
RE: Sense of smell
Oddly though, I wasn't able to smell anything since I was born ... I'm not able to smell something even if the odor is really strong.

But, all my other senses are fine. I don't seem to have a problem tasting and enjoying food either.
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#5
RE: Sense of smell
That's really odd, Rayaan - taste is strongly linked with smell.
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#6
RE: Sense of smell
Quote:What are some of your favorite smells?


Nah....I can't say it.



Big Grin
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#7
RE: Sense of smell
(September 19, 2011 at 2:13 pm)thesummerqueen Wrote: That's really odd, Rayaan - taste is strongly linked with smell.

Yeah, I think it's possible that the lack of my sense of smell does make a small difference to my sense of taste which I'm not aware of.

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#8
RE: Sense of smell
(September 19, 2011 at 2:13 pm)thesummerqueen Wrote: That's really odd, Rayaan - taste is strongly linked with smell.

He should still be able to taste - he just wouldn't have any idea what he was missing. Were we to experience his limited ability to taste, we would probably find it awful, but since he has no comparison, the term "delicious" to him would be just as wonderful as it is to us, because he can only compare it to his own limited ability to taste and not to ours.

A shame really, but certainly nothing that would truly hinder his general enjoyment of life. Especially since he was born with this particular curiosity.
[Image: Evolution.png]

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#9
RE: Sense of smell
Yeah, that's what I figured - it's all relative to what we're used to.

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#10
RE: Sense of smell
Used to love Honeysuckle... got an overly strong rush once that stung. Too sweet now.

Bacon: there is no better smell known to man

Autumn. Whatever that smells of

Lavender

Salad. Cucumber.
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