stinky springtime links

image via

Some fresh stinky tidbits to send you into your weekend (May it be fragrant!):

• Hitting right in the sweet spot of Nosy Girl's Smells & Stories Venn diagram is this New York Times piece, "Your Brain on Fiction:" 

"Words like 'lavender,' 'cinnamon' and 'soap,' for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells."

• Also squarely in that sweet spot, a beautiful, pertinent passage from The Art of Fielding, a book I finished yesterday and highly recommend: 

  "He could smell the way Owen's life and habits--weed and gingery cleaners; bookbinding glue, stiff white soap and garlicky tang of his skin; hardly a trace of Henry except for a faint bouquet of ribbed gray sock--had imagined themselves deep in the walls and floorboards of the place."  

• Nosy favorite D.S. & Durga gives New York magazine a peek at their studio. I love the details and the promise of those tiny bottles. Woodyamber! Beaver extract!  

 The makings of East MidEast must be on those shelves somewhere! [photo by Wendy Goodman]

• In a column called "Politics, Odors and Soap," Nicholas Kristof mentions a study that found people "offered harsher, more moralistic views after 'fart spray' had been released in the area."  He also notes that conservatives "secrete more skin moisture when they see disgusting images, such as a person eating worms. Liberals feel disgust, too, but a bit less." Does this make for sour-smelling conservatives who grow harsher and more moralistic in the company of their sour-smelling brethren?
• Do you read the blog Letters of Note? They recently posted a letter of advice, well worth a read, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter. The letter referenced Shakespeare's Sonnet 94 and this couplet burrowed into my brain: "For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds/Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." 
• Thanks to Britta, Beth, & my dad for these last quick links:
• Astronauts lose their sense of smell in outer space (so they crave hot sauce and look like Charlie Brown).  
• Hot on the heels of their story that spicy foods may promote heart health, NPR reported that "intense aromas lead to smaller bites." This story does not address the inverse phenomenon of instantly needing to take a giant bite of anything yummy that you smell.
• The pope gets his own fragrance, and you'll never wear it!

nosy motto

Study title/t-shirt slogan pictured in Auragie Nebulae, © Steve Cannistra

Avery Gilbert followed up on his recent post about a study linking body odor and personality with details of a study showing a connection between personality and sense of smell. The post and the study itself raise some really interesting questions (about the very idea of a "generally sensitive person," about empathy & smell, about rose-scented markers called Sniffin' Sticks), and I don't want to be reductive, but the most exciting thing to me about this study is the title: "Agreeable Smellers and Sensitive Neurotics." I feel like that should be the new banner for this blog! Or the motto for my life. I love it.

From the study's abstract (if you're at all interested, the study is worth a look--I'm no scientist, but I found it accessible):    

Significantly enhanced odor sensitivity in socially agreeable people, significantly enhanced trigeminal sensitivity [Gilbert describes this as "the hot in chili pepper"] in neurotic subjects, and a tendency for enhanced pain tolerance in highly conscientious participants was revealed. It is postulated that varied sensory processing may influence an individual's perception of the environment; particularly their perception of socially relevant or potentially dangerous stimuli and thus, varied with personality.

Gilbert's take: 

This is a well-executed and straightforward study: measure personality, measure sensory thresholds, and look for correlations. Therein lies the rub: correlations are just that—they do not prove causation. Nevertheless, the authors spend a lot of time editorializing for the idea that sensory thresholds determine the development of one’s personality. Perhaps. But the opposite case can also be made: that being considerate and empathic toward other people disposes one to develop more finely tuned sensory abilities. 

To reiterate my main takeaway:  

Could this title be any more perfect? Rejoice, Agreeable Smellers and Sensitive Neurotics! You are among friends. 

britta bonus

[click here to enlarge]

Look what happens when you feature science smarties on the blog! You get some straight-up aromatic chemical compounds, drawn and annotated by Britta.