The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

CD invented a (somewhat) perpetual motion device and nobody noticed...

I was also lucky enough to get to handle solid arsenic and solid phosphorous.  Good times.

Our sense of smell is really weird. By way of contrast, our eyes are basic photoreceptors tuned to a particular band of electromagnetic energy. Photons get focused on a given area, the energy causes the cells to fire, an electrical signal travels through a nerve, and the brain does its thing.

Smells come from basically airborne molecules. While a photon hitting our eye is either in band or out of band, molecules can be anything at all! The body goes through great lengths to arrange compounds in the body so they arrive at their receptor in just the right formation and conformation, but the nose just has to work with whatever gets breathed in.

If something called a "human" ever had a evolutionary use for the sense of smell, we lost that need too far back to even notice (any product touting "human pheremone" is crap. They might exist, but we can't detect them). However, the human brain has a great database of smells, and we quickly relate them to memories and emotional states in a much more intense manner than any other sense!

I think our sense of smell helps us avoid eating bad food, spoiled rancid meat for example.

I find women have a better sense of smell and I wonder if in pregnancy that evolved to protect the fetus from pathogens.  Men could get sick and survive but a pregnant women could lose the baby by eating bad meat.

I let the wife taste the wine in restaurants, her sense of smell is much more acute than mine.  

I heard a seminar once that compared our noses to gas chromatographs, they operate in the same general way apparently.

I think our sense of smell helps us avoid eating bad food, spoiled rancid meat for example.

I find women have a better sense of smell and I wonder if in pregnancy that evolved to protect the fetus from pathogens.  Men could get sick and survive but a pregnant women could lose the baby by eating bad meat.

I let the wife taste the wine in restaurants, her sense of smell is much more acute than mine. 

I heard a seminar once that compared our noses to gas chromatographs, they operate in the same general way apparently.

I used to let my girlfriends taste as much wine as possible

When I was in grade school sometimes the teacher would pass out tests etc which had been memographed
I used to love to smell a memographed sheet I havent really smelled anything quite like it since

apparently, the mayor and the chief didn't smell anything wrong

Now I'm thirsty

I did some of that.  My favorite class which I did with the local Riedel rep was to serve the same wine in different glasses to show how it makes a difference.

That astonishes everyone who thinks the stem doesn't matter.

I also did a lot of blind tastings, like the same varietal at different price points.