who only by moving can balance

Okay, I have only got a very little further with this book, but Footnote Number Three to Chapter One made me make a noise with my face.

In a discussion about olfaction, and specifically quantifying how good various species are at it:

I've deliberately avoided putting hard numbers on the scale of these differences. It is easy to find estimates, and very hard to find primary sources for them;; after an hours-long search that included a scientific paper that sourced a factoid to a book in the For Dummies series, I fell into an existential void and questioned the very nature of knowledge. Regardless, the differences are there, and they're substantial; it's only a question of exactly how substantial they are.

Part of the reason it is slow going is that there are A Fair Few Footnotes; they're Good (see above); and because this is a library loan I am reading via Libby on my phone, which handles footnotes in a way I'd be (or at least think I was) fine with if my ereader weren't so much better at it.

The other part is that I keep getting distracted by following up references. e.g. a fifteen-minute trawl prompted by Footnote Number 12:

... Noam Sobel, a neurobiologist who studies olfaction, has come closer than anyone else to wrangling this complexity [of trying to predict how any given molecule will smell, and how mixtures will smell, and so on and so forth]. While I was writing this book, he and his team developed a measure that analyzes 21 features of odorant molecules and collapses these into a single number. The closer this smell metric is for any two molecules, the more similar their odors. This isn't quite the same as predicting scent from structure, but it's the next best thin--predicting scent from similarity to other scents.

This parameterisation (?) of scent is a 2020 Nature article. Earlier work, published in PNAS 2012 and covered in an informal article by Nature discusses "olfactory white", toward which mixtures of odorants tend -- think white noise or white light.

Alas this trawl also turned up a New Scientist article in which the guy is claimed to have asserted that scent has an important role to play in Women Synchronising Their Menstrual Cycles (which, uh, by 2015 -- when the NS article was published -- had... had its existence as a phenomenon called into question), but I'm inclined (having thus far done nothing more involved than skimming the first sentences of abstracts) to suspect him of common or garden misogyny, of a form that's unlikely to significantly bias the results his group reports over and above the extent to which, you know, Existing In A Society does.

So I'm heading back to Ed Yong! With some new-to-me perfume nerd thoughts sloshing gently around my head.

... actually starts at KGX, where we rocked up nice and early and had lunch at Dishoom (Indian food, uncomfortable colonialism chic [I stand corrected, see comments], very hip, generally highly recommended for the food incl. by some of our relevant friends), on the grounds that A had not been there, followed by dessert at Ruby Violet, because it was right there, followed by cheerfully jumping all the (utterly miserable) Eurostar queues and inviting ourselves into the business lounge. (Sort of. The person checking me in told us we could use it, so I went and told the doorman that, and he was all "..." and checked with his superior and we were waved in). Whereupon I established (thanks to A) that the developed-as-a-symbol-of-Anglo-French in-collaboration-with-Raymond-Blanc Eurostar-21st-birthday-special gin goes really very well with fizzy rhubarb drink.

Between all of that and the light meal served us on the Eurostar we did not in fact require dinner. Also, we were very tired. Via a slight detour around the sculptures Les Marines and a decorative bench at the Gare de Lyon, we got into the hotel (the chair just about fits into the lift and through the door to the room) and curled up on the bed and watched an episode of Elementary and ate some more of the raspberry-and-treacle tart we picked up cheap in Waitrose the night before and fell asleep and it was great.

Today we achieved breakfast at the boulangerie just over the road (A had not previously met the tiny pistachio-and-raspberry financiers and is a convert), walked from our hotel all the way over to the flea market, poked around there with mild amusement for a little bit, acquired some entirely cromulent pasta-and-pizza for lunch because Hungry, got the bus over to État Libre d'Orange, indulged me in some perfume, and then wandered very slowly back to the hotel again. (We set off around 5:30 and had declared that Dinner And An Early Night would be a good idea. We... finished our bibimbap round the corner from the hotel at 9:30, and got in fairly recently. We were slow in part because A has blistered feet & I have blistered hands, and in part because Pokemon.)

I have been absolutely delighted by the dates in all the paving; the art; the Viaduct Of Art including this preposterous furniture and particularly the Square 38 desk nonsense; the churches various, some of them in the middle of terraces and some of them by themselves, and especially the beautiful clocks designed to match the rose window; the ironwork and doors, everywhere; the duck house in the gardens. I have learned A Thing about Parisian buses, as well, which is that unlike London the route maps have a symbol indicating if a stop is inaccessible (i.e. there isn't space to safely get the ramp out), which is useful, especially as we're intending to mostly do public transport tomorrow, see above re blisters on our motive extremities.

At ÉLdO, I ended up acquiring a small bottle of Tom of Finland (because A went "oooooooh" when I waved the paper strip at him, and obviously I need to expand my collection of woody leathers), plus samples of The Afternoon of the Faun and Putain des Palaces. I also ended up trying on Je Suis Un Homme; amusingly, it starts out smelling like I've spilled orange essence on myself and ends up a slightly odd powdery leather, which I think is mostly the fault of my skin not enjoying patchouli much. This is a Bit Of A Disappointment given how much I love the bergamot in Penhaligon's Endymion, but ah well.

Also smelled: Rien Incense Intense (much smokier; A definitely prefers Rien itself and I think I probably do too); Antiheros, indeed v lavender; Attaquer le Soleil Marquis de Sade, which smelled on the strip exactly like Rien does on me and is therefore gorgeous but of limited interest; Eau de Protection, which was a powdery rose; You Or Someone Like You, a rather aggressive apple made interesting through rose and mint and general cold freshness; and, of course, Sécretions Magnifique, famed for giving rydra_wong nightmares. Disappointingly, on the strip it seemed to me pretty much a slightly odd metallic tang; I didn't quite dare put it actually on my skin to see what it did.

Irritatingly, looking at the full note listing I realise Putain des Palaces contains lily-of-the-valley so I'm almost certainly allergic to it, so once I've tested it I'm likely to be looking to give it away -- shout if interested!

On the upside, despite not having properly done my homework in advance, I think the only thing I'm particularly sad about not having smelled is the cologne -- and given that I've already got four of them (... or is it five?), I think I can manage not adding another to my collection...

1. Yesterday got much, much better.

( Read more... )

Comme des Garcons Series 2 Red: Sequoia. This goes on good cognac (and nothing else); during early stages of drydown develops an undercurrent of rotting wood and loam. It turns into hot sap and soil and a slightly crunchy layer of conifer needles underfoot on a hot day; it is glorious and therefore, naturally, discontinued. I will be keeping an eye on eBay for bottles of this.

( +4 )

"... that is quite the loveliest lemon-flavoured cleaning product I have ever met."

WELL YES I DID SAY IT WAS YOUR OVERENTHUSIASTIC CITRUS-SCENTED CLEANING-PRODUCT FRIEND. :D

(... of which I continue unfortunately fond...)

Today has been a good day.

Today I made friends with some new perfumes on my way through John Lewis, on which very brief notes.

• Bulgari Jasmin Noir: unpleasant bubble bath, fading to mild but non-descript bubble bath. Perfume says "** Noir is the new silly. This is the sort of industrial-strength, thickly scored, too-many-cookes (four perfumers, apparently) composition the French call une soupe. TS describes the genre as cough-syrup ice cream, and I agree." Unlike Bulgari Black, doesn't simply turn into vanilla cookies on me.
  
• Guerlain Shalimar: goes on very strong, fades to quite a pleasant vanilla with something a little medicinally wholesome around the edges. Unnoticeable except right up against my skin, a couple of hours on; on me, it is entirely unclear why Perfume gives it five stars (but then they give two stars to a bunch of stuff that's nuanced and exquisite on me, so! Skin chemistry...)
  
• Guerlain Shalimar Initial: described by the counter staff as "lighter, more rose". Well, maybe, but it went on uninspiring and has faded away to pretty much nothing. Underwhelming first foray into Guerlain.
  
• Penhaligon's Lothair (linked because actual notes listed): thing that grabbed me most today. Amazing on the testing strip and in the bottle. It goes on very green on me, with the fig milk obvious; unfortunately I seem to amp juniper so it spends the first few hours just smelling like I've bathed in gin. Some time on, it's instead vanilla and lightly burned toast with a hint of bitter greens and, yes, tea. Alas it is probably not nice enough on me to buy any, but once again I am kind of tempted towards scent lockets...

Other adornment-related snippets: Lush Christmas release apparently hits shops on the 3rd of October, whereupon I will pounce on a large bottle of Rose Jam, if it is rereleased this year. There is going to be an enormous Lush store (biggest in world, containing spa, etc) opening on Oxford Street in March. And METALLIC TEAL LIQUID EYELINER.

The sky's beginning to turn deep blue. I appear, accidentally, to be watching sunrise around a solstice again, more or less.

Here are some things that have happened: yesterday, I finally (finally) got 24-hour access to our buildings; this was supposed to have been granted back when I started. And in spite of the fact that I was in the middle of a mass spec run, I actually managed to head home from work before 8pm; and my first use of the access was getting in at 6.45am to check on how my run was going (my machine time technically finished yesterday, but today's user wasn't going to get started til 10am, which gave me a solid 12 hours for an overnight run even if I'd got it started late), and the answer was good and I have data and tasty TASTY data.

I spent a significant chunk of the day sorting out the data-from-the-machine into something useful in my master spreadsheet; another chunk messing about with some of my incredibly shonky python; some on final tweaks to the transfer report (still need to write some and replot some graphs then send it off tomorrow, oops); and yet another on a flurry of e-mails about the solid month of labwork I've got planned once I return from the US trip, along with sitting around with my supervisor being excitable about rocks. I've got ten grams of a mica previously analysed as containing 550 parts per billion (ppb) of thallium; bear in mind that the average concentration of thallium in the mantle is ~2ppb, and most of my samples have concentrations around 30ppb. For these typical samples, 100 milligrams is enough to get three to six measurements out of -- what on Earth we're going to do with ten grams of 550ppb I am not entirely sure and nor's my supervisor, but that's the smallest quantity they'd sell it us in. (Exciting times in analytical terms, incidentally: of the three sample sets I'm wanting to shove through chemistry in July, #1 is of direct and immediate relevance to the PhD in terms of being actual data relating to the central question; #2 is tangentially related and getting me second authorship on a paper that's basically ready to go apart from firming up the numbers; and #3 is a set of geological reference materials nobody's measured my element-of-interest in properly before, which (1) have direct relevance to the PhD in terms of helping work out why I'm seeing what I'm seeing in the whole-rock samples, and (2) will make a nice little technical paper in their own right, which I have hopes of submitting by the end of the year.)

I also spent some time on the phone to Air Canada, who I am finding somewhat infuriating (oh crap, must remember to fill out my visa waiver application...), and was left sufficiently pissed off that I went "buggre all this for a larke" and jumped on a train to Brighton, where my useless ex + the Boything + sebastienne + Entomancy + I ate dinner at Giggling Squid before a subset of us headed off to a gig. sebastienne was there for David Devant & His Spirit Wife; I was there for 30 minutes of Indelicates, and because they were a support act and the rest of the audience were being awful and talking I got to sing along without feeling bad about it. (Also, I am so so SO looking forward to the repeat CNdeliMechs show happening in London in September -- CN Lester, The Indelicates, The Mechanisms as triple headliners, please join me, it'll be fantastic, I'll link to the deets once they've actually been announced...)

-- and then meandered my way home via the last train from Brighton to London, and shenanigans with night buses (I keep thinking I should maybe do something a bit more rigorous than go "I know roughly where I want to go and I'm comfortable navigating by a mix of dead reckoning and Boris map" for the occasions when I get back into London at gone 1 with no idea how to get home except a certainty that I can wing it) and walks: I do still adore walking round central London at 2, 3 in the morning (having said which, highly unusually for me I was wearing a skirt in public today and got noticeably more hassle than usual, though not enough to actually upset me).

Right. Yes. To sleep as the sun is rising, the better to be human when That One Lady gets into town later today...

That One Lady brought her bottle of it along this evening for me to make friends with.

I think it is important that I tell you that normally, she eats spiky. She eats spiky and turns it smooth and sweet and smiley and lovely. Vetiver won't hold on her. Nothing will hold on her.

This is not, in general, at all true of me.

Nonetheless, on TOL Bulgari Black ends up somewhere that she describes as "High Femme Drag".

About this perfume, rydra_wong says:

... this doesn't seem to be stocked in department stores at all here, but is splendidly cheap to buy online. And it has a marvellously tactile bottle, simple and heavy and coated in matte black rubber. And it's another fun one for bizarre reviews; it's notorious for its "burnt rubber" note (anyone who secretly enjoys the smell of petrol at gas stations, this is your scent), but the intense smokiness is derived partly from tea (Lapsang Souchong), and it's also extremely wearable.

In many ways it's close to Dzing!, but the burnt rubber/smoky tea is more upfront (versus Dzing!'s discreet Bandaid note, its ginger/saffron strangeness), and it then turns into a plainer, richer vanilla (whereas Dzing! has vanilla in it but dries down to more of a thin sweet wood/musk). Leather coupled with rubber, obviously. Comfortable kink.

And vass adds to the conversation. The notes of this perfume are, in theory, lapsang souchong, rosewood, bergamot, cedar wood, oak moss, vanilla, amber, sandalwood and musk.

On me, it starts out smelling unabashedly and unavoidably of vodka. No, really, someone opened a bottle of really expensive vodka and let it infuse the air.

And then after five minutes they tipped a bottle of cheap vanilla essence into it.

After ten minutes, it is briefly acrid and smoky, and after half an hour? Pure unadulterated vanilla biscuits, warm out of the oven and satisfyingly buttery, all the way down. Forever.

I WISH TO FILE A COMPLAINT THIS IS NOT HOW THIS IS SUPPOSED TO WORK ;_;

Note that synecdochic has set up smellsgood for those of us that way inclined ;)

( Huitieme Art - ciel d'airain )


( Serge Lutens - femininite du bois )



Still to go I've got Tauer Orange Star & Lonestar Memories, and Knize Ten, but I'm not particularly feeling in the mood for any of those today (LM turns into WD40 on me - it's hilarious but I'd like to write it up properly) so you get the theoretically femme scents today. ;)

... goes through an early phase of unpleasant acridity reminiscent of burning plastic and hothouse flowers in jumbled profusion, before settling on "cheap synthetic handwash".

I assume it has redeeming features on people who aren't me.

(This observation brought to you by trying the sample on my way out of the pharmacy with my prescriptions.)