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January 10, 2006

Scientists Destinkify Poop

Some scientists work on repairing injured spines. Others peer back into the first moments of the universe. These guys don't roll like that. They're into the important stuff:

A chemist and a nose specialist have just invented a new compound that turns manure's stench into a "pleasant smelling" odor.
The invention could help to ease tensions between farmers and locals who cannot stand the smell of animal waste. In past decades, rural and urban areas were more clearly delineated, but population growth has led to housing developments in areas that once were unoccupied or solely used for farmland.

...

Olfactory neuroscientist Charles Wysocki, who created the compound with organic chemist George Preti, explained to Discovery News that their process uses a one-two punch to snuff manure's malodorous bouquet.

He said one part of the process takes advantage of a natural phenomenon known as olfactory cross adaptation, which happens when the nose adapts to one odor and then becomes less sensitive to a second smell that is perceptually or structurally different from the first.

"The cross adapting compounds in the patent are hypothesized to bind to their appropriate receptor sites and those for the bad-smelling molecule, thereby blocking the malodorous parent molecule from activating its full complement of receptor sites," said Wysocki.

...

The second part of the one-two punch involves odor reducers that are stirred into manure to prevent its smelly substances from being released as a vapor.

The article's full of things you just don't read every day, like the statement that "Scientists still don't why humans find [the smell of crap] so disgusting," or why dogs eat their own feces.

A-Man, who apparently also Goolges for "Malodorous bouquet."

posted by Ace at 10:43 PM

Comments

Not only is the Singularity near, it smells terrific.

Posted by: Allah on January 10, 2006 10:48 PM

That must have been one hell of a Google news search.

Posted by: Slublog on January 10, 2006 10:56 PM

Heh. My poop doesn't stink.

Posted by: The Cow on January 10, 2006 11:07 PM

If the "locals" don't like the smell of cowshit...move eh?

It doesn't smell that bad....at least nothing as bad as you will find in subways of most cities.

Posted by: on January 10, 2006 11:13 PM

Man, I just dropped a mega-nuclear load and not one complaint.

This is sweet.

Posted by: The Clydesdale on January 10, 2006 11:19 PM

aah, finally my area of expertise is called upon. It's the pig poo that really stanks.

Posted by: doc on January 10, 2006 11:26 PM

this is great, now we can all poo in our gardens to fertilize the plants. Or poo on the carpet to freshen things up a bit before guests come over.

Posted by: Village Idiot on January 10, 2006 11:30 PM

Sigh....

I was going to post a comment, but you know,,,,Chris Klein quotes, Fun facts about Chuck Norris, jokes about Dick Cheney's Cheney,,,,,,

Sometimes, it all seems so pointless.

Know what I mean?

Sigh.......

Posted by: Red Jode on January 10, 2006 11:37 PM

OK, what I need is to inject this stuff STRAIGHT INTO MY ASS before my date with Laura Prepon.

"Oh, Conqueror, thank GOD you farted! Fart some more! FART for me, big boy!"

Turns a fart into a mating call.

One step closer to a perfect world.

Posted by: El Conquistadore on January 10, 2006 11:58 PM

So the neighbors, who most likely are newer to the neighborhood than the farmer, somehow missed that big old red building with all the animals?

Caveat Emptor.
or, ceteris perabus, or .... something like that.

Posted by: Tom M on January 10, 2006 11:58 PM

That's fine but its certainly no substitute for this

Posted by: BrewFan on January 11, 2006 06:37 AM

Wow!
Too bad they couldn't come out with this for the opening of Bareback Mountain. Woulda come in real handy for viewers sodomizing each other in the art house theaters. Then again scat might be an aphrodisiac for certain segements of the population.

Posted by: burnitup on January 11, 2006 09:13 AM

If those flatlanders dont like the smell of manure then they shoyuld just return to their big city apartment house and smell the local maure pile known as the NEW YORK TIMES

Posted by: spurwing plover on January 11, 2006 09:28 AM

can I get some of that for my dog?

Posted by: Dave in Texas on January 11, 2006 09:48 AM

Manure has a nice, homey odor to it. I wouldn't want to bathe in it, but it's not that bad. Herbavores don't have the awful-smelling scat that meat-eaters do, in general.

Now, chicken shit--that's some nasty smelling stuff. A chicken farm brings the same aromatic bouquet that a paper mill contributes to a town.

Posted by: rho on January 11, 2006 09:48 AM

The biggest market for this product would be as an additive to mouthwash/breathspray for Senators (think Kennedy, Biden, Schumer, Feingold, Durbin, ad Dem infinitum -- though McCain would need some new sugar-daddy to support his habit, too).

Posted by: Levans on January 11, 2006 09:50 AM

For your odiferous reading pleasure: Smellypoop

Posted by: Madfish Willie on January 11, 2006 01:52 PM

hahaha... check this out

I wake up in the morning, put my foot to the floor,
Make a fifty-yard dash to the bathroom door,
Diarrhea, uh! uh!
Diarrhea, uh!
No pain, no strain,
Just let it drain,
Diarrhea, uh! uh!
Diarrhea, uh!
Some people think it's gross,
But it's really toast.
Diarrhea, uh! uh!
Diarrhea, uh!
Sittin' in the pool,
And I felt something cool,
Diarrhea, uh! uh!
Diarrhea, uh!
I was walkin' down the hall,
And I felt somethin' fall,
Diarrhea, uh! uh!
Diarrhea, uh!

Posted by: Madfish Willie on January 11, 2006 01:53 PM

I'm thinkin', this blog has hit rock bottom. I mean, really. We've hit a new low.

I'm ashamed of myself for laughing.

Posted by: Michael on January 11, 2006 06:56 PM

Well, "Ma" isn't bad. And "newer" is good. What's so bad about manure?

Everyone knows why dogs eat poo: Dick Cheney put gravy on it.

Posted by: Dave Munger on January 11, 2006 07:10 PM

I'll second that comment about chicken shit. It's like concentrated "Sex Panther", except there are no chunks of "real panther" in it to help smooth out the stench.

What's even worse is the slurry that comes out of an egg laying facility. They pipe the shit from the chickens and the rejected broken eggs out into the same lagoon, and the resulting sulferous stench is enough to burn the hair off your head. Our company did a site layout for an egg laying facility a few years ago, and we had to locate all the piping around the lagoons during the process. We did the work during January to avoid most of the fermentation during the warm season, but it was still God-awful.

My God, I'd rather be Rosie O'Donnell's bikini waxer than work one day at one of those places. Thank God for college, eh?

Posted by: Russ from Winterset on January 11, 2006 07:13 PM

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What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
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Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

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The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

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