"There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms up-stairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms..."

"... of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lav...

The center of America, Obama wrote, is "a place where decency and endurance and the pioneer spirit were joined at the hip with conformity and suspicion and the potential for unblinking cruelty."

I'm just dipping back into "Dreams from My Father," looking for something — looking to see if the young Obama, the child Obam...

At the Lift-to-Smell Café...

... it's nothing to sniff at.

Willful anosmia?

You've heard of willful blindness, where someone doesn't see what they don't want to see. Something is happening that you approv...

"Objects characteristic of business environments, such as briefcases and boardroom tables, make people more competitive..."

"... less cooperative, and less generous. Smells matter too: mere exposure to the scent of an all-purpose cleaner makes people keep the...

Steve Jobs's feet.

From the Walter Isaacson biography "Steve Jobs" : He was still convinced, against all evidence, that his vegan diets meant that he...

"The Constitutional Right to Insult Your Neighbors With Tombstone Displays."

Just one section of an article — PDF — in the New York State Bar Association Journal about Halloween-related lawsuits. (Via ABAJournal .) T...

"There's a growing movement to make sure that smells are incorporated into historical records."

"Historians, perfumers, and florists all want to make sure we can smell the past." I've read that certain countries have a ...

"Smelly Hair Syndrome."

What does syndromically smelly hair smell like? Some describe it as "... stinks like a diaper." Others have compared the smell to ...

"No one was cleaning the street, and there were large pools of urine accumulating and festering."

"It was extraordinarily bad — bad enough that people would avoid the corner walking by... It seems like a small thing until you realize...

"Your name is Brian Mitchell, and you're attracted to young girls, and you're just a loser."

"... you're not going down as a servant of God. You're going down as a child rapist. You're going down as the lowest of the...

"A cruise is bad enough -- locked aboard a floating death-trap with people -- other people! -- with no means of escape."

"And then the ship stops. And the toilets stop working. And everything stinks like a sewer, which is a nice smell to smell when you...

Corpse flower alert!

Here at the University of Wisconsin. I was there for the great 2005 blooming. Blogged day and night .

Democrats attack homeless as unserious and fake.

In Arizona. “It’s unbelievable. It’s not right. It’s deceitful,” said Jackie Thrasher, a former Democratic legislator in northwest Phoenix.....

"Mythic Giant Earthworm Not Extinct, Spitting, or Sweet Smelling."

If only it were extinct , we could imagine that it spit and smelled sweet. Is it better to know it's still around, but not that interest...