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We’re Olfactory Failures, and Other News
By
Dan Piepenbring
January 29, 2014
On the Shelf
Crepe de Chine perfume ad, 1937
A woman has been
sentenced to read Malcolm Gladwell
.
Speakers of English may be
unusually ill-equipped to describe smells
. Our language lacks, for instance, a word meaning “to have a bloody smell which attracts tigers.”
At the intersection of art and commerce,
poets sell potato chips
. Poets sell iPads. Poets sell jeans and family vacations.
“We will likely make great selfies—but not until we get rid of the stupid-sounding, juvenile, treacly name. It rankles and grates every time one reads, hears, or even thinks it.
We can’t have a Rembrandt of selfies with a word like
selfie
.”
Live like your forebears. Adhering to Ben Franklin’s rigorous schedule allowed this young man to “
pick out a pretty fly outfit
,” among other efficiencies.
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