There is a particular kind of noise called white noise that you are not supposed to hear because your brain filters it out. My bring does not filter it out. My brain finds it, locks onto it, and cannot ignore it. They make sleep machines that generate white noise to mask other sounds. They keep me awake, and quickly drive me to something approaching frenzy. They install white noise generators into the ceilings of open plan offices to reduce the sound of chatter between cubicles. You are not supposed to hear them. I have made techies crawl into the ceiling to disconnect all the ones in my vicinity because they drive me round the bend. I believe that your wife can smell egg on a washed plate.
PS - Soap doesn't do shit to eradicate odors. Soap's job is to disrupt the electrical tension of water so that particles can more easily bind with water (while losing their adhesion to the plate, in this case) and thus be flushed/rinsed away.
If you want to destroy odors (whether in the air or on a plate or even from your clothes), what you want is vinegar (the one called "white vinegar" in the US, made from grain alcohol).
Love this experimental update. Years ago in a new apartment I smelled a gas leak, faint but persistent, the gas company told me it was all "in my head." I wouldn't relent, so they came back again with more sensitive instruments, and lo, there it was, a tiny leak from a cracked pipe in the middle of the wall. Wish I could say this extended to delightful smells but it seems to only work on gas and weird chemicals. Nestled in there next to the amygdala, the olfactory bulb is quite a mystery
Thank Priya for me for (apparently) solving a long-standing mystery in my household. For years, erratically, plates have emerged from the dishwasher with a mysterious smell, nauseating to me but undetectable by my wife. I attributed it to detergent residue, presumably left by a faulty rinse cycle, and, in saintly resignation, I would simply rewash the plates by hand before using them. I never connected the smell with eggs, which to me don't smell, or at least not offensively. I suppose that a tiny film of egg residue, roasting for half an hour in the drying cycle of a dishwasher, might have a smell not produced by a frying pan.
Hahahaha I also have this super power. It all started when as a child, I was making a cake with my neighbour and we cracked an egg into the cake mix and it had an embryo in it. I vomited, and from that moment on, even the smell of eggs would make me gag…even after the plate had been washed 😂
It took one persistent boyfriend, and a whole lot of bacon, finely chopped vegetables & spices while gradually weening me off the added extras and just down to eggs over a period of a few years before I could eat just eggs on their own again. Even now, I’m very specific about how I like my eggs.
Interesting to know I’m not the only person who can do this, everyone I’ve met thinks I’m delusional.
The "Burden of Knowledge" issue is very intruiging. One possible way of thinking of the issue is in the negative. The burden hypothesis is that there is so much already that you now have to climb this mountain of knowledge before you can add your stone to the mountain.
But I feel that I am experiencing something different. It seems lke the problem may be more like: we know all of this stuff already so there is the illusion that there is no need for new ideas because the old ones cover this already. Except they don't. This is a case of false complacency. I have had something published in genomics that addresses issues in morphogenetics. The ideas are rejected because people think that the current theory explains it adequately. A similar thing happened in physics around the start of the 20th century, when people were sure that everything could be explained by the physics of that time - all you could do was to add extra decimals of precision.
Seen this way, the fundamental problem is not the effort of arriving at new knowledge so much as it is the effort to get people to realize that the current models have a problem - they are insufficient.
This is more a Buren of Ignorance or a Burden in Insuffciency. The effort is not in arriving at the new knowledge as it is in getting people to realize that there is a need for the new knowledge.
When it comes to Philosophy of Science I admit to not having studied the field enough. What I just stated might well be part of the analysis that Kuhn did on paradigm shifts. The shift would only occur once people believe that the old paradigm is inadequate.
Thanks for this! I need to try the egg test with my wife. Regarding dietary stuff, have you read the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes?
“When I asked Subject 5 to describe the indescribable smell, they responded, “It’s indescribable.”” This sentence just made my entire day. Thank you!
There is a particular kind of noise called white noise that you are not supposed to hear because your brain filters it out. My bring does not filter it out. My brain finds it, locks onto it, and cannot ignore it. They make sleep machines that generate white noise to mask other sounds. They keep me awake, and quickly drive me to something approaching frenzy. They install white noise generators into the ceilings of open plan offices to reduce the sound of chatter between cubicles. You are not supposed to hear them. I have made techies crawl into the ceiling to disconnect all the ones in my vicinity because they drive me round the bend. I believe that your wife can smell egg on a washed plate.
Another highly informative and entertaining post!
PS - Soap doesn't do shit to eradicate odors. Soap's job is to disrupt the electrical tension of water so that particles can more easily bind with water (while losing their adhesion to the plate, in this case) and thus be flushed/rinsed away.
If you want to destroy odors (whether in the air or on a plate or even from your clothes), what you want is vinegar (the one called "white vinegar" in the US, made from grain alcohol).
Love this experimental update. Years ago in a new apartment I smelled a gas leak, faint but persistent, the gas company told me it was all "in my head." I wouldn't relent, so they came back again with more sensitive instruments, and lo, there it was, a tiny leak from a cracked pipe in the middle of the wall. Wish I could say this extended to delightful smells but it seems to only work on gas and weird chemicals. Nestled in there next to the amygdala, the olfactory bulb is quite a mystery
An absolutely delightful update!
Thanks for a fun array of stuff! 🗝️
Long-time fan--thanks for the shout-out!
Thank Priya for me for (apparently) solving a long-standing mystery in my household. For years, erratically, plates have emerged from the dishwasher with a mysterious smell, nauseating to me but undetectable by my wife. I attributed it to detergent residue, presumably left by a faulty rinse cycle, and, in saintly resignation, I would simply rewash the plates by hand before using them. I never connected the smell with eggs, which to me don't smell, or at least not offensively. I suppose that a tiny film of egg residue, roasting for half an hour in the drying cycle of a dishwasher, might have a smell not produced by a frying pan.
Hahahaha I also have this super power. It all started when as a child, I was making a cake with my neighbour and we cracked an egg into the cake mix and it had an embryo in it. I vomited, and from that moment on, even the smell of eggs would make me gag…even after the plate had been washed 😂
It took one persistent boyfriend, and a whole lot of bacon, finely chopped vegetables & spices while gradually weening me off the added extras and just down to eggs over a period of a few years before I could eat just eggs on their own again. Even now, I’m very specific about how I like my eggs.
Interesting to know I’m not the only person who can do this, everyone I’ve met thinks I’m delusional.
The "Burden of Knowledge" issue is very intruiging. One possible way of thinking of the issue is in the negative. The burden hypothesis is that there is so much already that you now have to climb this mountain of knowledge before you can add your stone to the mountain.
But I feel that I am experiencing something different. It seems lke the problem may be more like: we know all of this stuff already so there is the illusion that there is no need for new ideas because the old ones cover this already. Except they don't. This is a case of false complacency. I have had something published in genomics that addresses issues in morphogenetics. The ideas are rejected because people think that the current theory explains it adequately. A similar thing happened in physics around the start of the 20th century, when people were sure that everything could be explained by the physics of that time - all you could do was to add extra decimals of precision.
Seen this way, the fundamental problem is not the effort of arriving at new knowledge so much as it is the effort to get people to realize that the current models have a problem - they are insufficient.
This is more a Buren of Ignorance or a Burden in Insuffciency. The effort is not in arriving at the new knowledge as it is in getting people to realize that there is a need for the new knowledge.
When it comes to Philosophy of Science I admit to not having studied the field enough. What I just stated might well be part of the analysis that Kuhn did on paradigm shifts. The shift would only occur once people believe that the old paradigm is inadequate.
If you want to know how to pronounce zanakh in Arabic (Ramallah accent/dialect), there is a sound file you can click on at the Wiktionary page:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%B2%D9%86%D8%AE#Pronunciation_3
Thanks for this! I need to try the egg test with my wife. Regarding dietary stuff, have you read the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes?
Thank you for the consistently insightful (and funny) content.
Use high-quality Dixie paper plates for eggs. Next slide please.
What’s The Sixth Sense?!? 🤔🤔