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 Thursday, June 14, 2007
Pleasant Chemicals

A Brain emailed me the link to this story several days ago, and now I see that Pete is linking to it, too.

I had heard of this program before, from another story months ago. (The new development is the recent discovery under the Freedom of Information Act, I think.) Bizarre though it is, I'm quite sure it's not the stupidest thing our government has ever spent millions of dollars on.

What I like about this story is the felicitous typo -- I say "typo" for lack of a better word, though the error is something more than typographical -- in this sentence:

"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders would become gay," explained Hammond.

There's actually two misspellings in that quote -- so much for copyediting -- but the one I like is the chemicals that are "pleasant" in the human body. Oh, how nice. They're so pleasant!

Are there other chemicals that are pleasant in larger quantities, I wonder? What might explain their pleasance there?

(Tangential trivia for the day: I don't know if "pleasance" is a real word. I do know -- don't ask me why -- that it's the middle name of Lewis Carroll's young friend Alice Liddell, the real-life girl for whom the Wonderland stories were written.)

10:16:51 PM  [permalink]  comment []