Sideswipe: February 26: Living with the self-righteous flatmate
25 Feb, 2021 04:00 PM
3 minutes to read
Smell identity kit The most interesting use of police dogs concerns scent identification, a method analysed by Dutch and other researchers, but adapted by the unique paranoia of the Stasi. As early as 1973, the Stasi began collecting smell samples of a large number of citizens. Sometimes this was done with a special chair that the subject was asked to sit on during a visit to the police station. The chair had a dust cloth on top of the seat that was clamped into place by a removable frame. The subject had to sit in the chair for 10 minutes, and after the interrogation was over, the dust cloth was removed and stored in a glass jar. Sometimes Stasi officials did not bother with being subtle and merely told subjects to put a cloth under their armpits. The cloth was carefully handled by tweezers in an effort not to allow contamination by other human scents.
Six claims about life before the 1990s young people won t believe 11th February 2021
DO you want to shock younger people with tales of life in the pre-internet olden days? Here are some things to freak them out with.
You had to buy songs you didn’t like
Otherwise known as ‘albums’, and you always knew there’d be quite a few duds on the LP as you handed over your cash in WHSmith. All were still far better than an iTunes Ed Sheeran playlist, however.
People wrote letters
Definitely mention this because the texting generation will assume you were sitting in candlelight with a quill pen while wearing a Shakespearean ruff as you wrote a quick letter to your university girlfriend/boyfriend in 1989.