'Sweet smell' wafts through lower Manhattan

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'Sweet smell' wafts through lower Manhattan

Postby nomo » Fri Oct 28, 2005 2:08 pm

'Sweet smell' wafts through lower Manhattan<br><br> It was as if someone poured a vat of maple syrup on City Hall Park.<br><br>Or maybe it was vanilla coffee, one police officer downtown suggested. Hazlenut, said a passerby. Pancakes, glazed doughnuts and roasted peanuts, suggested others.<br><br> "It doesn't smell like it's usually supposed to smell out here, that's for sure," said Danny Alvarez, 26, of Brooklyn, who stood at what appeared to be the eye of the scent storm.<br><br>By 9 p.m., from the Battery Park to Chinatown, scores of reports had wafted in to 311, the city's information hotline, and to 911, of a "sweet smell."<br><br>And so, in a city where suspicious packages cause hours-long traffic delays, the calls were enough to prompt a brief but immediate response by emergency officials armed with sensors to determine the source. "We take everything very seriously in this day and age," said Jarrod Bernstein, a spokesman for the city's Office of Emergency Management.<br><br>Thursday night, authorities had not been able to determine the source. But on the streets, where nostrils were the judge, the perfume was undeniable. "I thought it smelled like flavored coffee," said a Con Edison worker on Ann Street who gave his name as Johnny, 46. "Maybe hazlenut."<br><br>"Syrup," said Vinny, a student from Queens. "After 23 years in New York City, I don't smell anything," he added. "Unless it's money, I don't care."<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/nyc-air1028,0,861248.story?coll=nyc-homepage-breaking2">www.nynewsday.com/news/lo...-breaking2</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p>--<br>When all else fails... panic.</p><i></i>
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sounds like

Postby nashvillebrook » Fri Oct 28, 2005 8:01 pm

the stuff that's in your car heater -- is it antifreeze? we had a heater start to fog the car up with this stuff. smelled just like maple syrup. <p></p><i></i>
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Here's something spooky...

Postby banned » Sat Oct 29, 2005 1:01 am

...Yesterday in San Francisco apparently a bunch of people at the downtown Macy's store got "respiratory distress" and nausea from a 'scent' that no one seemed to know the origin of.<br><br>OK, what are they actually doing?<br><br>Releasing some kind of substance that does damage to the lungs in preparation for the bird flu which will carry the exposed people to the big department store in the sky?<br><br><!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :( --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/frown.gif ALT=":("><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>
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oo oo that smell...

Postby firstimer » Sat Oct 29, 2005 6:40 am

<br>I'm sure that everybody remembers the NRBC dispersion tests that were conducted about 2 months ago in midtown Manhattan. They never said what "inert" substance they released, to be detected by these small 1 man portable tripod mini towers.<br><br> They appeared to be finished, but I noticed that about 1-2 weeks later they were out there again. This time there was no news coverage in papers or tv. Another thing that kind of spooked me was that the collection stations were sometimes unmanned. There would be a cardboard box, perhaps a "road case" and a tripod with a CPU box centered at the bottom, fed by a cable that ran up a 10-12' pole into what I would have to describe as a miniature "boom" microphone.<br><br> I work in broadcast tv, so I know it wasn't an audio recording setup. I was late for work as usual and didn't stop to chat with the guy. On my way home, I passed by the same spot and everything was broken down and packed up. There was some kind of note attached to the box that looked like a "return to:" label. Since I was spooked again, I didn't get closer. You see the London Bombings had just happened, I believe that Rove was supoenaed that week as well. I damn sure wasn't getting any closer to that shit. It felt like a setup for terrorism, but nothing happened until now.<br><br><br>I was up on Thursday. night with my window open until 3am. I smelled nothing. I will say this. In the 5 boroughs, It rained as much as I have ever seen in 15 years Saturday through Wednesday this past week. This smell shows up right after the rain stops. Hmm.<br><br>The only other time a smell pervadad NYC was 9/11, It smelled like burn't plastic with a burnt fleshy accent. (Oh god did I just say that) Anyway it has to be a really big deal to be detectable all over Manhattan. One neighborhood can have a smell like the meatpacking district, or the former fulton fish market, or even a sewage pipe bursting on Clinton st stinking up the whole lower east side.<br><br>here is a little history on tuff like that:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.lumpen.com/fatherland/biowarriors.html">www.lumpen.com/fatherland...riors.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:foIxBL-QxawJ:www.cs.sunysb.edu/~vislab/projects/urbansecurity/Newsday_20040509_Study_answers_blowing_in_wind.pdf">64.233.161.104/search?q=c...n_wind.pdf</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><br>Could the sweet tracer they smelled was a tracer for satellite imaging. In other words the testing isn't over yet. The sensors were essentially a proof of concept. If you saw where the sensors <br>were, it would all make sense. They were generally on the corners and at the middle of each block in a section going from 42nd street up to about 50th. It may have been even broader.<br><br> Once a city reaches a certain size, its ridiculous to setup thousands of sensors, or install them over time and maintain them. What if the area was contaminated beforehand and the sensors had to be setup in an NRBC environment? What a shitty job that would be. <br><br>A satellite, or plane would have a great vantage point for studying dispersal, density, and dynamics. That's the remote sensing that folks go on and on about applied to NRBC detection and monitoring. After the recent rain there were the most sunny clear and mild humidity days that I could remember. I couldn't imagine a better time to test this, mostly the winds have died down , but there is still a 15mph kick every once in a while.<br><br>It sounds like Bolton and the rest of the Neocons are closing in on Syria. There were a rash of articles yesterday that seemed to have lots of new stuff supporting a "wag the dog" due to the Fitzgerald and other delays that pushed it from June until now. That would suit the media just fine, So many people pundit's are coming on and spinning the single indictment as a whimper rather than a bang, I get the feeling they are backing themselves into a corner. Funny alot of Dem's are doing it too. Fucking Dems! we should thank Rove and Cheney and all of the others for showing us what the Democratic Party is really made of.<br><br>the neocon agenda sticks out like a broken finger, yet the dems can't get out front even if there life depended on it. Its so hard to believe that the Dem. party just bends over and fades into the stupid repub. party even during the moment that Fitzy takes <br><br><br><br>It still feels like the city is being set up for a doosie again. This dispersal testing, rogue terrorist alerts, those bizarre cop car drills that, more than anything else, resemble synchronized swimming.<br><br>NYC has some special features that make it a perfect place for a large-scale NRBC attack. Its an island capable of being fully contained with minimal oversight. Its got the highest population density in the U.S. Lots of underground. Pull the bridges and tunnels an presto you have a little lab for exploring new torture of the 21st century.<br><br>It seemed also that in that rush to publish yesterday some fresh news about Israel, AIPAC sp.? started to float and clarify. A source was hinting about isralel, proliferation, and two pesky woman (Plame and Miller?) doing waht I don't know, but thats a quick way to get the broader story out.<br><br>shit man i dont know, maybe we'll just have see.<br><br>One last thing FUCK THE NEW YORK TIME<br><br>FIRSTIMER<br><br>oh well <p></p><i></i>
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Ack! Sounds like "Escape from New York"!

Postby banned » Sat Oct 29, 2005 11:09 pm

Welcome firsttimer.<br><br>I have often wondered why they haven't pulled anything in San Francisco. It's not an island, but it's the tip of a peninsula with very limited access in and out...coupla freeways and two bridges. Of course the population is smaller, I think it's about 600,000 now spread over 7 square miles.<br><br>Maybe they figure the San Andreas will deal with SF soon enough--or that despite how much the City bugs the wingnuts because it's full of progressives and queers, they're basically harmless. <br><br>SF is extremely provincial as well. New York is a financial and cultural powerhouse, the center or a vital hub of many different fields. If San Francisco disappeared tomorrow (God forbid) the rest of the world might not notice until they didn't get the vibrator they ordered from Good Vibrations. (Sorry if that's cruel, but it's true <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :\ --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/ohwell.gif ALT=":\"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> ).<br><br>Politics in SF is like...OK, why Gavin Newsome slicks his hair back like that, or if he and Billy Getty are really bobbing nobs. Or how a $13 minimum wage is a nice thought but not exactly practical. Or why 16 years AFTER the Loma Prieta earthquake there are still things not fixed, about every half decade somebody goes "Uh, we really oughta fix this before the next one, doncha think?" and then somebody else has an argument and it gets heated and then everybody forgets about it because it's time to get out their chaps for the Folsom Street Fair or worry that transsexual lesbians are not treated with appropriate sensitivity by the police department.<br><br>It's like a little comic opera principality, I often think when the Big One comes, its hills will end up islands and it will become a cross between Venice and Monaco.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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