Fragrance & Memory

    Intrigued by the memories and emotions I had/felt at childhood times evoked by the sudden smell of a particular fragrance last week on the rush of my daily routine I was led to find out studies regarding the connection between frangrances /scent and memory.

      What happens to us is a sort of transportation to the past when we feel a particular scent. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, however, I got very intrigued by the way I was transported to my childhood times to the extent that I could experience and feel the same events and emotions I had/felt before. Perhaps it’s a common sense that there’s an enormous connection between scent and memory – even though we may not be conscious of it, we do experience it. Just like books, music, movies and photos, scent/fragrances may inspire and take us somewhere else.

The day before yesterday I went slack lining with a mate (Jeorge) and while we were coming back home we passed by a small pringles’ can. Then, he picked it up and said he would make a pencil holder out of it. The pringles’ can accidently fell on the floor and consequently produced a kind of distorted sound (a sound of varying waves of a can falling on the floor, I’d say). Guess what??? Yes, just like a particular fragrance I felt last week evoked very fresh moments of my past, that sound of a can falling on the floor brought some marvelous events of my childhood times back - playing with childhood mates (that was awesome).

Well, I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve got to the considerations that those experiences above revolves around our human senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch). Maybe each one of these senses is a particular and complex system of language that some of us may or may not master it (or at least understand it).

Due to contemporary life we are led to rely upon and exercise only some basic languages, e.g. verbal language, written language, and visual language.  However, each one of our 5 human senses do tell us a lot about ourselves, our environment, the people around us and what is about to come (intuition). Currently, there are even some people claiming a sixth sense (watch the movie, by the way) but I must say I should have some more readings about this issue. My final question for this post is: can our 5 human senses, somehow, have a connection to the so called sixth sense? If so, how?

*I would appreciate any consideration about this topic and suggestions for further readings \(:_
* Watch: Perfume - The Story of a Murderer (Directed by Tom Tykwer)
This is a must-see BBC documentary. It's really worth watching:

The Death Penalty Should Be Abolished

    The death penalty or the capital punishment is a term used to describe the act of putting a person to death, in other words, it is the execution of a person after judgment by a legal system, either as an act of retribution, or to ensure that they cannot commit future crimes. According to the Northwestern University School of Law's Center of Wrongful Convictions (CWC), there have been a total of 15,645 executions due to the death penalty in the U.S.; 14,489 of these occurred before the U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional in 1972 and 1,156 occurred after capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Also, CWC documented over 38 executions since the mid-1970s where there was compelling evidence of innocence or serious doubt about guilt. Another 130 death row inmates were exonerated, instead of executed, between 1973 and 2008 due to emerging evidence, including DNA analysis. A smaller number of people have been exonerated posthumously. Thus, the death penalty is expensive, it can be used in a biased fashion, and innocent people are put to death.

    Most areas with the death penalty laws also allow for many more appeals in capital punishment cases. Usually, criminals convicted in death penalty trials will gradually use up those appeals over years and years, and it can be very expensive for the state to continually go through the prosecutions. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the amount of money spent on these trials will usually exceed the cost required to keep a person in prison for life.

    The death penalty is biased. Even though most agree that modern laws are usually written without an intentional racial or financial bias, people with more money and social status are often able to get a better defense because they can afford more accomplished lawyers and pay for more impressive expert witnesses. Experts also believe that the racial composition of a jury can often give minorities a huge disadvantage. There are statistics regarding death penalty convictions which are more racially lopsided than some would think.

*(1973-present) Statistical numbers taken from the DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center).

*A comprehensive study in the death penalty in North Caronila found that the odds of receiving a death sentence rose by 3.5 times among those defendantes whose victims were white. (Profº. Jack Borger and Dr. Isaac Unah, University of North Carolina, 2001).

    There is a big possibility of a false conviction leading to the punishment of an innocent person. There have been cases over the years where evidence was disproved after an execution and many cases where conclusive evidence saved someone from execution at the last moment. The chance for a mistake is too great, regardless of the relative effectiveness of the death penalty.     

*Statistical numbers taken from DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center)

*Since 1973-present, over 130 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence.  (Staff Report, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil & Constitutional Rights, Oct. 1993, with updates from DPIC). 

*From 1973-1999, there was an average of 3.1 exonarations per years. From 2000-2007, there has been an average of 5 exonerations per year. 

    Although those in favor of the death penalty believe that it can discourage future crimes, there is not credible evidence that it deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than states without such laws. And states that have abolished capital punishment do not show significant changes in either crime or murder rates. The death penalty has not a deterrent effect. Claims that each execution deters a certain number of murders have been thoroughly discredited by social science research.

 

*According to a survey of the former and present presidents of the country's top academic criminological societies, 88% of these experts rejected the notion that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murderer. (Radelet & Lacock, 2009)

    In conclusion, the death penalty is surely more expensive than life sentence, it is unfair with the poor ones and with black people, and it may even lead to the execution of innocent people.