Multiple disciplines suggest themselves in today’s stories; it’s like an Ig Nobel in miniature around here.

• Chemistry
  Back in my college days (ah, nerd school) we had a simple test to determine what items went in which department — things that fell down were Civil Engineering, things that moved around and made noise were Mechanical Engineering, things that made your hair stand on end were Electrical Engineering, and things that smelled funky were Chemistry¹.

  Years later, I found myself doing a week’s work at a manufacturing facility of a flavoring and fragrances company and I was struck by the near total absence of any scents whatsoever — like the magic of chemistry had sucked out all of the olfactory noise that would prevent testers from judging tastes and scents on an isolated, objective basis. I wonder if Kaja Foglio knows what I’m talking about.

  This isn’t some idle speculation — Professora Foglio likely has experienced the odor equivalent of a sensory-deprivation chamber because she’s recently wrapped up the development of ZOMG Smells (noted geeks perfumers) development of a line of Girl Genius perfumes. Whether you want to smell like a Jägermonster, a madboy Spark! I meant Spark!, or the aftermath of the Nuremberg Pudding Incident (not to be confused with the Noodle Incident), ZOMG Smells (and shortly, the Studio Foglio online store and con booth) have you covered.

  If anybody knows of another webcomic that’s inspired a line of perfume, let me know. Since we’ve had songs recorded by/about webcomic characters (cf: Deathmøle, Dinosaur Comics: The Opera), interactive animations (cf: MS Paint Adventures, Dinosaur Comics again), recipes inspired by webcomics (cf: Webcomics: What’s Cooking?) and now perfume, I guess the only sense left to tie in would be touch. How long before we see a line of Girls With Slingshots sex toys?

• Economics (it’s sort of a science)
  Speaking of Girls With Slingshots, one may note that Danielle Corsetto has a brand-new design to her website, complete with spankin’ new RSS feed, blog capability, twitterfeed, con schedule, alt text, and the works. If you didn’t read Corsetto’s intro to the new design (and kudos to Tyler Martin for his work — it looks great) you might be confused by the list of conventions for 2011 where she notes she’ll be at the Blind Ferrett booth. If you did read the posting, you may have noticed that GWS has joined up with Blind Ferret — hosting, storefront, merchandise fulfillment, book publishing, handy excuse to head to Montréal every few weeks for “business meetings” (and absolutely not to enjoy a fabulous city full of comickin’ people).

  This is a big deal for Corsetto, and possibly a bigger one for Blind Ferret, who are now branching out into the sort of webcomics services-for-hire that this page has called for (and international/binlingual in scope, too); between the seeing-impaired mustelids and the toxic sentient solanid, those top-tier webcomickers that need business services appear to be better supplied than ever. Exciting times.

• Temporal Mechanics (okay, it might be Star Trek science, but it’s at least sciencey, right?)
  Michael Payne wrote to point out something important is happening next Friday, besides the expected post-American Thanksgiving tryptophan coma: the Daily Grind Ironman Challenge will cross 1500 updates. There are still six of the original 56 contestants duking it out for the status of Last Webcomicker Standing and the fabulous prize of $1120. How long is that, really?

  Long enough that most of the Final Six are actually approaching 2000 to 3000 updates in their comics, since they were merely hopping into the contest with whatever comic was actually running at the time. Long enough for contestants like Dean Trippe, John Campbell, Brian Fukushima, and Natasha Allegri (to name but a few) to build careers since they got knocked out, careers so notable that it’s a surprise to look down the list and say, “Crap, they were in that contest five years ago?” Long enough that the contest had already seen its field winnowed by half before I started my hack webcomics pseduo-journalism.

  Heck, it’s even been long enough for Brad Guigar to grow a sweet moustache/chinbeard combo and get a pair of contacts (compare/contrast). So to all of the remaining Iron Men, we at Fleen say well done and geez, are you gonna make us wait another 1500 days to see who wins this thing. Just bow out together and split the money.

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¹ In large quantities, things that smelled funky qualified as Chemical Engineering.