Malodorant; Odessa-Mama, NYC-Papa

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   Greetings from Yalta.  I just had a pleasant, 10-hour ride from Odessa that featured one thunderstorm and one flat tire...Tomorrow (Tuesday) I tour the site of the famous 1945 Yalta meeting, plus the place where Chekhov wrote CHERRY ORCHARD.

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ODESSA NOTES

GEM OF THE BLACK SEA--a nickname for Odessa.

LITTLE ODESSA--the title of a 1995 film about Bright Beach, Brooklyn, NYC.  The big Odessa immigration to NYC was in the 1970s.

ODESSA-MAMA, NEW YORK-PAPA--My tour guide said that Odessa was also nicknamed Mama, where people were born.  New York City was nicknamed Papa, as in "Come to Papa!"

THE DAY OF HUMOR IN ODESSA (ODESA HUMORYNA)--April first (April Fool's Day).  It's a big festival in the town.  Odessa is known as the "humor capital of the Ukraine."  I can't quickly find out when this tradition began; "April fools" pre-dates the founding of Odessa.

ROMA-AMOR--another city, better known for being spelled backwards.

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MALODORANT

   "Malodorant" is not in the revised OED?  Some interesting terms are in this article from TIME, and the DrudgeReport web page:

 Beyond the Rubber Bullet
The Pentagon's effort to create nonlethal weapons that hurt but don't kill has set off its own fire storm
BY LEV GROSSMAN
Sunday, Jul. 21, 2002
(...)
DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS

Imagine a cross between a microwave oven and a Star Trek phaser: a tight, focused beam of energy that flash-heats its target from a distance. Directed energy beams do not burn flesh, but they do create an unbearably painful burning sensation. The Air Force Research Laboratory has already spent $40 million on a humvee-mounted directed-energy weapon. Expect to see it in the field by 2009.
(...)
MALODORANTS

Working for the Pentagon, the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia has formulated smells so repellent that they can quickly clear a public space of anyone who can breathe — partygoers, rioters, even enemy forces. Scientists have tested the effectiveness of such odors as vomit, burnt hair, sewage, rotting flesh and a potent concoction known euphemistically as "U.S. Government Standard Bathroom Malodor." But don't expect to get a whiff anytime soon. Like all gaseous weapons, malodorants once released are hard to control, and their use is strictly limited by international chemical-weapons treaties.

PROJECTILES

No one likes rubber bullets — not the people being fired at nor the people doing the firing. "It's very easy to put out an eye, to blind someone," says Glenn Shwaery, director of the Nonlethal Technology Innovation Center. (...) Shwaery's team is looking into an even more radical solution: "tunable" bullets that can be adjusted in the field to be harder or softer as the situation warrants. "We're talking about dialing in the penetrating power," he says. (...)

REAL RAY GUNS
Further out on the horizon, the line between weapons development and science fiction becomes perilously thin. Mission Research Corp. of Santa Barbara, Calif., is working on a pulsed energy projectile (PEP) that superheats the surface moisture around a target so rapidly that it literally explodes, producing a bright flash of light and a loud bang. (...)

DRUGS, BUGS AND BEYOND

Even their supporters agree that "nonlethal weapons" is a dangerous misnomer and that any of these devices has the potential to injure and kill. What is more, some of them may not even be legal. Over the past three months, a chemical-weapons watchdog organization called the Sunshine Project has obtained evidence that the U.S. is considering some projects that appear to take us beyond the bounds of good sense: bioengineered bacteria designed to eat asphalt, fuel and body armor, or faster-acting, weaponized forms of antidepressants, opiates and so-called "club drugs" that could be rapidly administered to unruly crowds. (...)