In a story I wrote for the print edition this week, about a resurgent Butchertown Neighborhood Association and the inestimable Swift meatpacking odor, I mentioned the Nasal Ranger field olfactometer, a rather odd kind of technology that measures the density of a particular stench and offers a reading. One needs to be able to quantify a stink in order to make a regulatory agency do something about it.

As I reported, that’s what the Air Pollution Control District is trying to do with its off-hours initiative, intended to measure Swift Stink after city government workers go home (and thus do not respond to odor complaints).

If you’re curious — and surely you are about the Nasal Ranger — watch this lovely video from a reporter at the New York State Fair.