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January 26, 2005

San Francisco Bans Open-Air Smoking [Say Anything]

Well, they haven't exactly banned all outside smoking, but that's pretty much got to be the next step.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Legislators in San Francisco city voted to ban smoking in public parks on Tuesday, becoming the first major American city to embrace such an expansive ban on tobacco use.
"This is the first one that includes all the parks and recreational centers in a county," said Michela Alioto-Pier, a city legislator who sponsored the proposed ban. It needs the approval of Mayor Gavin Newsom to become law.

Several smaller California cities have already prohibited smoking in city parks, including Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, as well as the central Californian city of Fresno. A few cities outside California have limited smoking bans in local parks.

The legislator behind the law manages to hit the smoking-nazi trifecta when defending her ban.

"It is a danger to our small children and not a particularly good example for them either," Alioto-Pier said in an interview. Parks are "an area unfortunately where there is a lot of litter and cigarette butts make up four times as much litter as any thing else out there. It is a detriment to the environment. It takes 10-12 years for a cigarette butt to biodegrade, and the toxins go into the ground water."

Its for the kids, the environment and...the ground water. Gotcha.

Honestly, I didn't think there were any smokers left in San Francisco. How can there be? Pretty soon they're going to be organizing the smokers into walled-off smoking "ghettos." If I were a smoker I would have moved a long time ago.

And really, why don't they just making smoking illegal and get it over with? Its pretty clear that's where they're headed anyway.

[Cross-posted at Say Anything]

posted by Ace at 10:23 AM

Comments

"And really, why don't they just making smoking illegal and get it over with? Its pretty clear that's where they're headed anyway."

Because, hopefully, the lessens learned during Prohibition have not been forgotten. It can't be a good thing to make roughly1 in 5 Americans instant criminals.

Posted by: BrewFan on January 26, 2005 10:44 AM

"Why don't they just making smoking illegal and get it over with?" What a good idea! Though the Canadian who is horrified over the bicycle helmet law and the intrusion of the Nanny state is quite right, cigarettes are not bicycle helmets. But somehow, as long as they remain legal, banning smoking in public parks smacks of Nannyism. Inconsistent? I guess, but so is the law.

Posted by: 72VIRGINS on January 26, 2005 10:48 AM

I've got mixed feelings about this one.

As much as the greenypants bleating about the chilllldrun and the groundwater (amazingly, they didn't say anything about "secondhand smoke," which I also think is kinda BS) get on my nerves, I'm having a hard time feeling much sympathy for the poor oppressed smokers. Entirely too many of them see no problem with just flicking their butts on the ground when they're done with them, which, never mind the stupid groundwater and the cute little bunnies and squirrels, is frigging disgusting and completely without class.

"B-but plenty of smokers are responsible about disposing of their butts," some say, "and we shouldn't punish them because a few bad apples use the world as their ashtray ..." Tough shit. Maybe the responsible ones should have been better all these years about using peer pressure to let the butt-tossers know that it's unacceptable. Now that it's starting to result in loss of privileges, maybe they'll get better about policing their own in other places? One can only hope.

Posted by: Alex on January 26, 2005 10:54 AM

"And really, why don't they just making smoking illegal and get it over with? Its pretty clear that's where they're headed anyway."

Two words: tax revenues.

The wonder is not that tobacco hasn't been made illegal, but that all the currently illicit drugs haven't been legalized and subjected to the tender mercies of the revenooers.

Posted by: Doug on January 26, 2005 12:17 PM

> Maybe the responsible ones should have been better all these years about using peer pressure to let the butt-tossers know that it's unacceptable.

The great thing about this argument is that you can change "butt-tossers" to any other phrase, and presto! Instant justification for any crusade.

Posted by: Guy T. on January 26, 2005 12:30 PM

San Francisco is full of butt-tossers.

Posted by: amish on January 26, 2005 12:40 PM

What will happen out there when the "rights" of the homeless too smoke butts heads with the smoking ban? Aren't the homeless destined for sainthood in SF?

Posted by: dittybopper on January 26, 2005 12:41 PM

this is even worse than the smokind ban:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050126/hl_afp/usjusticeobesity_050126170655

Posted by: a-a on January 26, 2005 01:00 PM

Amish, Amish, Amish (tsk, tsk,tsk)

Dittybopper and Guy T,
Couldn't agree more. Not if I tried.

Posted by: Birkel on January 26, 2005 01:27 PM

That's got to be horseshit, about how long it takes a butt to biodegrade. We'd be up to our asses in the things if that were true.

And stop worrying about them in your ground water. They're filters, remember?

Posted by: spongeworthy on January 26, 2005 01:29 PM

Hey, there's Birkel, and he's talking about smoking again - GET HIM!

Posted by: John from WuzzaDem on January 26, 2005 01:51 PM

Ban my smokes and I will ban your car. I get enough CO walking by a bus stop to make me dizzy. As for pollutants, a tire tread from a semi is quite a bit heavier and less biodegradable than my filters. Hell with CA anyway, insanity and busybody syndrome seem to be residence requirements.

Posted by: pinky on January 26, 2005 02:19 PM

If you rip a butt lengthwise and spread the fluff in the filter out a little bit, you can scatter them around in Spring and the birdies will pick them up and use them as fluff in their nests.

See? Ain't that nice?

Posted by: lauraw on January 26, 2005 02:53 PM

"rip a butt lengthwise "

i think we have found our new catch phrase

Posted by: a-a on January 26, 2005 02:57 PM

I almost spit my Diet 7UP onto my computer a-a!

Posted by: a-a-a on January 26, 2005 04:20 PM

I had to light up real fast on reading that one.

Posted by: m on January 26, 2005 07:33 PM

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The Deplorable Gourmet
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TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!

Oh, I forgot to mention this quote from Pete Hegseth, reported by Roger Kimball: "We are sharing the ocean with the Iranian Navy. We're giving them the bottom half."

Batman fires The Batman
Batman is disgusted by the Joachim Phoenix version of Joker
Batman tries to fire Superman
Batman is still workshopping his Bat-Voice

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
Makin' love to whoever I please
I gotta do it my way
Or no way at all

Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

Sec. Army recognizes ODU Army ROTC cadets for their bravery and sacrifice in private ceremony
[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]

TJM gives you a brief tour of his movie collection.

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click
One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter
One day I'm gonna get that faculty together
Remember that everybody has to wait in line
Oh, [Song Title], look out world, oh, you know I've got mine

US decimation of Iran's ICBM forces is due to Space Force's instant detection of launches -- and the launchers' hiding places -- and rapid counter-attack via missiles
AI is doing a lot of the work in analyzing images to find the exact hiding place of the launchers. Counter-strikes are now coming in four hours after a launch, whereas previously it might have taken days for humans to go over the imagery and data.

Robert Mueller, Former Special Counsel Who Probed Trump, Dies

“robert mueller just died,” trump wrote in a truth social post on march 21. “good, i’m glad he’s dead. he can no longer hurt innocent people! president donald j. trump.”

TJM has thoughts on Superheros and Iconography

Canadian School Designates Cafeteria And Lunchroom As "No Food Zones" For Ramadan
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Chuck Norris, Action Icon and 'Walker Texas Ranger' Star, Dies at 86