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Greetings, Quotaholics:
Do
you smoke? I know, I’ve heard the old joke. “Do you smoke?
Then you’re doing it too fast!” But seriously, whether you
smoke or not will probably affect how you view today’s subject.
For some 40 years now we’ve been told about the dangers of smoking.
Yet, according to my source article in the San
Francisco Chronicle, 45 million Americans still smoke. More significant
to me is the fact that tobacco is still legal. In fact the tobacco farmers
are still subsidized by the government.
Millions of dollars have been spent in an attempt to get people to stop
smoking. Employers have sponsored smoking cessation programs. The government
and charitable organizations like the Heart Association have sponsored
ad campaigns aimed at getting people to quit, or better yet not start.
Yet people still smoke. Young people still start smoking.
Some employers have taken the somewhat drastic step of refusing to hire
smokers. Others have demanded that their employees quit. At least one
employer in Lansing, Michigan has not only done these things, he insists
that his employees’ spouses must quit. He enforces this rule by
requiring the employees to submit to mandatory, random drug tests.
According to the article, at a smoking cessation forum hosted by the
Commonwealth Club of California, participants said they found that idea
intriguing. Unfortunately for them, or luckily for smokers, California
has laws that prohibit employers from making hiring or firing decisions
based on employee participation in a legal activity.
“Safeway Inc. announced that its Pleasanton headquarters will
become smoke- and tobacco-free as of July 1, with the ban extending
to all regional offices in Canada and the United States as of Sept.
1. Safeway already requires nonunion employees who do not participate
in smoking-cessation efforts to pay more for their health premiums and
is in discussions to extend the policy to union workers.”
However, a Safeway spokesperson “…took considerable heat from
audience members because she works for a company that espouses healthy
lifestyles but sells tobacco products. (She) said Safeway has no plans
to quit selling tobacco because it does not dictate what legal products
its customers should buy, and ceasing cigarette sales would put the
company at a competitive disadvantage.”
Oh I get it, it’s OK to force your employees to stop smoking but
you want to make as much money from smoking as possible.
If smoking is as bad as we’re told, shouldn’t the growing
and sale of tobacco be banned? Is it fair for smokers to be refused
employment, forced to quit, or fired when tobacco is a legal substance?
If the government is serious about getting people to stop smoking, shouldn’t
they stop subsidizing tobacco production?
What would you do if your employer made the decision to ban smokers
from working there? If you smoke, would you stop? If you don’t
smoke, would it concern you that your employer had started a program
such as this? What if the next step was to ban employees from drinking
alcohol? What if they decided to ban other unhealthy practices such
as overeating?
Is if fair to charge smokers more for health insurance? Sure the argument
can be made that people who engage in an unhealthy habit should pick
up the costs associated with their decision, but what happens next?
Do companies start charging drinkers more for health insurance because
they are at greater risks of drunk driving accidents? Will people who
come from a family with a history of heart problems have to pay higher
premiums? Where would this end?
Unhealthily,
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“You
can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you
want to live to be a hundred.” - Woody Allen
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“A
man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called
a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted
in his mouth.” - Jacques Barzun, French born American Educator
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“The
horses pull the wagon and the driver gets the thanks.” – Anonymous
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Happy Hour in
Texas
[Thanks,
Jack]
A cowboy is driving
down a back road in Texas . A sign in front of a restaurant reads:
HAPPY HOUR SPECIAL Lobster Tail and Beer
"Lord almighty" he says to himself, "my three favorite
things!"
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“If you are poor, though you dwell in the busy marketplace, no one will
inquire about you; if you are rich, though you dwell in the heart of the
mountains, you will have distant relatives.” - Chinese Proverb |
“The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds
reptiles of the mind.” - William Blake, English visionary mystic, poet,
painter and engraver (1757-1827)
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E-Mail
the Imp
Interest in space travel is greater now than it has been for decades.
The recent success of probes sent around the gas giants; landing on
the moon of another planet; landing on an asteroid; and landing on a
comet have piqued the curiosity and imagination of millions. The latest
landing of a probe on the polar cap of Mars and the possibility of finding
water ice (and with it the possibility of past or present life) has
revived some of the fervor for space exploration not seen since the
Apollo missions to the moon.
The possibility of space tourism “taking off” in 2009 by
Virgin Galactic and soon to be followed by several other enterprises
is helping to fuel enthusiasm for space travel and exploration. With
the possibility of space travel, even sub-orbital flights by Virgin
Galactic being available to the common man (That’s one who has
a spare million or two left after gassing up the SUV), the subject of
sex in space is becoming a problem for both NASA and the Russian Space
Agency.
Virgin
Galactic reports that they are receiving inquiries from couples
seeking to be the first to have sex in space. I doubt that they would
be the first…human nature being what it is, I’m sure that
some cosmonauts and astronauts have already experienced “the little
death” and made “the two-backed beast”. A February
2000 article
in The Guardian
States that it’s already happened. Pierre Kohler, a respected
French scientific writer, says in The Final Mission: Mir, The Human
Adventure, that the subjects is taboo both at NASA and at mission control
in Moscow, but that cosmic couplings have taken place.
Supposedly these couplings were conducted to see if the physics of space
sex were practical in the face of year’s long space flights that
future manned missions would entail to explore Mars. Supposedly on a
1996 shuttle mission, Kohler says that twenty positions were tested
by computer simulation to obtain the best 10 and two guinea pigs then
tested them in real zero-gravity conditions. Only four positions were
found possible without "mechanical assistance".
I’ll bet a dollar to a donut that one of the four involved fellatio.
The mechanics of sex in space not withstanding, the duration of weightlessness
on a Virgin Galactic (a very aptly named company!) sub-orbital flight
will only be about five minutes in a very small and cramped vehicle…absolutely
no privacy. Couples would have to be stripped and practically in position
(one of the four) to start as soon as weightlessness begins and then
go at it like manic rabbits.
As for me, I’ve always found that five minutes is more than enough
time to enjoy three of my favorite things…a romantic drink before
and a cozy nap right after.
The Bad Sied 
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Speak
right up!
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On this day in history, June
30, 1859: Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Blondin
was born in St. Omer, France in 1824. As the age of five, he was sent
to École de Gymnase in Lyon by his gymnast father. After only six
months of training, he made his first public appearance with the name
"The Little Wonder." His natural graceful moves along with learned
skills made him a favorite attraction. He also was said to have a charismatic
personality, did everything in a grand way, and was a true showman.
Blondin’s showmanship abilities along with fearless daring led him to
increasingly dangerous undertakings. By the age of 35, playing to international
audiences, he crossed the Falls on a tightrope 3 inches (7.6cm) thick,
1,100 feet (335 m) long and 160 feet (50 m) above the water. Once he had
crossed the Falls, he needed to keep the audiences wowed and devised ever
more bizarre crossings. He crossed blindfolded, in a sack, with a wheelbarrow,
on stilts, carrying his manager – Harry Colcord – on his back,
and stopping midway and sitting down to cook and eat an omelet.
"No one should ever try that again." – Annie Taylor, after
going over Niagara Falls in a barrel
"In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature.
You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking
of a tightrope." - Henri Matisse
"If you had a friend who was a tightrope walker, and you were walking
down a sidewalk, and he fell, that would be completely unacceptable…"
- Mitch Hedberg
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Email Kirsten
"You should
not see the desert simply as some faraway place of little rain. There
are many forms of thirst."
~ William Langewiesche ~
My child is sick. He’s not sick enough to warrant a visit to the hospital.
But he’s sick enough to be in need of his Mom. I am therefore not able
to write an article today. Since I never like to leave my column blank,
I am giving you the written version of a re-run. I’ll be back as usual
on Wednesday.
————————————————–
Here's a word of advice: never kill an albatross. If you do, the
spirit of the albatross will be mad at you, and you will find yourself
stranded in the middle of the ocean wearing a dead bird around your
neck, with thirst driving you insane.
That, according
to a very long poem, is what happened to The
Ancient Mariner. I must confess, though, that I have never made
it through the entire story. The only thing about it that makes sense
to me is the thirst. That I can relate to. I cannot relate to people
using dead albatrosses as necklaces.
When we lose
about 2% of the normal
water level in our bodies, we start to feel thirsty. It is nature's
way of telling us that we have to rehydrate if we want our bodies to
keep functioning properly. It's kind of like the time I ignored
the gas warning light on my car because I thought I still had enough
gas to get home - I ended up stuck in a centre express lane of North
America's busiest highway during rush hour.
Ignoring your
thirst can have a similar effect to ignoring your gas gauge. When you've
lost about 5% of your fluids, you will start to experience severe headaches
and nausea. Your heart rate will increase as it works harder to get
blood around your body, and your body temperature will rise as your
sweating mechanism shuts down.
When your
water level is down by 10%, bits of your body start to shut down so
your brain can focus its attention on the functions necessary to maintain
life. Your skin will shrivel up so badly that you'll look like you
need to be ironed. Your vision will diminish and your muscles will stop
working. You will develop delirium to the point where you will feel
like a starving leopard in a desert that imagines it can see half a
tin of cat food two miles away.
A water loss
of 15% is usually fatal. At that point, the body just wouldn't have
enough fluid to send blood to all the places it needs to go, and your
immune system would be so weak that it would not be able to fend off
anything. It would be like a poodle trying to defend a pot roast against
a pride of lions.I
am a great believer in hydration. Next time you get a headache, muscular
aches or just a general sense of being run-down, get a drink of water.
You might be surprised at how something as simple as that can make you
feel better. If you make a habit of drinking plenty
of water each day, you will be able to think clearly, your body
will get rid of toxins and generally work more efficiently, you will
lose weight, and your skin will be as smooth as a baby's bottom,
just without the crack.
Kaleidoscopically
yours,
Kirsten
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I’m brilliant. And devious. I’m going to get my way no matter what
anyone else wants, and I don’t have to do anything to make that happen.
It’s all just going to unfold naturally.
Allow me to explain. As you know, our college bought a new computer
system. One of my responsibilities is getting the web server running
so students can do things like register for classes and pay their
bills, you know, stuff that makes a college run. It’s all pretty much
working, at least on our test server. But there’s a little problem.
They don’t want me to make it work on our live server. Well, they
do, but they only want part of it to work. They want students to be
able to pay their bills, but our registrar doesn’t want anyone to
be able to actually register over the web just yet.
That creates a problem for me. You see, there are two parts to creating
a web page such as this. The first part of it is that all the links
have to work. If you want to register for classes, the link you click
has to register you for that class, charge you for that class, generate
a bill for that class, and allow you to pay that bill. It does, all
the way through processing credit card payments and telling the database
a payment was made. When I got that working on the test server, I
put it on the live server. Think of it like building a house. The
people we bought this system from laid the foundation, and the coding
I did makes up the first floor.
The second part of creating a page is giving permissions to see the
page. I can look at the entire site, but I don’t want students to
be able to see the same thing the faculty sees. Students have no business
seeing a class roster but faculty must, so I simply don’t give students
the permission to see class rosters. The underlying structure of the
web page is there for them to see a class roster, they just can’t
see it because I didn’t give them permission. They don’t even see
a link they can click to get a class roster. Think of it as the second
story of the house. I’ll give you the key to your bedroom, but not
the one for faculty’s bedroom.
And that’s where my dilemma comes in. Everyone wants students to
be able to pay their bill online. But in the highly integrated system
that was delivered to us, it thinks that if you can pay your bill
online, surely you must be able to register for classes. The registrar
doesn’t want that yet. In order for me to turn off the ability to
register after you pay your bill would require me to modify the foundation
of the house. Oh, but they want that to work in the fall, so basically
I would have deconstruct my website and then reconstruct it in the
fall. I haven’t worked on creating it just to break it, so I came
up with an idea.
I showed the director of academic advisement how registration over
the web works. Now, I know the registrar doesn’t want this capability
enabled yet, but I was just “testing”. He now knows it can be done.
The business office knows payments can be made. Those are the two
major components to a college running, and they both work in my test
database. The director of academic advisement is taking a vacation
next week, but he assured he’d be getting into it with our registrar
when he got back. I’m taking those two weeks off, so I’ll miss that
fight. Then my boss goes on vacation, so that’s going to take some
of my time covering for him. In the remote chance that our academic
adviser can’t convince our registrar to allow students to register,
I’ll either be on vacation or too busy running the department to actually
look at deconstructing my work.
I think I could schedule some time for that in the fall, though,
which pretty much makes it a moot point.
Tim a’Musing
Having a Ball with Yarns
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Steak Sauce With A Kick: Deglaze your frying pan (after searing your
New York steaks) with brandy. Add two tablespoons of butter, a little
white wine and a splash of Grand Marnier. Serve over steaks - you’ll
never use steak sauce again. - Peggy in Tonawanda, New York
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It
appears that I ran the same line twice. You know the old saying…the
hurrier I go the behinder I get!
Next opening line…
Summer vacation is here…
Hints:
There’s a great rhyming dictionary at http://www.rhymezone.com/
Limerick rules. http://freespace.virgin.net/merrick.sheldon/limerickrules.htm
Submit
Opening Line
Submit
Limerick
I’m
calling my lawyer to sue
The pants right off of you.
What you did wasn’t so bad,
I’m not even real mad.
I just want to see if your balls are blue. - Bonnie in Louisiana |
From
Nantucket, there is this belle
And her bucket that we know so well
Her mouth is as clean
As a soldiers latrine
When doing that thing she did real swell. - E. Cole Aye |
From
Nantucket, there is this belle
Whose inamorato’s name was Earl
Always amorous
And looking glamorous
Around him her legs would furl. - E. Cole Aye |
rom
Nantucket, there is this gal
Whose life’s principle is "I shall!"
When asked, she’d wouldn’t say no
She’d do it fast or slow
Yep, she sings her songs in each locale. - E. Cole Aye |
There
was a girl from Nantucket
Who would always carry her bucket
For after each stroke
In which she choked
In the bucket, she’d place the divot. - E. Cole Aye |
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Re: Conniving Students
The students who
broke into the school should be punished because there was intent to
commit fraud and breaking and entering. To let them off with a slap
on the wrist sends the wrong message to other students. I would think
that 38 years would be excessive, but jail time is certainly warranted
for what they did. - JohnD
As a hard-working law student
I couldn’t help but comment on this article. I’m conflicted as to how
to react, on one hand I think we should applaud the students for taking
the initiative, and for being smart enough to not get caught instantly.
I always thought that school computer systems were secure, so how did
their spyware go undetected? I’m sure Tim can give me an answer to that
one!
At my university
we have online class tests which we are given a two week time period
in which to complete. Obviously once we start the test we only have
the designated time to complete it, but there are no rules on when exactly
when we must do it and also we are not invigilated. These tests can
account for up to 30% of a semester’s grade, perhaps even more in other
departments and there is definitely nothing to stop one person doing
the test with the aid of Google on another computer, or even just open
in another browser window or tab, and writing down the answers for the
rest of the class. This is perhaps the same crime, just to a lesser
extent, yet many of us students consider it genius!
However, on the other hand I am all for punishing these students just
as you would any other criminal. Just because they are seen as heroes
by some students, and just because their actions may have some moral
goodness to them does not make them any less criminal. At a time where
more and more students are entering University, here in England at least,
and when allegations of cheating and fraud are running rife through
academic circles I think it would be foolish to allow this to go unpunished.
Furthermore, after several sleepless all-nighters in order meet deadlines
for essays I most definitely do not think that they should be allowed
to continue their education with the grades they falsely obtained.
At least we can rest in the knowledge that the one wishing to study
law will never be able to practice due to his criminal record! With
the legal profession severely over-subscribed I should think this will
be a pretty serious handy cap. And honestly, he should have known better!
- Kizzi
Re: Dichotomy of Humans
Hi Bruce,
Part of
your answer may be in Robert Persig’s book, "Lila." He does
a good job of explaining how we all operate on several different levels,
with partially-conflicting goals. Every minute, our body kills thousands
of its own cells. To the cell, this is not a good time. The Neo-cortex
can often see sufficient reasons to do things that irritate the Cortex,
and vice-versa. In "Collapse" Jared Diamond points out that
during the killings in Rwanda, if no Tutsi were available, Hutu killed
Hutu. Afterward, he often heard that there just hadn’t been enough land
before the war, and that there was more equality afterward.
Diamond also talks about xenophobia, and how terrifying it is for both
sides when explorers meet unknown tribes. Each wonders if they should
shoot first, and can be triggered by innocent cultural artifacts even
if they have no wish to fight, going in. Steven Pinker http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html
found that even the bloody 20th century gave people about ten times
less risk of death from violence than tribal life. Some of his studied
tribes may be having shrinkage forced upon them, but the trend seems
clear. The more we get involved in atrocities by associating into larger
groups, the fewer we perform overall. It seems quite likely that psychopaths
are a tribe’s version of the ant’s soldier caste. Having no built-in
conscience, they should be put into a controlled group and given one
by majority rule.
Where things are going horribly wrong, there may be a loose alliance
of psychopaths frustrating the usual consensus for fair play. For most
people, though, the trouble arises from frustrations in our emotional
lives overwhelming our better nature. Often, when we are angry, it is
out of all proportion to the irritant, because many unresolved past
hurts are remembered and they flood the primitive parts of our brain
with the urge to fight. If we then act, with the powers of an adult
or soldier, mayhem results. Our lizard brains can be soothed by being
recognized and diverted into harmless outlets, but it is important not
to identify with its urges. - Bob of the North
[I thought about what’s called
the "Nuremberg Defense", that of, "I was only following
orders", which has been judged not to be a legal defense.
The concept stresses personal responsibility for actions, and clearly
that makes sense, but it occurred to me that in a very real sense the
defense is probably valid. People who would never have thought
of committing atrocities are ordered by a superior to do so and they
just do it.
There seem to be so many examples, like Nazi war criminals who escaped
detection and went on to live quiet, uneventful lives for decades until
they were finally discovered. If they had really been psychopathic
monsters one would think they would have continued in their ways, and
it comes back to that very scary invisible line that separates "them"
from "us". It’s not a pleasant thought, but history
has shown, at least to my satisfaction, that it seems to be a part of
human nature.]
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Disclaimer- All quotes printed in this publication are believed to be accurately
attributed, but no guarantees are made that some incorrectly attributed,
or even outright false quotes won’t get in here from time to time.
I assure readers that I will do my best to weed out incorrect quotes, and
will print a retraction as soon as I become aware of any errors. |
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