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08-19-2009, 02:12 AM | #41 |
Fair and Cold
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"...The saddest thing that I'd ever seen
Were smokers outside the hospital doors."
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08-19-2009, 03:46 AM | #42 | |
shadow of a doubt
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It's a question of utility really. In contrast to many of the examples that have been brought up, smoking has little or no positive societal influence, well, apart from tax revenues. Then again the damages it causes and the health-care costs that follow probably out-weights this advantage too (unless killing off the retired and unproductive balances the equation out again). The sort of general consensus these days is that not even the smokers themselves actually want to smoke, and that the state would be doing them a favour stopping them. Even if this isn't true, the perceived pleasure individual users get from smoking is hardly considered in these equations. Motor-traffic is obviously dangerous and polluting, but without it the national economy would suffer greatly, so that we can't get rid of. We tax it heavily though to keep people from driving too much and for a good, steady source of tax revenue. Sex? Well, it's all good, isn't it? Guns and violence? They too have redeeming qualities with the army and the police making what they claim to be justified use of them. But smoking? Nah, if the government could just snap their fingers and make it all go away, they would I'm sure. It's a matter of maximizing utility. Smoking is harmful with no redeeming qualities (from a societal point of view) and therefore unwanted. It's just that the smokers are still a minority large enough to be influential (but for how long?), and furthermore, a total ban would just open up the floodgates for organized crime as it did when other drugs were banned. So it's better for the state just to slowly stifle this unwanted activity with propaganda, taxes and regulations. I maintain it has little to do with morals.
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08-19-2009, 04:20 AM | #43 |
Princess of Skwerlz
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As long as it has to do with Middle-earth...
Please do stay on topic, people!
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08-19-2009, 08:42 AM | #44 | ||||||||||
Doubting Dwimmerlaik
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One issue is that I can indulge in my vices - cheeseburger-flavoured double fried donuts topped with real bacon, washed down with 64 oz of overpriced (but fair traded) coffee - and no one has to share in the experience...unless they can't help staring. With smoking, it's much harder to keep it to oneself. It's not only the smoke, but the lingering residue as well. Quote:
Surely some anthropologist has done a study. Quote:
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What I find funny is the coupling of cigarette sales with gas (petrol) stations. Okay, so most don't light up when they are actually pumping the highly combustible fluid into their vehicles, but they light up right around the place... Quote:
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Do as I say, not as I do. Quote:
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08-19-2009, 10:28 AM | #45 |
Fair and Cold
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Maternity ward is part of a hospital, innit?
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08-19-2009, 10:39 AM | #46 |
Doubting Dwimmerlaik
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Sorry; not sure what to call it. The place, where three of my four were hatched, is like a big baby extraction factory. They also do a few other things, specializing in women's issues.
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08-19-2009, 11:00 AM | #47 |
Fair and Cold
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Esty's going to whack me over the head in a minute, but a maternity ward certainly qualifies as a hospital facility. Hence that Editors' lyric I quoted is totally applicable to your conception of the saddest thing, because pregnant women about to give birth and smoking outside would certainly fall under the rubric of "smokers outside the hospital doors."
Honestly, folks up in Liverpool should go ahead and ban that song too, while they're at it. It certainly a sad song, but it has such an attractive pathos to it. You know the young 'uns will be smoking just to make Editors' frontman Tom Smith get all weepy and stuff.
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08-19-2009, 11:34 AM | #48 |
Illustrious Ulair
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Maybe they should ban TH & LotR from the children's section of the Library, too? Isn't reading about adults smoking as bad as seeing it on screen? Or maybe those references could just be quietly excised? Or maybe that's the plan - first the films, then the books - & we all know the argument: If banning 'x' can protect even one child..... I'm always wary of people who wan to ban things for other peoples' own good, because while they may start off wanting to ban things which genuinely are dangerous, they usually get a taste for banning things, & before you know where you are they're banning anything & everything 'just in case' & you end up at the stage where anything not compulsory is banned.
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08-19-2009, 11:56 AM | #49 | |
Doubting Dwimmerlaik
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08-19-2009, 07:56 PM | #50 | |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
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One would think that Tolkien, based on his lifelong smoking and drinking proclivities, would consider the ban nonsense. I concur.
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08-19-2009, 08:51 PM | #51 | |
Doubting Dwimmerlaik
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Thanks. I too fear the coming of the chat-skwerlz.
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08-19-2009, 09:28 PM | #52 |
Gruesome Spectre
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I'd lay it more at the era in which he lived. If the Shire was based on the rural England he knew, smoking and having a few well-earned pints at the local inn couldn't help being a popular pastime.
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08-20-2009, 12:22 AM | #53 | ||
Illustrious Ulair
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08-24-2009, 10:30 AM | #54 | |
A Shade of Westernesse
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Yet this calls to mind the adage "The law is a ***, a idiot" (Dickens) because the law in this case has no sensory apparatus to judge context. It can only see 1s and 0s.
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08-24-2009, 10:48 AM | #55 | ||
Doubting Dwimmerlaik
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Anyway, for me, it was the TV movie, "V" that made me want to be a scientist, so that, when the aliens land, I'd be on to their reptilian ways.
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08-24-2009, 10:55 AM | #56 |
Gruesome Spectre
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Speaking of Gimli, the films' glorification of dwarf-tossing has, I'm sure, led to a surge in the number of confirmed cases of that phenomenon. PJ is the enemy of civilisation!
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Music alone proves the existence of God. Last edited by Inziladun; 08-24-2009 at 10:59 AM. |
08-24-2009, 11:04 AM | #57 |
Doubting Dwimmerlaik
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I've always asked why we deserved this punishment...
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08-24-2009, 03:40 PM | #58 |
Fair and Cold
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Action movies have influenced me in curious & disturbing ways...
But the thing is - this doesn't just go for films. It goes for your parents, your friends, the people you see walking around on the street outside. At one point, such laws just veer off into absurdity, never to recover.
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08-25-2009, 07:05 AM | #59 | |
Cryptic Aura
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I'm actually rather pleased to hear of such bans.
Mostly these days books and movies are regarded as insignificant or frivilous, all well and good to teach kiddies how to read and cypher in school, but best put away with the toys once one attains adulthood. So, here is a group of concerned legislators--poets even if they are right about art -- who are worried that art might actually have some significant influence on minds. Scary thing! Give me the censors any day over the naysayers. Quote:
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08-27-2009, 09:33 AM | #60 | |||
Doubting Dwimmerlaik
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08-27-2009, 01:26 PM | #61 | ||
Cryptic Aura
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Note that I assume civil discourse is possible in the public sphere. I believe it was in The Shire, although possibly less so in Rohan and Gondor. Quote:
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08-28-2009, 09:40 AM | #62 | ||
Doubting Dwimmerlaik
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05-02-2010, 04:46 AM | #63 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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Lol. The gore in the movies was nothing compared to the books. Remember that scene in RotK where they cut off the soldiers' heads and catapulted them back into Minas Tirith? But yeah, this smoking thing seems a bit ridiculous.
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