Monday, August 10, 2015

A Tale of Two Smoking Bans


They must be putting something in the water or liquid vegemite  ... According to Walker Percy, disaster brings focus, connection, engagement. A hurricane can be therapeutic...Long term Orwelian Disasters 

A Texas judge has dished out arguably one of the most bizarre forms on justice ever handed down.
He presented Josten Bundy, 21, the ultimatum of choosing between going to jail for 15 days or marrying his 19-year-old girlfriend. Mr Bundy was facing assault charges after punching his girlfriend’s ex-partner for speaking ill of her, he said. During the trial, Smith County Court Judge Randall Rogers asked the young man if she was worth fighting for - reports KLTV.

A. Alvarez helped establish Lowell, Plath, and Berryman but felt something was missing from their work: a political message. Then he found Miroslav Holub (Pigeon or Dove)

George Orwell, an inveterate chain smoker, once wrote an essay about his idea of the perfect pub. It would have a beer garden for the children, a selection of real ales, good food of the ploughman's lunch type, and so on. Nowhere did he mention a ban on smoking. It would never have entered the seething mind of the author of 1984.

NSW prisons have become smoke-free zones as a ban on cigarettes and tobacco becomes effective on Monday. NSW prison smoking ban

If there’s one thing a prisoner in jail probably shouldn’t have, it’s a loaded gun. But perhaps a few officers at an Albuquerque prison missed that day of training. Jacob Piggott was brought to the metropolitan jail following an arrest,reports KOAT-TV. Police officers patted him down but failed to find or confiscate the gun hidden in his waistband

"Crown falls well and truly into the category of too big to fail. When there's a ban on smoking, they get an exemption. When there's a ban on ATMs in premises, they get an exemption. They have high-roller rooms where god knows what's going on," Dr Livingstone said.
High Rollers at Casino exploits direct line to God - Smoking of Fine cigars for Rich Rollers has parliament's Blessing

Eric Blair, alias George Orwell, wrote some of the 20th century’s most haunting and influential books. While best known for his fiction, Orwell also wrote brilliantly perceptive essays and produced some of the finest works of journalism ever attempted. His politics and writing have been debated and dissected for more than 50 years, yet there is one common theme running through nearly all of Orwell’s books that has yet to be seriously explored—the use of tobacco. Cigarette smoke so permeates Orwell’s stories it almost stains one’s fingers to read them. Cigarettes, for Orwell, represent comfort, camaraderie and all that is essentially good about civilization. It’s a curious and ironic stance for someone as opposed to colonialism and predatory capitalism as Orwell was, as tobacco figures prominently in the history of both. Yet he used the act of smoking as a literary device almost compulsively, reaching for it hundreds of times over the course of his career in order to achieve a diverse array of effects.

The flyer resulted in successful prosecutions and is now being used by other police departments. More at the NYTimes.
  In images reminiscent of the 1998 waterfront dispute, Hutchison Ports has engaged a balaclava-wearing security guard outside its Port Botany terminal after sacking 40 per cent of its workforce by email Balaclavas return to the waterfront in Hutchison ports dispute