Marketplace/Freakonomics podcast:

In many states (21, to be precise), it is perfectly legal for an employer to not hire someone who smokes. This might seem understandable, given that health insurance is often coupled to employment, and since healthcare risks and costs are increasingly pooled. And so: if employers can exclude smokers, should they ( Read more... )

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/09/11/21/147253/Apple-Voiding-Smokers-Warranties

Mr2001 writes: "Consumerist reports that Apple is refusing to work on computers that have been used in smoking households. 'The Apple store called and ( Read more... )

A husband and wife team are occupying the two machines two down from me. One plays a few hands, hits cash out, passes the ticket to the other, who plays a few hands, cashes out, and passes the ticket back ( Read more... )

So I'm playing VP and minding my own business when the stereotypical machine-hopper arrives at my bank, hops from machine to machine, with his wife sitting next to him (and therefore hopping in parallel), both smoking[1] like chimneys, and eventually he plopped down into the seat next to me and without so much as a how-do-you-do, blatantly ( Read more... )

I had recently been thinking about posting another evwhore long-term poll. LTP #2 and #3 have yet to be resolved, but LTP #1 was pretty accurate (although whether by pure accident or some sort of LJ-friends prediction market thing, who's to say) so I have my hopes.

I already had this idea for #4, but the posting is spurred by the news item Colorado ( Read more... )

Smoker, 90, critically burned as oxygen tank ignites

A 90-year-old Ypsilanti woman was criticially injured Thursday when the oxygen system she was using to breathe caught on fire while she was smoking.

[...]

The woman was involved in a similar fire in May while she was smoking, but she was not hurt, firefighters said.

(emphasis added)

The Nampa, Idaho public library board has decided not to remove some books with naughty pictures in them from the library, which doesn't sit well with some of its members.

One trustee at Monday's meeting, Bruce Skaug, made a motion to remove the "Joy of Gay Sex" completely, but the motion was not seconded. "I'd rather my 9-year-old take up smoking ( Read more... )

I opened this in the process of moving it into my SpamAssassin-training folder. It was obviously spam, but from the image, "pipe" would not have been my first guess.

Unless "smoking pipe" is some sort of code phrase now for "sex toy" to get past Bayesian filters.

Or maybe it's a dual-use device?

( Click here for PNG image )

- I got to my seat at the SJ Arena (I disliked "Compaq Center" and since the merger I really loathe calling it the "HP Pavilion") relatively early today. I have an aisle seat in row 7. Rows 6 and 8 at this point were completely empty. In spite of this, three people, not all at the same time, made me stand up so they could get past me into row 7 ( Read more... )