From: geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)
Newsgroups: rec.travel.air,alt.peeves
Subject: Re: Cryin' baby express ... what to do?
Followup-To: : rec.travel.air,alt.peeves
Date: 21 Jul 1992 16:22:45 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Menlo Park, Ca.
NNTP-Posting-Host: purplehaze.corp.sun.com



In article <1992Jul17.193722.27915@parc.xerox.com> dourish@EuroPARC.Xerox.COM 
(Paul Dourish) writes:

>Ooops. Well if it's not a problem for you, clearly it can't possibly
>be one for anyone else, since you are, of course, the WHO Reference
>Human Being, complete with the WHO Reference Sensory Organs.

Well, that's true, but it's also beside the point. :)  For one thing, I
don't eat parmesan vomit-cheese, so that never even enters into it.  But more
important, the odors of various foods are part and parcel of the experience
of being in a restaurant, and with a few exceptions such as liver, very few 
Western foods have a powerful enough odor to be offensive to many. (Lutefisk
isn't generally served in rerstaurants that I'm aware of.)  After all, I'm 
sure I would've been aware of it by now if there were.  So the few who are
offended by the odors of common American/European foods are an extreme 
minority, and can therefore be discounted as statistically insignificant,
disempowered, and rightfully ground under the bootheel of oppression.

------

>> Horse puckey.  If you want to smoke, *you* go to the toilet; why should 
>> *I* be the one to take any kind of action?

>Because I can't smoke unless I break federal regulations, and
>naturally I *never* do that; tampering with the detector has been
>deemed by the government to be illegal and hence immoral. Ahem.

Then don't smoke.  The fact remains that your need a nicotine fix isn't my 
problem.  Just sit there writhing and squirming in your seat until we land, 
reflecting on the price you must pay for your filthy, vile addiction.  I'll
make a deal with you: if you don't smoke, I won't fart.  Whaddaya think?

Besides, those smoke detectors are there for a reason, and tampering with
them *would* be immoral, completely apart from being illegal.  You ever
hear about that Air Canada DC-9 (ob.rec.travel.air) that made an emergency
landing in Louisville a few years back because of a fire that started in
one of the heads?  It's primarily because of that incident that those smoke
detectors were mandated.

------

>Your posting to alt.peeves wasn't *my* idea, but I have to put up with
>it. Think about it.

I did, and I rejected your line of reasoning completely.  You don't *have*
to read alt.peeves; you obviouisly read it because you want to.  On the
other hand, if I'm trapped inside the cabin of an airplane for the duration
of the flight, I have no alternative.  I can't go someplace else to breathe,
or to prevent my clothing and hair from getting stunk up.

I'm continually amazed by the flawed "logic" smokers use to attempt to
justify their habit, and the specious analogies they make.  Face it: unless
you're alone, and you're someplace with adequate enough ventilation to
prevent the smell of your habit from lingering -- please note that this
does *not* include most public restrooms, on or off an airplane -- you 
*have* no inalienable right to smoke.  Any right you have to smoke is 
transcended by the rights of others whom your smoking will annoy.  You and 
your kind have been rightfully forced to take your deserved place at the 
bottom of the social hierarchy, along with panhandlers and annoying street
lunatics.  You're on the run, and there'll be no turning back.  So you
might as well get used to the idea.

------

>Tell me about it. Fortunately, I don't live there, and don't have to
>subject myself to the kind of hysterical crap we get from that
>particular brand of weenie.

Hysterical?  I think that the fuss about second-hand smoke is a bit overdone,
but my personal reasons for disliking tobacco are purely practical: I don't
like the smell, and I don't like being made uncomfortable by people with an 
addiction to an unnecessary habit that they had no business taking up in
the first place -- for reasons having to do with their personal health, if
not the comfort of others.

------

>Clearly you haven't met the same ones as me. I've frequently felt my
>*life* endanged by these people, especially after they've been
>indulging in their own habit-forming, health-endangering behaviours.

Those people are zealots, and I don't like their kind any more than you
do.  Zealotry is a peeve in itself, independent of the actual manifestatio
thereof.  But their extremism doesn't taint the validity of their basic
postition vis a vis smoking.

Just out of curiousity, what "habit-forming, health-endangering behaviours"
are you referring to?

------

>I don't intend to let you that close to my clothing. Yours is your own
>concern. Sit somewhere else.

Poddleslobber.  I don't have to sit right next to you to get the "benefit"
of your smoking stench.


Geoff


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  "I'm sort of a meat man - red and juicy, dripping with blood as I tear
  the flesh from bones, giant slugs of partially chewed meat forced down
  my throat by the sheer weight of the meat and blood behind it."

						-- Russ Kepler
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Xref: sparky rec.travel.air:3373 alt.peeves:12415