Ban Smoking Statewide

As a single guy living alone, I tend to eat out a lot. My favorite culinary venues are in Indianapolis and Greenwood.

Until a couple of weeks ago, the question I was asked almost every time I ate out was, “Do you want smoking or non-smoking?” What a relief it is not to have to answer that question anymore. The long-awaited smoking bans took effect this month.

A growing number of Indiana communities have passed ordinances prohibiting smoking in public buildings, including restaurants. Bloomington led the way several years ago. Since then, Indianapolis, Greenwood, Columbus, Fort Wayne, Carmel, and Shelbyville are among those communities that have passed smoking bans.

Smoking bans are supported by a large majority of citizens, even many smokers. Smokers view it as another excuse to quit the nasty habit.

Some see smoking bans as just one more example of government’s encroachment on a person’s privacy. Normally, I would agree with such sentiments. I oppose the seatbelt laws for the same reason.

However, choosing not to wear seatbelts endangers only the person making the choice not to wear them. Laws requiring seatbelts restrict a person’s right to choose to take the risk. If smoking affected only the smoker, I would oppose smoking bans, too.

But secondhand smoke is not only annoying to the non-smoker, it is dangerous. Smokers have the right to smoke, but they do not have the right to smoke in public places where their bad habit adversely affects those around them.

The anti-smoking ordinances in place in Indianapolis and Greenwood go a long way toward protecting children and non-smokers from secondhand cigarette smoke. But in all honesty they do not go far enough.

In Indianapolis, for example, bowling alleys are exempt from enforcing the ban. There are lots of children at bowling alleys, since bowling is a family game.

The smoking ban also does not apply to outdoor venues. That might seem to make sense because there is always fresh air blowing in when you’re outdoors.

But I’ve attended outdoor concerts and other events where people were freely smoking all around me, or up-wind from me. It wasn’t much different from being in an enclosed space.

Initially, the proposed smoking ban in Indianapolis included outdoor venues. But the original bill was in danger of dying unless the changes were made. The compromise was a good one, but it is unfortunate that compromises have to be made when it comes to the protection of public health.

Other communities that are considering anti-smoking ordinances, such as Franklin, should take that into consideration. The issue is not about a person’s right to smoke. It is only about where they have that right. If it is a public space, even an outdoor one, nobody should have the right to smoke there.

And, although a hodgepodge of varied anti-smoking ordinances around the state is better than not having any smoking bans at all, a statewide unified ban would be far better.

The Indiana General Assembly is not considering a statewide smoking ban this session. It’s too late for such a bill to be introduced this year.

But next year, with the start of a new General Assembly, it would be a perfect time to introduce legislation that would ban cigarette smoking in all public places statewide.

There is very little likelihood that small towns with mostly Mom-and-Pop restaurants would consider adopting anti-smoking ordinances. A state law would cover such small towns and rural areas.

Once upon a time, and not too long ago, smoking was even allowed in patient rooms in hospitals. It was allowed on airline flights. In fact, there were few places one could go to escape the vile stench of cigarette smoke.

Today, the indoor air is much cleaner. But in a few years, it could be we will look back on today’s smoking climate and wonder why we even allowed it in public at all, even outside.

Heresy: A Crime Worth Dying For?

The recent spate of protests, death threats, and calls for censorship that came as a direct result of some Danish newspaper cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad doing unholy things got me to thinking about what kind of parallels might exist in other religions or at other times.

Although I can’t say I was shocked at what my research discovered, I can say with all certainty that I was at least mildly surprised by the frequency of religious censorship, even going as far as modern-day executions as retribution for what someone may have spoken or written.

A Danish newspaper last September published a dozen cartoons depicting Mohammad. They were caricatures, which means, of course, that they were not exactly flattering. The Muslim world, especially Muslims in the Middle East, responded by doing what they do best, burning embassies and calling for executions of the perpetrators.

Not to be outdone, though, two religious groups in Great Britain were also up in arms. One group rallied and yelled and said that the artwork sewed evil into people. They claimed it made a mockery of their god, and claimed that while they had no problem with freedom of speech there should never be freedom for desecration.

But these were not groups of Muslims protesting Danish cartoons; they were groups of Christians protesting the show “Jerry Springer: The Opera.”

They may have been right about that sewing of evil thing, because some members of the group published the phone numbers and addresses of BBC officials who showed the screening. At least one of them received death threats.

A second Christian group actually took the BBC to court to press charges for, of all things, blasphemy. The British High Court dismissed the case.

The biggest difference between the Muslim protests and the Christian protests were that no lives were actually lost in the latter.

It does show, however, that both fundamentalist religious groups, the Christians and the Muslims, get their feelings hurt far too easily. And when they do, their responses are those of five year olds.

They yell and scream and throw things. Then they want you to die, or at the very least, go to jail.

Take for example the case of an activist who was convicted in Germany last month and sentenced to one year of prison for mailing toilet paper stamped with "The holy Qur'an" to mosques and the media.

And in 2004 two Dutch film makers received death threats for their film exposing poor treatment of women in many Islamic nations. One of the film makers was eventually stabbed and shot to death by a Muslim.

Christian groups are more likely to call for censorship and bans than for murder, but there are also exceptions to that general statement. Abortion doctors have been the target of fundamentalist Christians, who believe firmly in the “right to life” for all humans, except, apparently, for abortion doctors.

Several movies have also been the target for censorship by Christian groups, including “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which depicts a love affair between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian,” which is a parody on Jesus’ life, was even banned in a couple of European countries, including Norway. But next door, in Sweden, the film was actually advertised as being so funny that it was banned in Norway.

Islamic countries, especially in the Middle East, are often a hotbed for violence. But that region has never earned a reputation for being a hotbed for innovation and invention. For them the Dark Ages have never ended. Religion often suppresses reason and creativity.

The Dark Ages are also still alive and well for Christian fundamentalists. If reason hadn’t finally supplanted the Christian forces that brought about the Inquisition, the witch hunts, and all the heresy trials throughout history, the U.S. might also be a third-world nation.

Personally, though I’m not religious, I do have one prayer. And that is may God help us to break free from our religions.

Bush's Science Policy is Schizophrenic

Last week NASA was forced to cut a planned robotic space mission. The spacecraft, named Dawn, was set to orbit two asteroids. It was a purely scientific mission, and one of several science missions that have been cancelled over the past few months.

Also last week, House Republicans touted a series of policy proposals that are supposed to enhance America’s competitiveness in technology. The U.S. still leads the world in technological progress, but that lead has been slipping in recent years.

The Bush administration’s science policy seems to be in a state of schizophrenia. On the one hand, Bush goes on national television during his State of the Union address and promotes technology and manned space missions. At the same time, NASA’s science missions are being cut or scaled back while Bush censors his top science advisors when the results of their science run contrary to the administration’s party-line conservative agenda.

And while the president is touting a policy encouraging the advancement of technology, he is making statements to the press in support of including the pseudoscience of intelligent design in the science classroom.

As for America’s space program, it seems to be in the early stages of a reversal. Back in the 1960s and early ‘70s, NASA’s missions were almost exclusively manned. Sending humans to explore space is extremely costly and dangerous. But, because of the Space Race with the Soviets, robotic missions to the moon were just not high-profile enough. Humans had to go up.

We learned a lot in those days. A huge number of modern consumer goods and services have come into being as a direct or indirect result of the manned space program of the 1960s.

Robotic missions are much cheaper and entirely safe. They can teach us a great deal about whatever they were designed to measure. But there are far fewer spin-offs that directly benefit society.

There was a great amount of sadness among many of the NASA scientists who made the early manned space program possible when Pres. Nixon decided to cut NASA’s budget, which effectively brought to an end to manned missions to the moon. Even orbital missions were all but halted.

In place of the manned missions, NASA turned its attention, and smaller budget, to unmanned scientific missions. The Viking missions to Mars and Voyager missions to the outer Solar System were spectacular successes. These missions led to great discoveries that excited not only the planetary scientists involved, but the general public as well.

In 1981, humans went back into space in the Space Shuttle, but the missions were all in close Earth orbit and were nowhere near as spectacular as the earlier moon missions. Basically, the Space Shuttle was a truck with earth orbit as its highway.

There were some infamous failures along the way, too. Two shuttle missions resulted in disastrous loss of life. And some robotic missions to the planets ended in failure as well.

Lately, however, the unmanned missions have been successes that resulted in increased scientific knowledge of Mars, comets, and asteroids.

So, as the pendulum swings back the other way, toward manned scientific missions, it is with a similar sort of melancholy that permeated through NASA when its early manned missions were cut.

If Bush’s initiative is successful, it will mean that the space program will get more expensive, and at the same time, more impressive. Sending men and women to the moon, and ultimately to Mars and other planets, will get the space program back on the track it should never have left in 1974.

The sad part is that it is at the expense of losing valuable unmanned science missions. These missions cost so little it’s a pity we can’t afford to keep them even as we ramp up the manned space program again.