You have to be consistent about these things. I can go searching now and find you causes in your house that are more likely to kill you than second hand smoking...

Wouldn't change much, you'd do everything to dismiss what I would say. Thats why I wont bother.

Are you sure? It must be nice to have a 100% guarantee that lets you blame your mother's smoking, being able to rule out the possibility that you would have had asthma regardless.

So now people who smoke automatically hate themselves, and are out to kill you?

It's not the number. It's the shear volume, and the volume you're exposed to for hours every day. When you see a smoker, you go "oh geez" and hold your breathe. You breathe readily as you sit in car exhaust every day. If you think exhaust is clean, open up an exhaust pipe and look at the inside. Then understand that that's only the stuff that stuck to the walls. The rest flew out the back, and just like dust accumulating on a desk, it went into your lungs.

Are you serious with this garbage? I am disappoint. The amount of gas that you inhale sitting 10-20 feet from a directed source for thirty seconds (I don't know anyone who sits idling in traffic for "hours every day") is very obviously negligible compared to spending an evening mingling in a confined space with several dozen such sources. If you're a cab driver in New York or something, yeah, I'd say you're pretty off to keep the windows down all day every day.

Also, hot, quickly propelled vehicle exhaust dissipates very quickly in an open space (as hot, quickly propelled gasses do), especially compared to cigarette smoke which dissipates very slowly (due to the tons of particulate matter in the smoke, I assume).

I tried to find a visualization of car exhaust, to confirm the intuition that it doesn't form an enveloping cloud around the surrounding area in a few seconds, no luck. Anyone have any relevant information?

add: l0l at Blizzard sucks -> smoking debate.

They chose to work there. I'm pretty sure they could grab another job anyplace else if they wanted.

Everyone did back then. Smoking during pregnancy doesn't lead to asthma, at least I've never heard so.

Can you smell car exhaust? If so, you are unrefutably breathing carcinogens. Ever been to a gas station? If you can't smell it, that still doesn't necessarily mean you're not breathing it. Carbon Monoxide, for instance, is oderless. Shouldn't that be all the evidence I need to tell you you're breathing carcinogens? And if you're going to pull the "some carcinogens are worse than others" card, there's really nothing I can say to continue this discussion.

As for volume, if you don't believe me, start your car in your closed garage. Have your neighbor start smoking in his garage at the same time. Have him smoke as many as he can, as fast as he is willing. Be sure to tell me who lasts the longest. That won't address the carcinogenic qualities, or the dissipation, but reluctance to go forward with the example certainly demonstrations the volume we're talking about. Now multiply that by 100,000. Multiply it by 1,000,000. You've still not reached the amount of cars driving every day through your state.

If you wanted to, you could take the annual CO2 emmisions for cars in your country/state, find the average carcinogen concentrations for combustion in cars, add a correction factor (because most people don't take care of their cars so it'll be worse), and you'll have the amount of deadly, carcinogen gas pumped into your local atmosphere every day. Cigarettes are the least of your worries.

Or you could just compare the barrels of oil imported (which are all burned) with the amount of cigarettes sold. Barrels of oil may very well beat cartons sold.

Yeah, just like the poor strippers. They're forced to undress for men so that they can work their way through college.

Just because you can't smell it doesn't mean you didn't inhale it.

I completely agree, and never suggested that A: we do not breathe car exhaust or B: that car exhaust does not contain carcinogens.

If you're going to pull the "breathing in some amount of carcinogens is the same as breathing an arbitrary amount of carcinogens" card, there's really nothing I can say to continue this discussion.

Come on man, you're killing me here. There is obviously no question that a vehicle produces more gas than a person. The entire point I was making is that we're exposed to exhaust for a much briefer period than cigarette smoke (assuming the bar/restaurant scenario), and that exhaust is allowed to freely disperse during that time, while the cigarette smoke is contained (as in your garage).

If you're going to pull the "doesn't everyone at a red light jump out of their car and stick the nearest tailpipe in their mouth" card, there's really nothing I can say to continue this discussion.

I've never bothered to do the math. If you have, please provide the information, also taking into account a solid definition for 'local atmosphere', which I imagine you greatly underestimate (and which I also imagine would make the carcinogen concentrations a non-issue for most people in most situations). I was arguing specifically the stop-light-exhaust-breathing scenario, but why not, it's an interesting proposition.

854 pounds (0.43 tons) of CO annually per vehicle, assuming a 'light truck', driven 14,000 miles a year (http://www.epa.gov/oms/consumer/f00013.htm) Couldn't find a reliable number of active vehicles, let's assume ten billion just to be safe (the info I'm finding suggests between 100 million and 1 billion). That's 4,300,000,000 tons of toxic CO annually, into 5,144,100,000,000,000 tons of atmosphere. That's a ratio of 0.000000836, less than 1 ppm (lower bound for toxicity is 667 ppm).

This is just simple, back-of-the-envelope type stuff, but you see the idea. And apparently around 75% of the mass of the atmosphere is in the lower layers, where things like vehicle emissions and cigarette smoke tend to dissipate.

Add: Oh, CO₂ output is around 20 times as much as CO (around 20 ppm in that lose model), but the unsafe concentration is around 45 times as high (30,000 ppm).

We'd still be pretty safe, even assuming all those toxic gases were collected in our local 1% of the atmosphere. (This is the 'people might be weenies, so let's just be careful' rating for CO₂, the similar rating for CO is 50 ppm, if memory serves.)

Add2: My reading suggests that carcinogens in exhaust (ozone and particulate) have a mostly local effect, when it comes to people. (Though with ten billion small trucks on the roads we might be in trouble, with around 76 ppb of ozone (safe levels are around 60 ppb). Although, once it leaves ground level it ceases to be harmful to people, so... )

Of course. Look what I was replying to with that.

Striking a Canadian police officer with a soap bubble is assault as well.

I can definitely see why he'd be pissed that someone is blowing soap bubbles on him, and I'm not sure if he should put up with it.
I know that if someone started blowing soap bubbles on me I'll probably be annoyed and if he doesn't stop I'd get angry and assertive, not much differently than that police officer.

As for smoking, even that fact that it is a major nuisance is enough in my mind to prohibit people from smoking in confined locations and even crowded public locations (for example, smoking on me when I'm sitting in a bus stop and requiring me to leave my seat to avoid the smoke). It isn't much different from walking around in public completely naked, or carrying a megaphone and making a lot of noise (and both are likely to get the cops called on you)
I'd also prefer if parents were prohibited from smoking at home (to prevent them from setting a bad example and from potentially harming their children's health), but stopping that is not only impossible but quite ridiculous and invasive to your privacy.

Two Cubans, at least 50 Captain Blacks, and probably 40 filtered cigarettes. The cigarettes are virtually tasteless to me, and the smoke smells horrible. The Captain Blacks taste OK, because I always get the sweet "flavor", but even then I mostly just smoked them for the "coolness" of the thicker smoke. The Cubans actually tasted pretty good (it's so pure that you can actually taste that it's a plant!), but that's relatively speaking. A burger or fries or, Hell, a hot dog tastes better.

• Playing video games isn't relaxing.

• Writing programs isn't relaxing.

• Watching a movie isn't relaxing.

• Driving a car isn't relaxing.

Video games generally require mental effort, and some even require physical effort. Writing programs usually requires even more mental effort. Watching a movie is relatively relaxing, assuming you don't care too much about what it is you're watching (personally, my mind is pretty busy when I'm watching a movie, and I expect anybody watching one for the first time would also be busy taking it all in). Usually when I leave a movie theater I'm all "fired up", the furthest thing from relaxed. Driving a car is clearly not relaxing. It also requires physical and mental effort. These things are enjoyable (for many people), but usually not relaxing.

If those activities were relaxing then you would be able to do them to calm down when you're batshit crazy stressed out. Relaxing is laying back and breathing deeply, possibly with some music, and letting your mind slow down.

Just because unintelligent people fail to do it doesn't mean that every germ-conscious person's actions are futile. For example, I saw an episode of MythBusters where they wanted to test just how much germs spread when a sick person interacts with people. They invited the MythBuster team, as well as 3 blind participants, to a table for a social experiment. Initially, nobody except for Adam and Jamie knew about the actual test (I don't think Jamie participated). Adam hid a dripping canister of a normally invisible liquid that would drip down the side of his nose to simulate having a running nose (he would then have to keep wiping it up). He was the host of the party, so initially he handed things out to people, etc. His intention was to act normally, as most people normally do. In the end, they turned on the ultraviolet (or whatever) lights to make the liquid visible and it was EVERYWHERE. The entire table was covered with it, as were the hands and faces of most participants at the table. All except for Carrie, who admitted to being an actual "germophobe". She said that she just naturally implemented all of her natural behaviors and she ended up avoiding almost all of the fake germs without knowing about it. In the second experiment, they started fresh again and explained to everybody how the experiment worked. Then they all explicitly tried not to get the germs on them. Instead of Adam handing stuff out, he asked other people to. The germs spread much less that way, and were mostly just all over Adam.

Or you could be like every other guy and just not flush. Aim at the sides, not at the water, and you won't get splashed. You're not touching it so it's not going to hurt you (except for the smell, but generally that's the least of your worries in a washroom). It's not rocket science. If you think that's bad, women's washrooms are statically much worse.

QFT. Car exhaust is very likely worse for you than cigarette smoke, but you don't inhale as much of it because it's typically released into the atmosphere unhindered, and dissipates much quicker. Most people, when not prohibited, smoke indoors where the smoke really can't dissipate easily. Additionally, you very rarely find yourself trapped in the exhaust of an automobile. You can generally move to get away from it. When it comes to cigarette smoke, that usually requires you to walk away from people, essentially making you anti-social. A notable exception would be rush hour traffic in a major city, where there is a lot more exhaust around you and nowhere to go. That is already recognized as a health concern, however.

My dad used to smoke in the car when I was young. I would always sit behind him. He would crack the window, but I can say from experience that it didn't matter because the smoke still came right back in my face. I was also diagnosed with asthma and used to have inhalers. I haven't needed them in a long time though, perhaps because he quit. My brother, on the other hand, has been smoking for 10 years or so, and now he has been diagnosed with asthma and was prescribed inhalers.

Agreed. She was being a brat and daddy warned her to stop. If she was blowing the bubbles on me then I would have said the same thing (except I wouldn't have a badge, so she'd probably keep doing it until things escalated and I was arrested). Fuck that bitch.

That said, it does appear that the police were mistreating people, and wrongly arresting them, etc (you can see more by following a link displayed in that video). Allegedly, a criminal defense attorney that lives in the area was asked to help, so she came by and was subsequently detained as well. She said she witnessed the police arresting people without cause, for example, because they had a bandanna or a defense attorney's number written on their arm. She said the people were also told that they could leave (eventually) only if they allowed the police to search all of their belongings. The criminal defense attorney said that it was a major breech of the charter of rights. One woman said that in front of everyone the police lifted up her shirt and bra, exposing her to the crowd, claiming to have been searching her (for tits, I'm guessing).

I would really like to see this defense attorney that was in the midst of this actually take action and get a few 10s of police suspended or fired, if not criminally charged.

The problem is that 95% of communication is non-verbal. When a crowd gathers to "stick it to The Man", police begin to fear for their own safety, and begin to return the body language back. People start yelling at the police, and the police understandably begin to feel threatened. Eventually, they return the intimidation right back at the crowd, and eventually it spirals into arrests and wrongful searches and assaults. Nobody is thinking clearly.

That said, the reason for the police's presence in the first place doesn't seem clear to me. I'm not sure why they were even there. The defense attorney seemed to make it sound like they were there for "surveillance", as if they were looking for something that wasn't really there. Or perhaps their intention was to protect the G20 submit, but from what I'm not sure. Perhaps politics was afraid of terrorist actions or something. Sadly, I don't think that anybody is really around to do checks and balances... And good luck to any Canadian citizen that tries take on the police, or government, for that matter. We just don't have rights, or lawyers to defend those rights, here. As evidenced by the defense attorney who was held by the police and presumably did nothing about it afterward.

Assuming the police aren't corrupt and had good intentions, they should train to remain calm and not communicate with the crowd (that only gets people angrier). That way, they should be able to remain collected until somebody actually does push the limits and deserves to be arrested. That said, they should have called people in to make contact with the crowd (non-police spokespersons, for example, just to explain what is going on in a calm voice and kindly ask the people to remain calm).

Meh... People are fucking stupid.

Yeah, I know. I caught that in another thread. I just don't have much else to add to it. In any case, when I say marine, I'm thinking of the U.S. marines.

Of course, smoking is destructive and even somewhat attention-seeking behavior, so somebody whose life sucks, or who wants attention, is more likely to smoke. I don't think that too many U.S. marines would smoke these days, but I don't have any proof to back up that assumption. At least, I don't think it would be disproportionate to the rest of the population. If anything, I would think that proportionally fewer marines would smoke when compared to the rest of the population.