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Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Happy birthday to Illinois' indoor smoking ban
News media in Chicago are commemorating the first anniversary of the state-wide ban on indoor cigarette smoking. The benefits are obvious: I can go to any sports event, bar, nightclub or restaurant and not worry about suffering in a smoking environment. I lead a smoke-free lifestyle, and I don’t think I should need to sacrifice that privilege just to enjoy an indoor establishment. So for purely selfish reasons, I love the one-year-old law. I think it has more far-reaching, less obvious benefits as well. It very much dilutes the social aspect of smoking, which for many smokers is the whole point. Some “non-smokers” smoke when they drink, or only smoke when they are out with friends. The new law makes this habit terribly difficult. People have a choice: stay home, smoke outdoors, or go smokeless for the evening. Part of the fun of smoking, as I understand it, is smoking with others, using cigarettes while flirting, and looking sophisticated smoking at the bar. No longer. With fewer opportunities to smoke, fewer people are going to become addicted, and perhaps fewer young people will decide to start.
Has the cigarette machine business fallen on hard times? I remember seeing cigarette machines in restaurant lobbies when I was a kid. (Especially at The Chandelier on Dempster Street in Skokie.) Now the law requires that cigarette machines only be located in an over-21 area, and said areas—bars and casinos?—don’t allow smoking in Illinois. So I was pretty surprised to see a cigarette machine at Nick’s Beer Garden Saturday night. Nine dollars a pack. Wow. I hope it accepts five-dollar bills.
Has the cigarette machine business fallen on hard times? I remember seeing cigarette machines in restaurant lobbies when I was a kid. (Especially at The Chandelier on Dempster Street in Skokie.) Now the law requires that cigarette machines only be located in an over-21 area, and said areas—bars and casinos?—don’t allow smoking in Illinois. So I was pretty surprised to see a cigarette machine at Nick’s Beer Garden Saturday night. Nine dollars a pack. Wow. I hope it accepts five-dollar bills.
No chance of fans on ice at NFL games this weekend
The NFL schedule shifted two weeks behind what it was in the 80’s, so many years ago. The Super Bowl was often the third Sunday in January; now it’s in February, and the 17-week season starts after Labor Day. This leaves playoff fans in cold-weather stadia braving worse conditions than before. To make matters worse—colder—the NFL shifted its Saturday playoff games three hours later, putting the second game in prime time. The league pushed back the times on Championship Sunday as well, but only by two hours.
Fans became accustomed to bundling up to sit for 3½ or 4 hours in the January chill in Foxboro, Mass.; Green Bay; Philadelphia; and even Chicago a few times. Not so this weekend! The NFL controls game times but cannot decide where the games are. Playoff seeds determine home-field advantage. This weekend, the games will kick off in Phoenix, San Diego, Miami, and the Vikings’ rickety domed stadium in Minneapolis (completed 1982). Shirtsleeves in January—-what a concept! Next week, this weekend’s winners will travel to Nashville and Charlotte on Saturday. Will fans bring light jackets for temperatures in the 50’s? Next Sunday’s games may be more typical of cold-weather games: they’re in East Rutherford, N.J. and Pittsburgh. Brr.
Fans became accustomed to bundling up to sit for 3½ or 4 hours in the January chill in Foxboro, Mass.; Green Bay; Philadelphia; and even Chicago a few times. Not so this weekend! The NFL controls game times but cannot decide where the games are. Playoff seeds determine home-field advantage. This weekend, the games will kick off in Phoenix, San Diego, Miami, and the Vikings’ rickety domed stadium in Minneapolis (completed 1982). Shirtsleeves in January—-what a concept! Next week, this weekend’s winners will travel to Nashville and Charlotte on Saturday. Will fans bring light jackets for temperatures in the 50’s? Next Sunday’s games may be more typical of cold-weather games: they’re in East Rutherford, N.J. and Pittsburgh. Brr.
Israel held to a pacifist standard
“This is how you can tell, by the way, an antisemite. There is no other country in the world where someone would expect the country to absorb rocket attacks by the hundreds, injuring and murdering your own populace without a response. Except if it’s a Jewish country, well then yes of course you should keep absorbing the rocket attacks.”
--Michael Medved, The Michael Medved Show, Dec. 29
--Michael Medved, The Michael Medved Show, Dec. 29
Monday, December 29, 2008
Belated Chanukah message from the Rebbe
As Chanukah comes to a close—-shkiyah (sunset) in Chicago is in just a few minutes—I’d like to reprint something Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson z”l (the Lubavitcher rebbe) wrote about Chanukah in 1980:
The Chanukah Lights remind us in a most obvious way that illumination begins at home, within oneself and one’s family, by increasing and intensifying the light of Torah and Mitzvot in the everyday experience, even as the Chanukah Lights are kindled in growing numbers from day to day. But though it begins at home, it does not stop there. Such is the nature of light that when kindled, the Chanukah Lights are expressly meant to illuminate the “outside,” symbolically alluding to the duty to bring light also to those who, for one reason or another, still walk in darkness.
Let us pray that the message of the Chanukah Lights will illuminate the everyday life of everyone personally, and of the society at large, for a brighter life in every respect, both materially and spiritually.
The Chanukah Lights remind us in a most obvious way that illumination begins at home, within oneself and one’s family, by increasing and intensifying the light of Torah and Mitzvot in the everyday experience, even as the Chanukah Lights are kindled in growing numbers from day to day. But though it begins at home, it does not stop there. Such is the nature of light that when kindled, the Chanukah Lights are expressly meant to illuminate the “outside,” symbolically alluding to the duty to bring light also to those who, for one reason or another, still walk in darkness.
Let us pray that the message of the Chanukah Lights will illuminate the everyday life of everyone personally, and of the society at large, for a brighter life in every respect, both materially and spiritually.
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