Kim and I were in Utah last weekend, and I’ll be posting about that soon, but one of the really cool things about Utah is that smoking is prohibited in all public places including restaurants and bars.  It was so nice to go out to eat and not be bothered by the smoke that never fails to infiltrate the "non-smoking section" in Pennsylvania restaurants.

When I learned about Utah’s public smoking ban, I looked it up and found lots of other good news on the subject:

On September 25th, a public-smoking ban went into effect in Philadelphia.  And Allentown is making noises along the same lines:

On Sept. 20, Allentown City Council approved a resolution urging the state of Pennsylvania to enact a statewide ban on smoking in public places.
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This is not an issue of choice.  Those directly affected by second-hand smoke did not choose to bear the negative effects of someone else’s habit.  Taxpayers do not choose to shoulder the financial burden of those who require regular, costly treatment for lung disease.  In fact, most consumers are in favor of indoor bans.  According to a national Zagat Survey of more that 110,000 restaurant patrons in the United States, 80 percent of respondents said that all restaurants should be smokefree.  In California, 70 percent of respondents said they would eat out less if smoking were permitted again in restaurants.

Earlier this month, Philadelphia became the latest major U.S. city to go smoke-free indoors.  This continues a trend at the state and municipal level that is spreading across the United States.  According to Americans for Non-smokers’ Rights, a California-based lobbying organization, 17 states and 474 municipalities have enacted smoking bans in restaurants, bars and other workplaces.  Hawaii begins a ban in this November, and Washington, D.C., is going smokeless in January.

Even those crazy Europeans are on board with this:

Four fifths of EU citizens support a ban on smoking in offices, shops and other indoor public spaces, according to a poll marking World No Tobacco Day.

However, they are less sure when asked specifically if they support a ban in bars - in this case, 61% are in favour.
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The world’s first nationwide smoking ban in public places was imposed in Ireland in 2004.

Italy and Scotland have outlawed smoking in enclosed public places and the rest of the UK is following suit in 2007.
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"More and more of us don’t smoke and don’t want to be anywhere near smokers either."

The poll suggests that young people are the most likely to find smoke unpleasant, for reasons such as its smell.

This is January 2005, and even Italy, where it is not unusual to see doctors smoking in hospitals and pupils lighting up in school corridors, has moved with the times by introducing a harsh new law banning smoking in public places, including bars and restaurants.

France is to ban smoking in all public places from next February, the prime minister has announced.

Cafes, nightclubs and restaurants are to be given until January 2008 to adapt, said Dominique de Villepin.
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Smoking kills more than 13 people a day in France, said Mr de Villepin - calling it an "unacceptable reality".
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Opinion polls in France - often considered a nation of smokers - suggest 70% of the people support the ban.

And the BBC has this roundup of smoking bans around the world.

Hi Anthony... hope all is well with you.  I was sorry to hear about Kim’s dad.  I posted a message to you all to let you know that you were in our prayers. 

I love how you set up your mom’s photo site.  Very nice!!  Can you tell me what I need to do to view her movie clips?  I’d like to be able to view them. 

Thanks Anthony... next time come down too!  Love Lisa

Some movies we recently (relatively recently) watched:

A Prarie Home Companion: great movie.  Hilarious.  Especially good if you’ve listened to the radio show.  Actually it’s a lot like the radio show in some ways, except that you don’t have to listen to the annoying songs they play, because they cut to backstage scenes during the songs.

With Honors: good, sad, funny.

Blast from the Past: hilarious.  As annoying as Alicia Silverstone is, she was actually really good in this.

The Devil Wears Prada: hilarious.

House of Sand and Fog: kind of interesting, but slow.  And dark, which for me isn’t a bad thing, but Kim hated it.  It seemed to be fixated on the girl’s smoking habit for no apparent reason, which was irritating.

Sometime near the beginning of this week, our internet connection got really slow.  Web pages either wouldn’t load at all, or they’d take 2 or 3 minutes to load.  Sending email took forever.  Uploading data happened at 1-8 KB/s instead of the normal 50 KB/s.

I called the cable company and they said they could detect signal problems getting to our modem.  They said they would be able to send someone out in 2 weeks (!!) but it was likely a problem with a splitter on the coaxial cable: the splitters sometimes go bad and then the signal gets severely degraded.  The idea of a splitter dying sounded ridiculous to me, given that it’s an entirely passive device with no electrical or moving parts, but I figured I’d take the splitter out (thus temporarily disabling the TV’s signal) and connect the cable directly to the cable modem.

Unbelievably, the internet was back to its good old speedy self.  Still in denial, I put the splitter back, but now the internet still worked fine.  So apparently, either the splitter or one of the cables involved has a bad connection or a break somewhere, and moving stuff around must have bumped it back into good contact.  For now I’ll just have to keep an eye on it and maybe go jostle the whole mess around once in a while to see how the signal is affected.

Here’s a photo that I took from the back deck last night.  The orange only lasted for a couple minutes, as usual.  When I looked again 15 or 20 minutes later, the moon had gone down in the sky, so maybe over the next few days I’ll be able to get some nice red moon shots.

Click the image to get the high-resolution version.