I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside >Down" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam Piper >called "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this distraction >before: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if it
isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
The percentage of adults that smoked even in the 1940s was less than 45%
no matter what Hollywood made it look like, and it went down from there.
But he has a large majority of his characters smoking.
Yuck !
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside Down" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam Piper called "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this distraction before: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if it
isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
The percentage of adults that smoked even in the 1940s was less than 45%
no matter what Hollywood made it look like, and it went down from there.
But he has a large majority of his characters smoking.
Yuck˙˙˙ !
BCFD 36 <bcfd36@cruzio.com> writes:
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside
Down" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam Piper
called "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this distraction
before: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if it
isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
The percentage of adults that smoked even in the 1940s was less than 45%
no matter what Hollywood made it look like, and it went down from there.
That number, presuming it is nationwide, probably doesn't account
for geographical differences. In the upper midwest in the 1960s
and 1970s, I suspect that percentage was considerably
higher.
I certainly don't miss smelling like an ashtray after
visiting a bar or pub, trying to eat while breathing
clouds of second-hand smoke in restaurants or getting
stuck on an airplane for four hours with a bunch of smokers.
But he has a large majority of his characters smoking.
It really was part of popular culture in those days. My dad
quit around 1969 - took up the pipe for the next 5 years,
then quit cold turkey. His father and brother and most of
their rural neighbors all smoked; his brother from age 9
until his death in 1979 - even while on supplemental
oxygen for most of the decade before he passed.
Yuck !
With which I concur 100%.
BCFD 36 <bcfd36@cruzio.com> writes:
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside
Down" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam Piper
called "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this distraction
before: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if it
isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
The percentage of adults that smoked even in the 1940s was less than 45%
no matter what Hollywood made it look like, and it went down from there.
That number, presuming it is nationwide, probably doesn't account
for geographical differences. In the upper midwest in the 1960s
and 1970s, I suspect that percentage was considerably
higher.
I certainly don't miss smelling like an ashtray after
visiting a bar or pub, trying to eat while breathing
clouds of second-hand smoke in restaurants or getting
stuck on an airplane for four hours with a bunch of smokers.
But he has a large majority of his characters smoking.
It really was part of popular culture in those days.
My dad
quit around 1969 - took up the pipe for the next 5 years,
then quit cold turkey. His father and brother and most of
their rural neighbors all smoked; his brother from age 9
until his death in 1979 - even while on supplemental
oxygen for most of the decade before he passed.
Yuck !
With which I concur 100%.
I flew back from Belize to Miami, Florida in 1989 in the last row of
Taca Airlines 737 in October 1989. The guy sitting next to me in the
middle seat was smoking a Churchill Cigar the entire way. It was a
horrible flight.
Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
I flew back from Belize to Miami, Florida in 1989 in the last row of
Taca Airlines 737 in October 1989. The guy sitting next to me in the
middle seat was smoking a Churchill Cigar the entire way. It was a
horrible flight.
That's pretty repulsive. I remember British Airways' cabin crew handing
out complementary cigarettes to everyone on board after the meal, but a
cigar is going too far. (I also remember flights with nonsmoking seating sections which were of course as full of smoke as the rest of the cabin.) --scott
Hollywood was part of the problem. Almost all of the actors were
smokers.
On Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:11:31 -0700, BCFD 36 wrote:
Hollywood was part of the problem. Almost all of the actors were
smokers.
I have an archive of images (scans of pictures from the earlier part
of last century or even before) from a now-defunct website called, I
believe, ?Retro Science?. One of the categories of images includes a
bunch of ads for Chesterfield, among them Ronnie Reagan shown signing
cartons of cigarette packs to give to all his friends for Christmas.
Other ads showed other well-known A-listers of the time (including
Bogie & Bacall) also smoking the same brand.
There?s even an ad or two somewhere in there claiming how some
particular brand is so much better for your lungs than the others.
Two rows in front of me was a lady with a chicken in a cage that cackledthe entire two ??? hour trip. I was really wondering how she was going
to get the chicken through border control.
I have an archive of images (scans of pictures from the earlier part
of last century or even before) from a now-defunct website called, I
believe, ?Retro Science?. One of the categories of images includes a
bunch of ads for Chesterfield, among them Ronnie Reagan shown signing
cartons of cigarette packs to give to all his friends for Christmas.
In article <1167fbb$3muhq$1@dont-email.me>, BCFD 36 <bcfd36@cruzio.com> wrote:
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside
Down" off and on for a couple of weeks.
I have socks older than that anthology.
BCFD 36 <bcfd36@cruzio.com> writes:
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside
Down" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam Piper
called "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this distraction
before: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if it
isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
The percentage of adults that smoked even in the 1940s was less than 45%
no matter what Hollywood made it look like, and it went down from there.
That number, presuming it is nationwide, probably doesn't account
for geographical differences. In the upper midwest in the 1960s
and 1970s, I suspect that percentage was considerably
higher.
I certainly don't miss smelling like an ashtray after
visiting a bar or pub, trying to eat while breathing
clouds of second-hand smoke in restaurants or getting
stuck on an airplane for four hours with a bunch of smokers.
But he has a large majority of his characters smoking.
It really was part of popular culture in those days. My dad
quit around 1969 - took up the pipe for the next 5 years,
then quit cold turkey. His father and brother and most of
their rural neighbors all smoked; his brother from age 9
until his death in 1979 - even while on supplemental
oxygen for most of the decade before he passed.
Scott Lurndal wrote:
BCFD 36 <bcfd36@cruzio.com> writes:
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside >>> Down" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam Piper
called "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this distraction >>> before: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if it
isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
It really was part of popular culture in those days. My dad
quit around 1969 - took up the pipe for the next 5 years,
then quit cold turkey. His father and brother and most of
their rural neighbors all smoked; his brother from age 9
until his death in 1979 - even while on supplemental
oxygen for most of the decade before he passed.
My father took it up during the war. At age 30 he was told he could
keep on smoking or keep on living. He went for the living.
When I went for dinner in my hotel in Fairbanks circa 1994 I asked for
the non-smoking section. But most people there were smoking so I
reminded the waiter that I wanted non-smoking.
"But this is the non-smoking section", he said.
"They why are these people allowed to smoke here?".
"Ah, by "non-smoking" we mean "no cigars or pipes".
I never ate there.
I once did some contract work for a radio station and took their cart machine back to repair. It was so disgusting with tobacco residue that I ran the whole thing through the parts washer before working on it. When I returned it, the station manager was upset and insisted that wasn't his machine, because it was white and his was orange.
--scott
William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> writes:
Scott Lurndal wrote:
BCFD 36 <bcfd36@cruzio.com> writes:
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside >>>> Down" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam Piper >>>> called "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this distraction >>>> before: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if it >>>> isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
[...]
It really was part of popular culture in those days. My dad
quit around 1969 - took up the pipe for the next 5 years,
then quit cold turkey. His father and brother and most of
their rural neighbors all smoked; his brother from age 9
until his death in 1979 - even while on supplemental
oxygen for most of the decade before he passed.
My father took it up during the war. At age 30 he was told he could
keep on smoking or keep on living. He went for the living.
My father took up smoking possibly during the war too, but gave it up
when he married.
I recall being rather shocked when working in the Netherlands around
2000 to find the workplace allowed smoking in the building and, as I got
to IRI early I used to open the window in the office to reduce the
stench and close it when when less bad or others started to arrive (even
in mid-winter).
Smoking advertisements in Europe on poster-boards in the late 1990's
was also a surprise. They had largely disappeared in Australia by then
and workplaces were supposedly non-smoking inside buildings, I recall stories about Department of Health in Canberra having hordes of smoker's outside the ground-floor front having a smoke and the Department trying
to force them to move to a different location.
On 21/08/2026 23:48, Scott Dorsey wrote:
[SNIP]
Similar story - back in the distant 1980's, a cigarette company had a >minicomputer, but it was just in a room with all the terminals and all
I once did some contract work for a radio station and took their cart machine
back to repair. It was so disgusting with tobacco residue that I ran the
whole thing through the parts washer before working on it. When I returned >> it, the station manager was upset and insisted that wasn't his machine,
because it was white and his was orange.
--scott
the ash trays on the desks, no clean room, not even a "mildly less dust
&c" room. (I doubt any worker for that mob was I non-smoker!)
On 8/21/2026 10:30 PM, Stephen Harker wrote:
William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> writes:
Scott Lurndal wrote:
BCFD 36 <bcfd36@cruzio.com> writes:
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside >>>>> Down" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam Piper >>>>> called "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this distraction >>>>> before: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if it >>>>> isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
[...]
It really was part of popular culture in those days. My dad
quit around 1969 - took up the pipe for the next 5 years,
then quit cold turkey. His father and brother and most of
their rural neighbors all smoked; his brother from age 9
until his death in 1979 - even while on supplemental
oxygen for most of the decade before he passed.
My father took it up during the war. At age 30 he was told he could
keep on smoking or keep on living. He went for the living.
My father took up smoking possibly during the war too, but gave it up
when he married.
I recall being rather shocked when working in the Netherlands around
2000 to find the workplace allowed smoking in the building and, as I got
to IRI early I used to open the window in the office to reduce the
stench and close it when when less bad or others started to arrive (even
in mid-winter).
Smoking advertisements in Europe on poster-boards in the late 1990's
was also a surprise. They had largely disappeared in Australia by then
and workplaces were supposedly non-smoking inside buildings, I recall
stories about Department of Health in Canberra having hordes of smoker's
outside the ground-floor front having a smoke and the Department trying
to force them to move to a different location.
Over the years my workplaces moved from allowing smoking everywhere
except the machine room, to confining it to a 'smoking room' on each
floor (the ceiling tiles of which rapidly darkened), to a bus-shelter
like structure outside near the door, to one well away from the door.
Don't miss it a bit.
On 8/21/2026 10:30 PM, Stephen Harker wrote:
William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> writes:
Scott Lurndal wrote:
BCFD 36 <bcfd36@cruzio.com> writes:
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside >>>>> Down" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam Piper >>>>> called "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this distraction >>>>> before: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if it >>>>> isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
[...]
It really was part of popular culture in those days. My dad
quit around 1969 - took up the pipe for the next 5 years,
then quit cold turkey. His father and brother and most of
their rural neighbors all smoked; his brother from age 9
until his death in 1979 - even while on supplemental
oxygen for most of the decade before he passed.
My father took it up during the war. At age 30 he was told he could
keep on smoking or keep on living. He went for the living.
My father took up smoking possibly during the war too, but gave it up
when he married.
I recall being rather shocked when working in the Netherlands around
2000 to find the workplace allowed smoking in the building and, as I got
to IRI early I used to open the window in the office to reduce the
stench and close it when when less bad or others started to arrive (even
in mid-winter).
Smoking advertisements in Europe on poster-boards in the late 1990's
was also a surprise. They had largely disappeared in Australia by then
and workplaces were supposedly non-smoking inside buildings, I recall
stories about Department of Health in Canberra having hordes of smoker's
outside the ground-floor front having a smoke and the Department trying
to force them to move to a different location.
Over the years my workplaces moved from allowing smoking everywhere
except the machine room, to confining it to a 'smoking room' on each
floor (the ceiling tiles of which rapidly darkened), to a bus-shelter
like structure outside near the door, to one well away from the door.
Don't miss it a bit.
In article <116afeq$l6co$1@dont-email.me>,Upside
William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
Scott Lurndal wrote:
BCFD 36 <bcfd36@cruzio.com> writes:
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned
PiperDown" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam
distractioncalled "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this
itbefore: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if
45%isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
The percentage of adults that smoked even in the 1940s was less than
there.no matter what Hollywood made it look like, and it went down from
Your
That number, presuming it is nationwide, probably doesn't account
for geographical differences. In the upper midwest in the 1960s
and 1970s, I suspect that percentage was considerably
higher.
I certainly don't miss smelling like an ashtray after
visiting a bar or pub, trying to eat while breathing
clouds of second-hand smoke in restaurants or getting
stuck on an airplane for four hours with a bunch of smokers.
When I went for dinner in my hotel in Fairbanks circa 1994 I asked for
the non-smoking section. But most people there were smoking so I
reminded the waiter that I wanted non-smoking.
"But this is the non-smoking section", he said.
"They why are these people allowed to smoke here?".
"Ah, by "non-smoking" we mean "no cigars or pipes".
I never ate there.
British style pubs in Toronto were particularly bad in the winter.
coat, scarf, gloves and had would stink of smoke for days, and there >>wasn't much you could do about it (I think I had two scarves, though).
In the summer you could change completely.
When smoking was banned in bars the prophets of doom/capitalism
predicted Armageddon for the industry. Nobody would go to bars!
Thousands would be unemployed. People would get healthier - well, not >>that one.
Not a single one of the bars or pubs I went to closed as a result. The
vast majority are still open today, as non-smokers filled the seats and
ofsmokers learned to hold off for a brief while.
And I'm not coughing for hours as I leave.
The Toronto Chess club used to be as bad or worse than any bar. Many
soon.my friends there smoked. Those who did not give it up died far too
All that said, I cannot understand disliking a book because the
characters smoke. I've enjoyed books where characters take heroin, and
I'm not keen on that either.
Clarke, I believe, wrote about a future in which old movies were edited
to take out smoking. One last successful prophecy?
It's happened. Disney edited it out of their Pecos Pete tall tale.
Cryptoengineer <petertrei@gmail.com> writes:
Don't miss it a bit.
Agreed.
On 8/20/2026 7:23 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
I flew back from Belize to Miami, Florida in 1989 in the last row of
Taca Airlines 737 in October 1989. The guy sitting next to me in the middle seat was smoking a Churchill Cigar the entire way. It was a horrible flight.
That's pretty repulsive. I remember British Airways' cabin crew handing
out complementary cigarettes to everyone on board after the meal, but a cigar is going too far. (I also remember flights with nonsmoking seating sections which were of course as full of smoke as the rest of the cabin.) --scott
Two rows in front of me was a lady with a chicken in a cage that cackled
the entire two ??? hour trip. I was really wondering how she was going
to get the chicken through border control.
My brother and I renamed Taca Airlines to Taco Airlines after that trip.
Landing at Belize in 1989 was a real trip. No terminal and no jetway,
you walked down the portable stairs to the jet parking place. When we
landed, they had just started all of the Harrier fighter jet engines to
warm them up in their individual concrete bunkers in case the
Nicaraguans came across the border again.
And a huge helicopter was
hovering 200 feet off the ground with four door gunners hanging off the sides. Belize was a British protectorate back then and the Brits were
showing the flag.
Lynn
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside Down" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam Piper
called "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this distraction before: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if it
isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
The percentage of adults that smoked even in the 1940s was less than 45%
no matter what Hollywood made it look like, and it went down from there.
But he has a large majority of his characters smoking.
Yuck !
On 8/20/26 11:00, BCFD 36 wrote:
I have been reading a very old anthology called "The World Turned Upside
Down" off and on for a couple of weeks. I has a story by H. Beam Piper
called "Omnilingual". I was less than impressed, but it had one
distraction that annoyed me. I believe I have mentioned this distraction
before: almost every character was smoking.
Piper seems to have a smoking fetish. In a couple of other stories
including Little Fuzzy, all of the characters smoke, a lot. BTW, if it
isn't obvious, I hate smoking.
The percentage of adults that smoked even in the 1940s was less than 45%
no matter what Hollywood made it look like, and it went down from there.
But he has a large majority of his characters smoking.
Yuck??? !
It reflects the culture of the time. Nearly everyone adult in the
1940s-1960s smoked.
"Having a no-smoking area in a restaurant is like having a
no-pissing area in a swimming pool"
British style pubs in Toronto were particularly bad in the winter.
Your coat, scarf, gloves and had would stink of smoke for days, and
there wasn't much you could do about it (I think I had two scarves,
though). In the summer you could change completely.
On Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:20:13 -0400, William Hyde wrote:
British style pubs in Toronto were particularly bad in the winter.
Your coat, scarf, gloves and had would stink of smoke for days, and
there wasn't much you could do about it (I think I had two scarves,
though). In the summer you could change completely.
NASA?s Apollo Mission Control was full of smokers during its operating >lifetime. I think an Ars Technica article on the restoration mentions
some of the ... deposits ... they found when opening things up ...
On Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:20:13 -0400, William Hyde wrote:
British style pubs in Toronto were particularly bad in the winter.
Your coat, scarf, gloves and had would stink of smoke for days, and
there wasn't much you could do about it (I think I had two scarves,
though). In the summer you could change completely.
NASA?s Apollo Mission Control was full of smokers during its operating lifetime. I think an Ars Technica article on the restoration mentions
some of the ... deposits ... they found when opening things up ...
In article <117ghnu$1aonh$2@dont-email.me>,operating
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:20:13 -0400, William Hyde wrote:
British style pubs in Toronto were particularly bad in the winter.
Your coat, scarf, gloves and had would stink of smoke for days, and
there wasn't much you could do about it (I think I had two scarves,
though). In the summer you could change completely.
NASA?s Apollo Mission Control was full of smokers during its
lifetime. I think an Ars Technica article on the restoration mentions
some of the ... deposits ... they found when opening things up ...
My parents were chain-smokers. When my mother died, so much tar had
built up in the surface of her kitchen cabinets, they started seeping
a blood-like substance.
On Sat, 22 Aug 2026 08:46:40 +0100, Jerry Brown wrote:
"Having a no-smoking area in a restaurant is like having a
no-pissing area in a swimming pool"
Public pools get worse, sometimes: try a cryptosporidium outbreak
which requires the entire pool to be shut down while they try to
figure out how to clean it out. It?s chlorine-resistant, I believe.
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