3 Packs a Day


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Peikoff says he smoked 3 packs a day. Here is the podcast where he says he smoked 3 packs a day.

3 packs a day

Being a nonsmoker all my life I was clueless about the price of smokes. I did a little search and came up with a price of approximately $20 a pack. 3 packs a day is $60 a day on smokes. In a 30 day month that is $1800 a month on smokes. For what? Symbol of controlled fire?

He says at that time there was no evidence that smoking is bad for health. He did not count statistics as evidence. But the truth is doctors knew at least as far back as the 1800s that smoking is bad for health. I present the following book as evidence that doctors knew that smoking is bad for health as far back as 1889 and before. This is a very well written book and you can read it by clicking on it.

Tobacco: Its Use and Abuse

by Rev. John B. Wight

Of the South Georgia Conference

(Columbia, South Carolina:

L. L. Pickett Pub Co, 1889)

This book is well worth reading.

Now I will do a bit of a rant. Ayn Rand defines 'value' as what one acts to gain and/or keep. To value something is to act to gain and/or keep it. The word 'value' can be used as a noun or as a verb.

Health qualifies as a value, that is, as something one can act to gain and/or keep. Furthermore health is a rational value, something that is worth acting to gain and/or keep.

Money is a value as a means to other things. We value money because we can buy goods and services with it. If you were on an island all by your lonesome with a billion $ and you couldn't get off the island and you couldn't buy anything with the money, you would find that money is of little or no value for itself but mainly or only of value as a means to other things.

Health is a value both for itself and as a means to other things. Perhaps most people don't much value health until after they lose it. Dr. Burton said in a speech that most health minded people are either very sick or very intelligent. Perhaps one must be exceptionally intelligent to value health -before- losing it.

What do you value? Whatever you value, you probably can gain and/or keep it better with health than without health. If you want to make money, you can make more money with health than without health; besides sickness tends to be expensive. If you want to excel at anything, physical or mental, you can do it better with health than without health. If you want to be a world chess champion like Fischer or Kasparov, you better maintain a high level of health. If you want to enjoy anything (sports, music, food, whatever), your capacity to enjoy it probably will be enhanced by health. Health is sort of the foundation of everything else.

Furthermore health once lost in a serious way tends to be difficult to get back. If you lose money but have everything else going for you, you probably can make a comeback, like Donald Trump. But losing health in a serious way tends to be a bit like moving pawns in chess, you can't move them back. Sometimes you can regain health from a serious disease, but it would have been easier and better to not get the serious disease.

For reasons stated above, I am puzzled that Peikoff, the foremost Objectivist, would value health (a rational value) so little as to smoke 3 packs a day and spend $1800 or so per month in today's money wrecking his health.

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Smoking tobacco causes changes in the lining of the bronchi called squamous metaplasia from the normal pseudo-stratified, ciliated, columnar epithelium to stratified squamous epithelium. The latter is pre cancerous. Also predisposes to destruction of the alveolar walls in the lungs called emphysema which reduces the surface area available to transport oxygen into the blood stream. This process of emphysema is irreversible.

Squamous metaplasia is reversible. If one stops smoking the normal epithelial lining of the bronchi is restored.

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The timing suggests that the real evidence, for Peikoff, was Rand's cancer in the mid-70s. Since the party line is that this never happened, he's not going to say so.

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Being a nonsmoker all my life I was clueless about the price of smokes. I did a little search and came up with a price of approximately $20 a pack. 3 packs a day is $60 a day on smokes. In a 30 day month that is $1800 a month on smokes. For what? Symbol of controlled fire?

Jerry:

I would suggest that you stay out of research as a profession...lol.

The Price of Everything

73

What A Pack Of Cigarettes Costs, State By State

By Nate Hopper | June 15, 2011

cigarettes3-e1308149362750.jpg51. West Virginia: $4.74

50. Louisiana: $4.82

49. North Dakota: $4.91

48. Kentucky: $4.97

47. Idaho: $4.99

46. California: $5.19

45. Alabama: $5.27

44. Georgia: $5.29

43. South Carolina: $5.42

41-42. Indiana, Wyoming: $5.50

40. North Carolina: $5.51

38-39. Nebraska, Virginia: $5.55

37. Tennessee: $5.56

36. Missouri: $5.58

35. Oregon: $5.59

34. Mississippi: $5.75

33. New Hampshire: $5.87

32. Nevada: $5.95

30-31. Arkansas, Colorado: $5.96

29. Montana: $5.99

26-28. Delaware, Iowa, Kansas: $6.00

25. South Dakota: $6.03

24. Texas: $6.07

23. Florida: $6.08

22. Oklahoma: $6.19

21. Ohio: $6.22

20. Minnesota: $6.53

19. Maryland: $6.70

18. Pennsylvania: $6.80

17. Arizona: $6.87

16. New Mexico: $6.88

15. Michigan: $6.90

14. Utah: $7.22

13. Maine: $7.97

12. Washington, D.C.: $7.99

11. Wisconsin: $8.11

10. Vermont: $8.23

9. Connecticut: $8.25

8. Massachusetts: $8.30

7. New Jersey: $8.35

6. Rhode Island: $8.60

5. Alaska: $9.14

4. Illinois: $9.67

3. Hawaii: $9.73

2. Washington: $9.89

1. New York: $11.90

Methodology: Prices were obtained by calling a gas station in each state's most populous city and asking the clerk for the price of a pack of Marlboro Reds with tax. Memphis, Tenn., was toughest (nine phone calls). The gas station in Milwaukee, Wis., had the only employee who ended the conversation with "have a good one."

http://www.theawl.com/2011/06/what-a-pack-of-cigarettes-costs-state-by-state

Adam

Ex-smoker and thankful for self-discipline

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Ingesting nothing but coffee and staying up nights in a row is horrible too. Rand seemed pretty clueless about health and that, but she also seemed to favor quality over quantity when it came to life, no?

I'm sure she had no idea how bad smoking was until the doctor pulled out a barbeque scraper, plus the cancer.

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Ingesting nothing but coffee and staying up nights in a row is horrible too. Rand seemed pretty clueless about health and that, but she also seemed to favor quality over quantity when it came to life, no?

I'm sure she had no idea how bad smoking was until the doctor pulled out a barbeque scraper, plus the cancer.

Nicotine helps you--a writer in this case--concentrate on the task at hand, excluding distracting noises. That's one reason old fashioned newsrooms were full of typewriter noise and cigarette smoke. She likely would have lived ten more years and in better health if she hadn't smoked. I quit in 1969. I was mostly afraid of emphysema and with good reason. I had a lot of medical knowledge and experience Rand never had. If she had stopped smoking right after writing AS, it probably would have been too late regardless respecting congestive heart failure and especially lung cancer. (Drinking a lot of green tea over subsequent years might have prevented the lung cancer.) That was a pro-smoking culture back then too.

--Brant

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Peikoff says he smoked 3 packs a day. Here is the podcast where he says he smoked 3 packs a day.

3 packs a day

He says at that time there was no evidence that smoking is bad for health. He did not count statistics as evidence.

It looks like Peikoff emulated Ayn Rand, mirroring her stance on the issue.

But the truth is doctors knew at least as far back as the 1800s that smoking is bad for health.

<...>

Ignoring the dangers of smoking is no doubt irrational. Imo Peikoff (like Ayn Rand) would find it especially difficult to admit having been irrational about something, in view of Objectivism being a philosophy of rationality.

This explains the attempt to 'rationalize' their choice by downplaying the knowledge (which already existed back then) about the dangers of smoking.

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From: BBfromM

To: atlantis

Subject: ATL: Was Ayn Rand ever wrong? To Ellen Moore

Date: Tue, 5 Jun 200111:05:03 EDT

To Ellen Moore:

To date, you never have said -- and have denied it when an instance was raised -- that Ayn Rand made a mistake. I want to ask you about the following:

Ayn Rand smoked a great deal, and for many years. And she announced often, publicly as well as privately, that there was insufficient evidence to prove that smoking caused cancer or any other disease. Many Objectivist students across the country felt safe in continuing to smoke because of her convincing arguments against statistical "proof." Then, when she was diagnosed with lung cancer, she stopped smoking at once, finally convinced that the evidence was sufficient. Her doctor did not have to tell her to stop; she did it before he could raise the subject.

When she was well, and back at work, friends said to her that she really should tell people that she had changed her mind, that now she was convinced that smoking was indeed dangerous to life. She flatly refused to do so. The reasons is not relevant; I can think of no reason good enough to warrant her silence when the results could be the death of some of the people who had accepted her original arguments and therefore had continued smoking.

For those of you who wish to know her so-called reason, it was her horror of announcing that she had cancer, because she believed that any serious illness resulted at least in part from "wrong premises." She could not bring herself to inform her students that she had any wrong premises, since she had so often told them and countless others that she had none, and had believed it herself. No matter how long and how hard her friends tried to persuade her, she refused. And she spent months, probably years, trying to discover the wrong premises that had resulted in her cancer.

Ellen, my question is: Do you think Ayn Rand was wrong not to tell her students her new conclusion about smoking?

Barbara

From: BBfromM

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: Was Ayn Rand ever wrong? To Ellen Moore

Date: Tue, 5 Jun 200114:41:02 EDT

Tim Hopkins wrote: << So I do think that the reason for not telling her [Ayn Rand's] students and admirers that she had changed her mind on the smoking issue is important, since it is possible (again, correct me if I am wrong, since I did not know her) she was *not* convinced of a causal relation between smoking and cancer, and stopped smoking on the basis that such a relationship was probable, not proven. >>

Even if it is the case that she considered that the relationship between smoking and cancer was probable, not proven -- I believe that she had the moral obligation to tell her students and admirers that much. It would have stopped many of them from continuing to smoke.

Ba

From: BBfromM

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: Re: Was Ayn Rand ever wrong? To Ellen Moore

Date: Tue, 5 Jun 200118:16:56 EDT

You are quite right, Jeff, but this was not Ayn Rand's position. She did think that her smoking had been at least a partial cause of her lung cancer. And she should have told this to NBI's students.

Barbara

From: Nathaniel Branden <brandenn@pacbell.net>

Reply-To: brandenn@pacbell.net

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: ATL: Rand and smoking

Date: Tue, 05 Jun 200116:05:42 -0700

When Devers Branden visited Ayn Rand, as reported in the revised edition of my memoir, Devers still smoked (1980-81).

When Devers pulled out a cigarette AR said to her, "Oh, you really should not smoke. It's very bad for your health."

Devers promised to quit and she did.

Nathaniel Branden

From: BBfromM

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: Re: Was Ayn Rand ever wrong?

Date: Wed, 6 Jun 200100:29:13 EDT

Steve Reed wrote:

<< Was it that she [Ayn Rand] had, in fact, decided (or not) that smoking was genuinely dangerous to -human life,- in more general terms? Or that it clearly had been a cause of harm to -her own life,- in specific terms? I never quite understood which alternative was involved here. (Perhaps something else.)>>

I think that both sides of the alternative were involved. That is, that she began to think it likely that smoking potentially was dangerous to life and that it had been at least a partial cause of her own cancer.

Steve further wrote:

<<It would only tend toward being a causal "result" for those who -substituted- Rand's judgments about this evidence for their own appraisals. We do that all the time when relying on expert testimony. Many strong admirers of Rand (such as I) have had moments of doing so. . . . Yet whether Rand had enough of a scientific basis at hand to be properly relied upon as an expert on this issue is another matter. She had one genuine broader philosophic truth at hand, that "correlation is not causation" -- yet she ended up using this, it seems, as a mere rationalization.>>

If you had heard Ayn Rand's arguments about why there was no proof that smoking had a causative role in cancer, you would not speak of her listeners substituting her judgment for their own appraisals. As usual, her arguments were powerful, even overwhelming. I believe that most of our students were convinced by her reasons, whether or not they also saw her as an authority figure. Unless one went home, thought about what she said and how convincing it was -- and then thought: But is just isn't so! Although there are many exceptions, the correlation between smoking and cancer is simply too strong to be explained away.

It is very difficult to make real to people who didn't see her in action, the extraordinary intellectual power of Ayn Rand. We are very lucky that she wasn't a communist, because if she had been, we probably would now be living under a communist dictatorship. (I know, I know, I'm uttering a near-contradiction – Ayn Rand as a communist would not be Ayn Rand -- but it approximately makes my point.)

Steve also wrote:

<< . . . Mind-over-disease cults have had a long history of popular appeal in Russia, over two centuries -- and have had a newly fueled appeal with Russia's equivalent of tabloid TV, in the past decade. Especially in light of Chris Sciabarra's recent research, I wonder if some of -that- perspective sneaked into her outlook at a tender age.. . . . It's no calumny on Rand to note this possibility, as some of the Orthodox have implied in bashing Barbara's bio. Irrationalism has deep roots, and the human mind deals with too many matters at once to make it easy to exclude others' bad judgments.

I quite agree with you that it's no calumny on Ayn Rand to suggest that the mind-over-disease idea might have begun with her early years in Russia. I have said before that the astonishing thing about her was how many of the ideas that constituted her world as a child, she was able, then and later, to question and, if they didn't make sense to her, to reject. Most people never question the ideas they are exposed to in childhood, the ideas that seem to the child to be so universally accepted that there must be nothing to question or doubt, and that there cannot be a justification, since "everybody knows they are true," even to expose them to the light of reason. Her extraordinary ability and determination to do this to the extent that she did do it, is one more expression of her genius. That she missed a few of the ideas that everyone knows are true but are not true, is not surprising; it probably is inevitable for any mind. Even a great mind cannot know to question *everything.*

This is an aside, but reading her Journal, I was struck once again, as I have been so many times in the past, with the incredible scope and range of her intelligence. In her early teens and twenties, she was thinking about the major concepts of philosophy, and struggling her way to her own philosophy. Hers was as firsthand a mind as I can conceive of.

However, though her view might have begun in Russia, it was later buttressed and expanded upon by Nathaniel, in long conversations they had over many years. He was convinced in those years that the mind and the emotions played a crucial role in disease -- which may very well be so, but that is another issue.

Barbara

From: "Peter Taylor"

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: ARI on Smoking

Date: St, 15 Jul 200017:52:33 GMT

To briefly recap the smoking thread:

Jason R. Walker wrote:

"The compromise is this: in the state of Florida, "Big Tobacco", as it's referred to, will no longer sell cigarettes in exchange for amnesty from the suit."

Steve Reed wrote:

"The tobacco companies were craven enough to dig their own grave of precedent. Let them lie, and die, in it. I'll save my moral support for Gates."

Thomas Gramstad wrote about the auxiliary costs of smoking: "1. Material and medical expenses because of fires caused by smoking. 2. Material and medical expenses because of traffic accidents caused by smoking . . .

3. Medical expenses related to diseases where smoking is a contributing, but not the single or major cause of the disease. 4. Smokers are usually allowed many short smoking breaks on the job."

Dennis May wrote in support of the benefits of tobacco:

"The findings:

Cigarette smoking improves hand eye coordination. Increases the speed of reflexes. Correlates with higher intellectual capabilities. Increases alertness. And increases blood pressure, reducing high-G induced blackouts."

Peter Reidy wrote about being objective during this argument and mentioning all the facts:

"I haven't been following this discussion, but have people mentioned that smokers never get Alzheimer's, or that they save the rest of us money by dying sooner? They are much less likely to spend the last decade or two of their lives collecting pensions, in and out of the hospital."

Brant Gaede wrote about ARI's support of smoking:

"Sure one's total context determines whether it is rational to smoke or not, but maybe the context itself is not rational. I think the ARI is just trying to justify Ayn Rand's smoking. I think Ayn Rand was irrational about her smoking and rationalized it."

And now I write:

$140 Billion may seem an excessive judgment, but then again, considering the worth of even one life, perhaps it is the correct, "jury-nullification" type of verdict, i.e., allowing a jury to express outrage at a terrible injustice, even if the dollar amount is later lessened.

Perhaps it is the correct "jury-nullification" type of verdict - because "they," (the management of the tobacco companies, or Big Tobacco) have a product, if used correctly, will addict you. And if you are addicted, your life will be "greatly" shortened. And the evidence is definitely pointing towards the fact that second-hand smoke also significantly shortens the life of the breathers of second-hand smoke.

And "they" know it. "They" have known it, about addiction and health risks associated with smoking, since the fifties and they have known it *for sure* since the sixties. "They" are liars. They have allowed and encouraged people to use their product and then die agonizing, early deaths. And they did not give a fig. Perhaps fraud was involved, and criminal as well as civil laws were broken.

Just imagine this same scenario with any other product, say automobiles. Let us imagine, The Twentieth Century Motor Company made a car that vented a portion of the exhaust, as well as an addictive gas, into the cab of all its vehicles. The exhaust is a carcinogenic (just as diesel gas exhaust is.)

The owner of The Twentieth Century Motor Company, Ma Chalmers and Elsworth Tooey, tinkered with the design, until it took, say, one-hundred rides, in one of their cars, before the passengers were physically addicted. They decided to keep the facts a secret.

People had tremendous loyalty to this brand of vehicle. The cars were heavily advertised and became "stylish." People also had tremendous loyalty to this brand of vehicle because they became physically addicted to driving the vehicle. When they drove one of these vehicles a certain anxiety left them. They felt calm and fulfilled. They were getting a "fix" of the addictive, exhaust mixture. Vroom! Vroom!

And "they" did not care that their defective product would kill. In fact, Ma and Elsworth's only concern about the death of their car-buyers, was that they would constantly need to replenish the ranks of Twentieth Century Motor car drivers. So, they put their ads on bill-boards, in magazines, on the side of buses in the city, and they especially put their ads everywhere that kids and teenagers could be influenced to drive their vehicles, so that "they" could maximize the length of time that addicts could buy new cars.

Likewise, the tobacco company's universe was not "benevolent." I say this verdict is not an argument about freedom or Capitalism. It is about a murderous intent to hurt, maim, and kill, where the concealment of the true nature of their product, involved fraud and coercion. Sure, we should have the right to buy any product we wish, however, we should also have the right to sue the maker's of defective products or products that were intentionally-made-lethal and that cause the owner's death.

The fact is that the majority of non-smokers will say, "Of course. Sue the Bastards . .."

And smokers will disagree and begin stock-piling cigarettes if there is ever evidence that cigarettes will become illegal. This helps to prove my point. Addiction is an insidious process. An addict will do terrible things (and the least terrible thing they do, may be to evade, and then like ARI, defend their position to their death) just to be able to continue "to feed their habit" or to "get a fix."

In the name of my father, who died of smoking-related disease, I hope the tobacco companies are sued into oblivion. "They" do not deserve the good feelings or support of any Objectivist. "They" killed Ayn. "They" have killed too many of us.

Peter Taylor

From: "Peter Taylor"

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: ATL: ARI and Smoking

Date: Sat, 15 Jul 200018:14:08 GMT

This is a slightly revised reprint of a letter I wrote to "family" and "agora" when I first entered the World Wide Web, around nine months ago.

On page 22 of the paperback version of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand writes about her character Dagny Taggert, ". . . When she extinguished her cigarette, she knew that she needed another one, but thought that she would give herself a minute, just a few minutes, before she would light it . . ."

Rather than being evasive or defensive about Dagney's and perhaps her own nicotine addiction, Rand openly states this fact for a discerning reader to discover. Many fans of Ayn Rand may know that she died from smoking related disease. Why didn't she ever write anything derogatory about smoking, after discovering her illness?

I am certainly not going to "Psychologize" her, but when Rand wrote her masterpiece she was aware of several things - the unhealthy effects of smoking on herself - the effects of addiction on herself - the possibility that her glamorization of smoking would cause others to feel permissive about smoking. To paraphrase something that I once heard on the radio, ". . . as early as 1901, the writer O'Henry wrote that a cigarette was a nail in a smoker's coffin . . ."

She knew.

She knew . . . though she certainly could not have envisioned people wanting ARI's writing contest (and her book) CLOSED to High-School students because of what we now know about the long-term effects of smoking.

When she ends Atlas Shrugged on page 1074, Ayn writes,

"The road is cleared," said Galt. "We are going back to the world. He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar."

Does any reader doubt that his hand held a cigarette?

My father died from smoking related disease and I have two non-smoking daughters, a college aged daughter Sarah, who has read Atlas Shrugged and a fifteen year old named Laura, who seems to be stuck at page 40 but says she is going to read it. I cautioned my daughters about being influenced about smoking by the world's greatest writer, persuader, and pro-smoking advocate.

I would like to benevolently extend this caution to everyone, and especially to some of the most valuable people in the world, Objectivists, Students of Objectivism, Libertarians and all people who have enjoyed her books and consider themselves pro-reason.

Inhaling burning vegetation, to be more adult, to be better able to concentrate and "think" more clearly, to be "Cool," or to be like Ayn Rand's characters - could be traveling a road that leads to addiction, illness, and an early, agonizing death. That is not Objective. This is not what Ayn Rand would have wanted.

Live long and prosper,

Peter Taylor

It's not particularly relevant to this discussion, but although Rand had lung cancer in the 70s, it did not recur after her surgery. She died of congestive heart failure. However, as someone who was foolish enough to smoke for many years, I know, as every smoker knows, that we all twisted our brains into pretzels in order to avoid facing the fact that cigarettes might very well kill us. Yes, in the early 60s, when Rand said there was no poof that smoking caused cancer, it was true that there was no final, definitive, absolute, syllogistic, incontrovertible, undeniable, non-statistical, overwhelming proof. But we knew. We all knew, including Ayn Rand. With regard to any other issue, had we had the amount of evidence we had about the danger of smoking, we would have considered it more than enough evidence for us to act upon.

Barbara

Here is a letter I wrote to my daughter. Rush Limbaugh read it and commented on air. Unfortunately, my daughter is still smoking.

April 3, 2008

I have some bad news, Laura.

My Uncle Peter died this morning of tobacco related, chronic lung disease. He had been in the hospital for two weeks and was scheduled to go into hospice today but he died at 5:30 this morning. He will be buried at ArlingtonNationalCemetery.

Uncle Peter, my Dad, and several other members of my Dad’s family including first, second, third cousins, and aunts and uncles, were identified and tested by the medical establishment, in Philadelphia, back in the 1970’s.

A researcher had noticed the family name “Taylor” popping up again and again, as people who needed treatment at lung centers at Johns Hopkins and Philadelphia hospitals.

My Dad’s side of your family Laura, way back then, was identified as having a predisposition to nicotine addiction. Once addicted, it is very hard for a Taylor to quit. Recently they identified genes that show a predisposition to hard nicotine addiction. Our family may have this “marker.”

Unfortunately, we also have a greater intolerance towards the affects of tobacco smoke. We show irreversible, lasting lung damage, earlier. Smokers in our family age at a faster rate in their faces and internally. While we have the genes to live into our nineties (and that is no exaggeration) no smoker makes it past their seventies. And the last years are hard.

All of our family’s smokers are in a decline by the time they reach 50 years of age. You saw my Dad before he died. He was as pathetic as the Physicist, Stephen Hawking, tied to a bed or chair.

Remember my Dad at your cousin Susan’s wedding, wheeled around in a wheel chair? He carried oxygen tanks with him everywhere. He said his every breath was painful. Doctors who manage chronic pain say dying from burns is a level ten pain. Dying from this disease is also a level ten pain. It consumes your very being.

During the last years of his life, my Dad hoped to die every day.

We love you very much, Laura.

What else can I say?

Semper cogitans fidele,

Your Dad

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Back in the 1960s, Peikoff smoked Old Gold. I have no idea what Rand smoked. I remember Barbara Branden on stage left at NBI in 1968 pulling this tremendously large lighter out of her purse and lighting up. Very glamorous appearance.

--Brant

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Rand smoked menthols, according to the 1961 Saturday Evening Post profile. BB was smoking Pall Mall in the red pack the one time I saw her at NBI and NB Shermans.

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Rand smoked menthols, according to the 1961 Saturday Evening Post profile. BB was smoking Pall Mall in the red pack the one time I saw her at NBI and NB Shermans.

I smoked Benson and Hedges then ended up with Pall Mall until I quit exactly 43 years ago.

--Brant

the world wants to know

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Rand smoked menthols, according to the 1961 Saturday Evening Post profile. BB was smoking Pall Mall in the red pack the one time I saw her at NBI and NB Shermans.

I smoked Benson and Hedges then ended up with Pall Mall until I quit exactly 43 years ago.

--Brant

the world wants to know

When I smoked I smoked Camels (for which I did not walk a mile) and Pall Mall. I quite the cursed habit in 1962 after getting to two packs a day.

I am happy to report that non of our children picked up the habit. And neither of our two older grandchildren are smokers.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Old Gold, Pall Mall, Shermans, and an unnamed type of Menthols...someone's going to have to tell me which is the particularly rational brand.

http://www.lewrockwe...ard/mozart.html

CARSON (turning to KEITH): Keith, would you like a cigarette? Here, this is a particularly rational brand.

KEITH (a bit bemused): "Rational...?" (A slight pause) Oh, I'm sorry, thank you. I don't smoke.

(Exclamations of disapproval from JONATHAN and GRETA.)

GRETA (lashing out): You don't smoke! Why not?

KEITH (taken back): Well, uh... because I don't like to.

CARSON (in scarcely-controlled fury): You don't like to! You permit your mere subjective whims, your feelings (this word said with utmost contempt) to stand in the way of reason and reality?

KEITH (sweating again): But surely, Miss Sand, what other possible grounds can you have for smoking than simply liking it?

(Expressions of fury, dismay from GRETA, JONATHAN, and CARSON, "Oh!", "Ah!", etc.)

JONATHAN (bounding up): Mr. Hackley, Carson Sand never, never does anything out of her subjective feelings; only out of reason, which means: the objective nature of reality. You have grossly insulted this great woman, Carson Sand, you have abused her courtesy and her hospitality. (sits down)

KEITH: But. ..but...what possible reason can there be...?

CARSON: Mr. Hackley, why are you evading the self-evident fact? Smoking is a symbol of the fire in the mind, the fire of ideas. He who refuses to smoke is therefore an enemy of ideas and of the mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mGpMpaHGM4

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I have smoked off an on since I was a teenager. Quitting has been easier and harder at different times, mostly a matter of not smoking, so as a negative action, fairly easy to do. Staying quitted is harder. I have gone years and decades between smokes, My father-in-law had one lung (tuberculosis) and smoked Pall Mall (reds), which I found a pretty good smoke, along with American Spirit. The most I ever smoked when much younger was a pack a day -- three packs a day, you have to wonder what else he had time for... Last time around, 2003-2010, I was at a one to three cigarettes a day once or twice a week, every month or so. One factor is the legality of "loosies." In Michigan, two stores had grandfather rights to sell cigarettes outside the pack. In NYC, loosies are illegal but available. Living in Ohio, 1999-2001, I would buy a pack, smoke one or two and throw the rest away...

The health consequences of tobacco were announced in 1550. At first, tobacco was illegal and with no effect on its use. The old joke goes: the doctor tells his patient to quit smoking, quit drinking, and give up the young girls. And the patient asks, "Will I live to 100?" And the doctor replies, "No, but it will seem like it."

No one gets out alive. We all have finite spans; and we are all done too soon. Ain't no doubt about that. The only question is whether and to what extent you make the most of your time. If you enjoy smoking and are willing to live with the consequences, then do.

Old joke - true story. The HR director of the company was a runner. Did marathons, but mostly just ran 3 to 5 miles a day. He said, "They say you live longer but in the end you realize that you spent all the extra time running."

Myself, in preference to the elevator, I climb stairs. I passed the joke on to another stair climber.

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I still smoke from 1-2 packs per day. I pay (after tax) around $4.40 per pack at Walgreens.

Both of my parents smoked for years. My father died in a boating accident, and my mother drank herself to death.

The notion that people didn't know back then that smoking was dangerous to your health is absurd. I recall, from a very early age (c. 1954), hearing my parents discuss the problem many times. They may not have been aware of the link between smoking and cancer and other diseases, but they certainly knew that smoking was deleterious to their health. Severe coughing fits from time to time were sufficient to make them aware of that obvious fact.

Rand was rationalizing a bad habit, as we all tend to do at times. The difference is that Rand rationalized with panache, and I rather admire her for that. 8-)

Ghs

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Brant wrote:

Peter, where do you go to get this old material?

end quote

I save some threads on my computer and also on about fifty old floppy discs.

Peter

From: Brant

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: ayn rand quote

Date: Tues. 4 Apr 2002 17:40:36 EDT

Peter, where do you go to get this old material?

--Brant

Peter,

A decade ago or more ago I posted some satirical stories on A2 (or maybe it was on Old Atlantis) under the pseudonym "Ortho Docks." This was during the heyday of "Roland Pericles" (i.e., JR) and other fictitious characters.

Would you happen to have copies of my Ortho Docks posts? I lost all of them during a computer crash years ago, and I would very much like to read them again.

Thanks,

Ghs

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The last Objectivist event I went to was a TAS one in New York around 2003. The only smokers there were myself and David Kelley, which meant that at break-time we were the only ones to go outside to do our thing. I honestly can’t remember what we talked about, but I had a monopoly of sorts. Another smoking related memory I have is of being in London on the last day smoking was legal in restaurants and maybe bars too, I forget. This was probably in June of 2007. I remember when the smoking ban was coming up in Florida I was chatting with the CEO of the company I worked for, he said he was in favor, I asked why, and he said “because I don’t smoke”. Not much I could say to that, at least not to him (and he ended up dying of a heart attack around age 60). It’s like with this vaginal probe business; sure I’m in favor, why, well, I don’t have a vagina! Now if Phil were still here he’d accuse me of the slippery slope fallacy for that last part…

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Oh, gruesome topic. I smoked from age-17-33, then quit for 20 years. I took it up again at age 53. Why, you might ask. The reason is that I am stupid and dumb.

Carol

1 pack a day.

I would offer this piece of advice for people who have stopped smoking cigarettes. never, never, never consider yourself an ex-smoker. Once a smoker always a smoker. But one does not have to light up. I have not lit up or smoked a cigarette since august of 1962.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Oh, gruesome topic. I smoked from age-17-33, then quit for 20 years. I took it up again at age 53. Why, you might ask. The reason is that I am stupid and dumb. Carol 1 pack a day.

I didn't start smoking cigarettes until I was 44.

Ghs

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One thing I really hate are the damned anti-smoking ads on TV. I think they might be a Florida specific thing, there was a big legal settlement here that involved the tobacco companies being made to fund these things. If you're trying to not smoke, these commercials make you want to light up just to spite them.

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