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The king of smokers

thomas-morris.uk

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Re: The king of smokers

#61

Post by ceilingscorpion »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #2

I wonder how much the current 'marijuana is good for you' attitude resembles the 'smoking is good for you' attitude in the past? NB: I think all drugs should be legalised so this isn't an anti-drugs post.

> [tobacco's] virtues rarely get a hearing, and yet the latter are many and great. To quiet nervous rest; to soothe a ruffled temper; to favour calm and partial thought; to steady and clear (not to cloud) a confused, overworked brain; to counteract the effects of physical exhaustion

Read that and my immediate thought was "Huh, I've heard this argument before."

Re: The king of smokers

#62

Post by nilkn »

dragonwriter wrote: post #50
nilkn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, then what, exactly, is "ordinary" air? Air that has no ill health effects? If so, then this has become a tautology -- obviously air that has no ill health effects has no ill health effects. If all such cases are conveniently excluded from the definition, then there's no point even talking about this. This is air that millions and millions of people breathe just by walking outside. Anyway, your observation that…

The upthread question about why inhaling smoke would be harmful if "ordinary air" was not pretty clearly used "ordinary air" to mean at least "air without smoke", since inhaling "smoke" is always inhaling "air with smoke", and it would be silly to ask the question if both alternatives meant "air with smoke".

The upthread question also mentioned heat, so one could also say that "smoke" was pretty clearly used to refer to something like dense, hot cigarette smoke dragged right off a lit cigarette and inhaled directly, not the sort of "smoke" that's involved in city air.

Re: The king of smokers

#64

Post by Bartweiss »

ableal wrote: post #30
Bartweiss wrote: post #19

The "clever calculator" mentioned in the post is perhaps a bit less clever than suggested. 500,000 quarts of beer, spread evenly over an 80-year drinking career, still amounts to 34 pints per day. However great his appetites, I'm a bit skeptical of that number.

There must be an order of magnitude error there, possibly an extra zero in the printed number. The smoking of four tons looks feasible, for sixty years at about 180g/day (enough tobacco for 9 packs of cigarettes, but used in pipes ).

An extra zero seems plausible. 3 to 5 pints of (likely weak) beer daily isn't out of the question.

Re: The king of smokers

#65

Post by JadeNB »

chadgeidel wrote: post #32
JadeNB wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when I point out that inhaling smoke of any sort is bad for you at some level, I get a LOT of pushback for a claim that seems self-evident. I don't argue this claim—I don't have any evidence either way—but nor do I regard it as self-evident. An honest, not rhetorical or leading, question: why should inhaling smoke be bad when inhaling, say, ordinary air isn't? Is it the heat? Particulates? EDIT: Thanks for the exce…

http://www.uvm.edu/~susagctr/Documents/Woodsmoke.pdf Sam Harris had a decent presentation about it here: https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-fireplace-delusion EDIT: This is just wood smoke I guess - You are asking about generic "smoke". I apologize for not addressing your question fully.

> This is just wood smoke I guess - You are asking about generic "smoke". I apologize for not addressing your question fully.

To the contrary, this is my favourite response (even though I don't have the religious response in defence of wood smoke that Sam Harris hopes to provoke). Thanks!

Re: The king of smokers

#66

Post by gist »

Bartweiss wrote: post #64
ableal wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be an order of magnitude error there, possibly an extra zero in the printed number. The smoking of four tons looks feasible, for sixty years at about 180g/day (enough tobacco for 9 packs of cigarettes, but used in pipes ).

An extra zero seems plausible. 3 to 5 pints of (likely weak) beer daily isn't out of the question.

I thought also that back in the olden days beer was preferable to water because it wasn't contaminated.

Re: The king of smokers

#67

Post by ksherlock »

Bartweiss wrote: post #19

The "clever calculator" mentioned in the post is perhaps a bit less clever than suggested. 500,000 quarts of beer, spread evenly over an 80-year drinking career, still amounts to 34 pints per day. However great his appetites, I'm a bit skeptical of that number.

"You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are." -- Adolphus Busch

Re: The king of smokers

#68

Post by susan_hall »

A dear friend of mine quit smoking, cold-turkey, and she went completely berserk for 3 months, with dangerous mood swings and outbursts of violence. She had previously suffered a mild depression, which now emerged as some kind of dark nightmare of rage and guilt and hatred and also self-hatred.

This is what struck me: of all the SSRIs she'd had ever tried, none had ever worked as well as tobacco. Tobacco moderated her depression and mood swings more effectively than any modern drug that her doctors had prescribed for her.

So I when I read this passage, what strikes me is how much truth there is still in this, even in the year 2016:

"its virtues rarely get a hearing, and yet the latter are many and great. To quiet nervous rest; to soothe a ruffled temper; to favour calm and partial thought; to steady and clear (not to cloud) a confused, overworked brain; "

Re: The king of smokers

#70

Post by caub »

susan_hall wrote: post #68

A dear friend of mine quit smoking, cold-turkey, and she went completely berserk for 3 months, with dangerous mood swings and outbursts of violence. She had previously suffered a mild depression, which now emerged as some kind of dark nightmare of rage and guilt and hatred and also self-hatred. This is what struck me: of all the SSRIs she'd had ever tried, none had ever worked as well as tobacco. Tobacco moderated he…

he could have got over it by moving a bit his ass, sport help fighting depression with hormones, but not easy once you have 50% lung capacity
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