Ignorance Vs Intolerance

Where is the thirst for knowledge? Where is the energy to do our own research and fact finding? There seems to be a correlation between the level of ignorance and level of intolerance when it comes to people taking a stand on something. The higher the level of intolerance seems to be in parallel with the level of ignorance, for example:

Once again, someone is taking a stand with a public outcry of “injustice” and “unfairness” that hotels and motels have a copy of the Gideon bible in the nightstands and not a copy of the Qur’an (for those infected with the Ebonic Plague and the ignorant, you might recognize what I am referring to if I transliterated it as “Koran”).

The fact that “anyone” would be offended or upset or hurt by a bible in a hotel, in a drawer, for anyone who wishes to read it is absurd, idiotic and selfish. It is not there to push religion on anyone, nor is it discrimination, nor is it a plot or conspiracy. The Gideons asked the hotel owners if they could place a copy, free of charge, in the rooms and the owners agreed. It is not favoritism. You are not required to read it, nor are you charged if you don’t. You are also not given a discount if you do read it. You are not even charged if you take it.

The Gideons supply approximately 60 million copies a year to replace the ones taken and the worn out ones. Guess what? No charge.

If you wanted to supply and distribute the Qur’an or some other kind of literature to the hotels, I am sure you are allowed to ask to do so. But that does not mean the owners have to agree to let you. It is not a right. It is a personal preference by the hotel owners and are not required by any law to allow “any” free distribution or products in their hotels.

If you don’t like the Bible being there, don’t read it, don’t even look at it, leave it in the drawer out of sight. You are still “free” to bring your own reading material and read it any time you want while you are there.

To me, this is a simple case of ignorance driving intolerance.

**Disclaimer: I am not a Gideon, or a distributor of Gideon International products.**

Another problem is the out of control smoking ban. First lets talk about proportion. A lab rat (mouse) is injected with the nicotine from a single cigarette every day for a specified amount of time to see if it will develop cancer. That would be the equivalent of a single cigarette six feet tall and eight inches across (diameter). In realistic terms, that is 11,200 cigarettes taking into consideration that 2 feet of that cigarette would be a filter. Now, take the nicotine from that giant cigarette (11,200 real cigarettes), extract the nicotine from it, and inject it into a persons blood stream. Not inhale it mind you, inject it. Do yo suppose one might get cancer from it? Gosh, ya think?

Ok, that aside, lets just talk about the smoke, or second hand smoke which is the cause for the smoking bans. All across America, smoking bans are going into effect to reduce the amount of smoke that non-smokers inhale. Obviously the smokers don’t mind the smoke, but the reason this is happening is because non-smokers don’t like the smell of it, OR they have jumped on the propaganda bandwagon that the smoke is harmful to them.

Let’s be realistic and talk about proportions again. If someone decides to directly inhale from a cigarette, they are obviously directly ingesting a concentrated amount of smoke “in place of” air into their lungs. There are a number of things that, in large quantity, are bad for you (not everything). Eating too much, eating just grapes, drinking (water and alcohol alike, and a good example is the person that died from drinking too much water during a radio contest), etc. Inhaling too much smoke can be harmful, like too much of anything else. However, the human body is an amazing, and on some levels, mysterious organism. We don’t live in what people perceive to be a perfect environment. For example, the air we breathe, though seemingly harmless, contains many harmful elements (in varying quantities) but our bodies are made to filter out what it doesn’t need, and extract the approximately 21% oxygen in the air. What else is in the air we breathe? well..the basics are Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Hydrogen, Argon, Neon, Helium, Krypton, Xenon, and all the other pollutants such as DDT, cyanide, smoke from forest fires, factory pollutants, etc. The list is huge. Now, if you had a large enough quantity of any one of the other elements in the air we breathe, then yes it would be bad for us. We exhale carbon dioxide and someone else inhales it with everything else in the air. It’s bad for us, but we can’t smell it, so do we ban it too? Forest fires smell bad, but we inhale the smoke from it as well, do we ban forest fires?

Keeping things in perspective, if you stood in a forest fire and tried inhaling too much of the smoke, yes it would definitely be bad for you, like anything else you inhale too much of. A room full of smokers puts a lot of smoke in the air, and for that matter, depending on the size of the room, just one smoker can fill a room with smoke and I would say that is bad. I don’t have a problem with banning smoking in confined spaces, or where the smoke from a single smoker produces a large enough quantity of smoke. However, if it is one smoker in a warehouse, then it doesn’t bother me. Can I smell it? yes. Am I inhaling some of it? Yes. does it smell bad? yes (to me). Is it hurting me to smell it? no. Is it harming me? probably not because my body is filtering the smoke directly from the cigarette, and the smoke that was filtered and exhaled from the person smoking (which passed through a filter before it entered that person’s lungs, filtered by his/her body, then exhaled and mixed with the air before it was filtered by my body and went into my lungs). On the other side of the coin, if there were enough smokers, producing enough smoke, confined in a small enough space, without circulating air, then at some point it would become harmful to me. There are all kinds of variables that affect the amount of smoke in the air (and other kinds of gases and pollutants) but the least of which I am worried about, is outdoor smoking or in well ventilated areas where I might be able to smell the smoke, but not be inhaling a significant amount of it. If it were an every day occurrence, I would also be concerned. But it’s not. So to me, the smoking ban is WAY out of control.

One last example is the use of cell phones while driving. The short of it is, CB (Citizens Band) radio’s were not banned from vehicles, nor were we required to have hands free devices to use them while driving, even if it was found in a vehicle that was involved in an accident. Listening to or talking to someone in the seat next to you, or behind you, or listening to the radio, or singing along with the radio, or talking to someone on a cell phone (or CB radio) is not the problem. The problem is not the devices, it is having “too much” of those things replacing your attention on your driving and control of your vehicle. Period. Guns don’t kill people, people do. Cell phones don’t kill people, people do. Cigarettes don’t kill people, people do. (more smoke than what the human body is already capable of filtering out)

Question: If cigar and cigarette smoke smelled good, like strawberries, or chocolate, or honey, or fresh baked bread, would people be pushing for an immediate ban?

Question 2: If a gun could shoot both a bullet and a happy pill, would you still ban the gun or teach people to be responsible in using it?

Question 3: If cell phones could only call God, would you ban them from being used in cars or only with hands free devices?

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