The St. Joseph County Council voted this evening to enact a smoking ban, according to the 11:00 news on WNDU. (I can’t find an article online yet about the vote.) The ban had previously been passed by the council and then vetoed by the county commissioners, but the council apparently overrode the veto. According to this earlier report:

As passed by the council, the ordinance would ban smoking in restaurants, stores, shopping malls, stadiums, sports arenas, parks and most other public places, as well as in most places of employment, including businesses that provide employees with smoking in breakrooms.

Bars, bingo parlors, private clubs and outdoor areas of golf courses would be exempt from the ban, which would be enforced by the county health department.

Hmm… what about bowling alleys?

I don’t know when the law will take effect, but this article implies it won’t be for several months.

UPDATE: Here’s the article from the South Bend Tribune. The ban goes into effect on April 10.

Continuing on an earlier theme… Ann Althouse is worried about robots. (Hat tip: Insty.)

Speaking of which, here’s a video clip of that SNL ad with Sam Waterston. “For when the metal ones come for you. And they will.” Heh.

There is a report that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, engaged and expecting a child, are breaking up, but Hollywood’s Weirdest Couple^TM claims that report is “100 percent false” and full of “malicious fallacies.” (Hat tip: Bea/Fark.com.)

My new Gonzaga sweatshirt, ordered from eBay, arrived in the mail today.

Woohoo!

Come to think of it, between the sweatshirt, the USC banner at right (not to mention the autographed Reggie Bush picture at top left — Patrick’s awesome wedding gift to Becky and me) and the Notre Dame license plate thingy at bottom right, my three favorite schools (sorry, UConn) are all represented in this photo! (For the uninitiated, here’s a work-in-progress Bloypedia post explaining why I like Gonzaga.)

Can I get an Amen?

A Muslim cultural institute in Germany on Monday criticized Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad for disparaging the Holocaust, daring him to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“In this place of horror he can again deny the Holocaust, if he has the courage,” a spokesman for the Islam-Archiv-Deutschland Central Institute told the German Catholic press agency KNA. …

By denying the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad not only denigrated the Jewish victims of the genocide but also the 200,000 Roms and Arabs murdered in the “gypsy camp” of Auschwitz-Birkenau and other camps, the institute spokesman said.

The fact that the president of an Islamic state repeated Nazi anti-Semitism was harmful to the image of Islam and “a disgrace for all the world’s Muslims”, he added.

Indeed. Hooray for moderate Muslims speaking out!

Heh:

The familiar double-lobed heart symbol seen on Valentine’s Day cards and candy was inspired by the shape of human female buttocks as seen from the rear, according to a professor of psychology who studied the origin, history and symbolism of the Feb. 14 holiday.

In other Valentine’s Day news, a female 2L who shall remain nameless (she did not want a hat tip) sent along this website suggesting a male-friendly alternative to Valentine’s Day. (Images on linked page SFW; text and concept not. Ad questionable.)

UPDATE: The un-hat-tipped 2L in question would like me to specifically mention that the “male-friendly alternative” is called “Steak and BJ Day.” That’s right, BJs. Blowjobs. Hot oral copulation. Everyone clear? She figures this will increase the clickthrough rate of the link. She’s probably right. :)

In the latest iTunes video coup, the entire Schoolhouse Rock collection is available for download. The direct links are here and here. Each three-minute episode (there are 22 of ‘em) costs $1.99. If you only want the “I’m Just A Bill” episode, go here.

Also newly available, according to TUAW: Season 1 of Saved By The Bell and the SI swimsuit videos. (Hat tip: dcl.)

(Previously: the Tidmarsh ad.)

The AP reports:

The 78-year-old lawyer who was shot by Vice President Dick Cheney in a hunting accident has some birdshot lodged in his heart and he had a “minor heart attack,” a hospital official said Tuesday.

Peter Banko, the hospital administrator at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial, said Harry Whittington had the heart attack early Tuesday while being evaluated.

He said there was an irregularity in the heartbeat caused by a birdshot pellet, and doctors performed a cardiac catheterization. Whittington expressed a desire to leave the hospital, but Banko said he would probably stay for another week.

Assuming the guy is ultimately okay, this will open up a whole new avenue for jokes about this incident, considering Cheney’s own heart troubles.

The controversial Vagina Monologues, moved to a DeBartolo classroom and coupled with panel discussions in order to make them “academic” in accordance with Father Jenkins’s decision, are this week: yesterday, today and tomorrow, at 7pm. (Here’s the Observer article about the first performance.) Free tickets are still available for tonight’s show by calling the performing-arts box office at 574-631-2800. Tomorrow’s show is sold out (er… well, the tickets aren’t being sold, per se, but you know what I mean), but if there are any seats unfilled at 6:50, stand-by audience members can get in, according to 2L and cast member Lisa Velte.

Alas, it looks like I won’t be able to make it. I had lost track of the schedule and thus didn’t know about last night’s performance until this morning; I can’t go tonight because Becky doesn’t feel well and I don’t want to be apart from her on Valentine’s Day; and tomorrow, we’re planning on going to the ND-South Florida basketball game (and, since the show is sold out, I might not be able to get in anyway). So after all that “Vaginagate” blogging, it looks like I won’t be attending this year’s VMs. Oh, well. Good luck (er, break a leg) to the cast and crew!

Those who don’t mind “spoilers” concerning events that will be broadcast during tonight’s tape-delayed Olympics coverage on NBC, click here. (Apologies to anyone who didn’t want to know but read it before it occurred to me that it was a spoiler.)

The “P.S.” on the linked post isn’t a spoiler, though. It concerns last night’s broadcasted events, and it’s a remarkable story. Click here and here. Fellow 2L Alex Ho has more.

UPDATE: Okay, so we all know you’re allowed to make ethnic jokes about your own ethnic group(s). But when you get married, do you earn the right to make ethnic jokes about your spouse’s ethnic group(s)? In comments on the linked post, I test the waters. :)

Another day, another Olympic event, another Bode Miller screw-up:

American Bode Miller was disqualified from the Alpine combined Tuesday for straddling a gate in the first slalom run, just when he seemed to have built a commanding lead for his first Olympic gold medal.

The disqualification, the fifth straight time the often-reckless American has failed to finish a slalom race, gave the lead to Austrian Benjamin Raich, who had trailed Miller by nearly a second before the disqualification was announced. …

It was Miller’s eighth slalom this season, and he’s only finished two without either a disqualification, a crash or skiing off course.

Do you think Nike is regretting its big “Join Bode” ad campaign yet?

On the bright side, Team USA, despite suffering a string of setbacks, still has more gold medals (4) than anybody else, though we’re third in the overall medal count behind Norway and Russia.

P.S. A happier Olympic story (not involving Americans) here and here. Remarkable. Fellow 2L Alex Ho has more.

Victor Davis Hanson: “Do the Europeans sense that the more open, free-wheeling and non-judgmental the culture, the more it is hated by the jihadists? If Europe as a whole is more pro-Palestinian than the United States, disapproved of Iraq, and yet is still hated as much, is magnanimity at last exposed as appeasement–earning only contempt from an emboldened enemy? (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

Happy Birthday to my dad, the Valentine’s baby who, had he been born a day earlier, would have been a Friday the 13th baby. (Calendar here.) That would have explained a lot, arrr. :) Anyway, he’s 58 today.

(If you’re wondering why I’m not making any old-fart jokes… I’m saving them up for February 14, 2008. :)

Happy Birthday, Dad!

P.S. And a very happy birthday from these guys, too:

:)

How long do you think the waiting list is for police officers wanting to get on the prostitution beat in Spotsylvania County, Virginia?

#4 Villanova upset #1 UConn yesterday, 69-64, to take the lead in the Big East standings. They’re still tied in the loss column with West Virginia, which handed the Wildcats their lone conference loss back in January. So I guess that means the Mountaineers are now in the driver’s seat to get the #1 seed in the conference tournament, if they win out. They have to play the Huskies on Friday, though. If UConn beats WVU, Villanova will simply need to win out to win the regular-season title — but that “simple” task will require beating UConn again on Feb. 26, which just goes to show that regular-season titles don’t mean much in this era of unbalanced schedules. (If UConn beats WVU and Villanova, and otherwise all three win out, they’ll all finish with two conference losses, and I’m not sure how the seed tiebreaker works in that situation.)

It’s much easier to figure out the conference standings out in the West Coast Conference, where Gonzaga is 10-0 and four games away from its second-ever undefeated WCC season. The #5-ranked Zags (21-3 overall) beat Portland yesterday, 97-83. National player-of-the-year candidate Adam “J.J. Who?” Morrison scored 33 points, and J.P. Batista scored 32. Gonzaga’s last four regular-season games are at second-place Loyola-Marymount (8-2) on Feb. 18, at Pepperdine (3-7, sixth place) on Feb. 21, at home against San Diego (6-5, tied for third) on Feb. 25 and at home against San Francisco (6-5, tied for third) on Feb. 27.

P.S. Back to UConn for a moment. There’s a ongoing feud between Coach Jim Calhoun and several journalists over accusations that he’s a major bully. (Hat tip: yoco.) See also here. (h/t.)