Good f**king grief......

[marmar]

from Grist:




Breaking: Rich people don’t like bad smells! Even if the smells come from nature, in the form of a sea lion. The problem is not just a bunch of sea lions with BO; it’s what comes outta sea lions’ buttholes and besmirches the beaches of Rich-Land. The San Diego suburb is technically called La Jolla, or “that place where Mitt Romney is in the process of replacing his 3,000-square-foot beach house with an 11,000-square-foot monster castle.”

Gawker has the scoop:

(Last week,) a lawsuit was filed against the city of San Diego and its interim mayor Todd Gloria by a group called Citizens For Odor Nuisance Abatement.

Note: The group’s SOLE PURPOSE is eradicating bad smells. SOMEbody has too much free time. You’d think they could at least come up with a good acronym, like SCENT (Smell Committee Enforcing No Turds) or SNIFF (Snooty Neighbors Incensed by Foul Fumes).

The group is demanding that the city clean up the rocks in La Jolla Cove because sea lion shit has built up to the point that it’s infecting the air.

The smell is “foul, noxious, and sickening,” according to Court House News, which is helpful because only EVERYONE ALIVE knows what crap smells like.

The lawsuit alleges that the city illegally erected a fence in front of the rocks at La Jolla Cove thus allowing sea lions and birds to roam free and shit everywhere. The plaintiffs are asking a judge to force the city to remove the fence and clean up the shit.

We agree that shit shouldn’t just be sitting around. No argument there. But wouldn’t it be cool if the hella-wealthy showed this level of concern for the air pollution caused by their SUVs?

[Scuba]

1. Move those houses away from the precious nesting grounds!!!

On edit: start with the houses that have car elevators.

[darkangel218]

2. "start with the houses that have car elevators."

+1 mil!!!

[marmar]

3. .....

[Shrike47]

4. I believe a primary complainer is a restaurant, where they are selling the view of the seals...

[Marie Marie]

5. Figures.

[MADem]

27. The restaurant could do a public-private partnership with the city, if they'd like

Get permission from the city to access the protected area, in exchange for being allowed to power-wash the shit away.

Win-win. Get outta court and act.

People who want something need to put forth the effort. That seal shit ain't bothering ME. It ain't bothering most of the taxpayers in that county either. The few people who are irritated by it no doubt have the means along with the motivation to do something about it.

[KentuckyWoman]

6. That's right folks - nature smells natury........ Next up in news

Rich people whine because dirt is dirty.
Film at 11.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

11. I've run into a dirt fanatic,.....in VEGAS...

That's right, in the middle of an endless DESERT as far as the eye can see.

I remind them the PLANET is called "Earth" for a REASON.

[hunter]

7. The shit and urine of the uber-wealthy smells worse and the rest of us have to suffer it...

... living in this "trickle down" economy.

[sabrina 1]

8. This was predictable as a natural extension of the anti-smoking 'don't foul up MY air'. I remember

Last edited Tue Dec 31, 2013, 01:41 AM - Edit history (1)

people realizing that they too had things they would rather live without, but up to the time when the extremist anti-smoking crowd, they had accepted that everyone had things they didn't like and we all have to live with each other.

But now people are thinking that maybe they too can get laws passed to try to create an environment that THEY would like to have.

So now we will have people holding their noses when someone wearing perfume passes by, or deoterant eg, Or dog poop or bird poop. And soon, EVERYTHING that bothers SOMEONE will banned.

It's hilarious. People don't realize sometimes when they think they've 'won' that there are consequences to every action, consequences they may not have imagined being so focused on their own issues.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

15. Are you really equating second hand smoke

With some nature smells? There were much bigger reasons anti smoking laws were put into effect than just "yucky smells ruining my pretty air".

[sabrina 1]

17. Yes. And now we know due to the latest ten year study, that there is zero evidence

that second hand smoke has any connection to people dying of cancer.

A foul odor to some, is as irritating as smoke to others. Some people are allergic to perfume eg, others to deoderant. If you really care about people you should support EVERYONE who is irritated by things they don't like or think are harmful to them, getting equal rights to not have to endure the smelly habits of others.

[alp227]

24. Even if that study is settled science,

do people have the right not to have harmful substances in their air without their consent?

[MADem]

30. The study isn't even close to "settled."

It simply says that there isn't a "clear" link. The study's goal was to prevent flight attendants with cancer and other respiratory illnesses from getting a payday.

I'm always suspicious of studies that have a goal that isn't scientific in nature:

The study doesn’t cover the many other ill effects of breathing somebody else’s cigarette smoke, of course, which include asthma and possibly cardio-pulmonary disease. I called Gerard Silvestri of the Medical University of South Carolina and member of the National Cancer Institute’s Screening and Prevention Board, and he said the study merely confirms what many researchers already believed.

....Previous cancer studies have had mixed results, the researchers said, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still calculate secondhand smoke is responsible for 46,000 heart disease deaths and 3,400 deaths from cancer a year. The problem is many studies showing the strongest association between secondhand smoke and cancer were case-control studies that can suffer from “recall bias,” or the tendency of people with a disease that can be blamed on a past exposure t0 be more likely to recall it.

....Still, the study goes a long way toward eliminating the premise of a groundbreaking lawsuit on behalf of 60,000 flight attendants who sought damages for lung cancer from passive smoke that was common back in the days when you could light up in an airliner. Tobacco companies settled that by paying $300 million to establish the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute, to support research into tobacco-related diseases. Lawyers for flight attendants have been battling to have FAMRI shut down and the proceeds paid directly to flight attendants, saying the elimination of smoking on airliners has ended its usefulness to the class.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/12/12/study-finds-no-link-between-secondhand-smoke-and-cancer/

[sabrina 1]

35. Apparently no. Eg, yesterday, and we are in a very rural area, a huge semi on the road was spewing

clouds of black smoke into the air. When we drive on the LI Expressway, we are in a cloud of poison and it's all legal.

Not to mention the factories, energy plants etc.

I would have felt a lot safer passing someone smoking a cigarette.

Maybe some day we can do something about our poisoned air that people are breathing in every minute of every day, but so far, it's all legal and unless you build a bubble to surround yourself in, nothing you can do about it.

[arcane1]

26. Don't even get me started on perfume!

I'm especially sensitive to perfumes and colognes, and some people wear an obscene amount of it. I had to leave work one day because of someone's excessive perfume

[Hekate]

33. Did the study reference children's asthma?

Second-hand smoke in children's homes seems to predispose them to asthma (i.e. lung disease). Naturally that would include other indoor environments like restaurants and airplanes. Other age groups who already have asthma are also affected. I didn't develop asthma until adulthood, though one brother had lung problems from childhood on (he started smoking about age 12 or 13, so that may have had something to do with its severity) -- Sadly, the last thing I read seemed to indicate that my adult-onset asthma may not have been as random as I thought, but may have had its roots in the smoke-filled rooms of my childhood home.

I really have no opinion on smokers enjoying the great outdoors downwind of me, but "downwind" is of necessity a relative position.

[sabrina 1]

36. Two members of my family have asthma. The main cause of asthma attacks for them can be

household cleaners, sprays, hair spray etc. Dog hair, cat hair especially and the general outside environment, pollen, grasses etc.

'Seems' is the operative word in your comment. There are so many poisons in our air that to even try to blame passing by someone with a cigarette for asthma just makes no sense whatsoever.

[Hekate]

37. "Predispose" was the operative word: smoking parents, not passersby

If there is a correlation, many things can then be a trigger later on, not just the original source. I'm curious if the study mentioned that, and not just for myself. I don't "blame passing cigarettes", sabrina; I'd like to know if the study looked into the childhood environment of asthmatics.

I've mentioned before that my parents were smokers and our house was full of smoke. Children can't escape the air inside their own homes, can they? Most of my animosity towards cigarettes is not toward individual smokers but Big Tobacco because of the addictive nature of the product and how cruelly my mother struggled and failed to break herself of the habit until cancer finally settled in and she was able to make the break permanent.

As an adult-onset asthmatic I am quite grateful for the changing ethos that has cleaned up the recirculated air inside offices, restaurants, and airplanes, and that everyone nowadays thinks it would be rude to light up inside anyone's home without explicit permission. I used to keep an ashtray for the convenience of my friends, but over 35 years ago it was rendered redundant without a word from me.

[geek tragedy]

38. It is utterly moronic to compare the artificial emissions of poison gas to the natural

odor of wild animals in terms of the regulatory state.

[sabrina 1]

39. If you're talking about auto emissions? I agree. Animals are part of nature, auto emissions are not

but should autos be banned, unless they find a way to run on water? I wouldn't mind frankly, the world survived without them from the beginning of human history until relatively recently. It is utterly moronic also to compare the artificial emissions of poison from automobiles to someone passing by smoking a cigarette ocassionally. But that is what the anti smoking crowd is doing and they have decided, most likely because they are contributing the poison from auto emissions to our air, that a passing smoker once in a blue moon, is more dangerous than the never ending spewing of auto emissions into the environment.

[geek tragedy]

40. Just because cars have bad side-effects does not make cigarettes ok.

Logic fail.

Especially since, you know, cars actually provide benefits (transportation) whereas cigarettes serve no useful purpose except making money for the tobacco industry.

There isn't a person alive on this planet who would function worse if cigarettes had never been invented.

[sabrina 1]

41. There isn't a person alive on the planet who would function worse if Oil had not been discovered. I

wonder what the death count has been from that particular 'discovery'. People have been smoking for centuries. And many of them have lived to be very old.

One of the oldest women in the world eg, and she's not alone, chain smoked until her mid eighties, slowed down to about 3 a day by the time she was in around 112 because her eye sight wasn't good enough to light them and she didn't want to have to keep asking other people to light her cigarettes for her.

Lots of the world's oldest living humans smoked until they died. I suppose you could argue that the 122 year old could have lived longer if he hadn't smoked, but I guess quality of life was more important to him than another year or so stressing out .

[geek tragedy]

42. Yours may literally be the most ignorant thing ever written on DU.

1) You're saying not a single person who would function worse without:

a) cargo ships
b) modern aircraft
c) freight trucks
d) moving vans
e) automobiles

Sorry, that's just a mind-bogglingly stupid thing to say, so stupid I question whether you honestly believe it.

2) You're actually trying to argue that smoking isn't bad for people by citing a single anecdote. That's crazytown and something even the tobacco industry publicly disputes, it's so completely ignorant and false.

Last word is yours. I am no match for such determination to avoid facts, logic, and good faith argument.

[Hekate]

9. I kind of want to say "You're shitting me, right?" but that would be crass

I have a friend who volunteers guarding the beach near Carpinteria during seal-pupping season. Well, not exactly guard, but really a nature guide who can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the seal cycle, and incidentally tells you to not annoy the adults or pick up the babies.

The one thing that has never, ever come up in our conversations is the odor. I'm sure there is some. I'm also sure that since this is the "beach", there is something called a "tide" that occurs regularly -- it's where the ocean comes up and washes off the sand and the rocks.

What next? The clueless rich complain about the seagulls? The kelp that washes up in piles?

[Historic NY]

10. Had same problem in my town...

new arrivals complained about the foul manure smell from the local dairy farms. They spread it in the farm fields when cleaning out the barns. My answer was what was here first your house or the cows? You had the opportunity to move or select a another area, the cows and farm don't, its been here for more than 100 yrs. It usually shut them up.

[davidthegnome]

12. Well if they don't like it...

That's why we have brooms, dustpans, sponges, little baggies to throw shit away in - and so on. All they have to do is clean it up themselves. I devoutly hope that someone in their local government, a judge... someone, is smart enough to tell them this. Don't like it? Clean it up, assholes.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. Nope, not going there

And I thought my towns hyper local news was not GD material.

Anyhoo, this is an oooolllllldddddd issue preceding the modern La Jolla

[alfredo]

14. The Sea Lion may not like the smell of whiny rich people.

[Cleita]

16. I personally am having a problem with the rich taking over the coast of California.

They seem to think that because they can afford beach front property that the beach belongs to them. The coast belongs to the State of California. Yet they seem to think they can declare private beaches and chase off wild life that doesn't suit them. When does it stop?

[Egalitarian Thug]

19. This has been going on there for generations. Rich assholes from Malibu to San Diego

periodically attempt to steal the beaches from the state. There are groups like this one in every uber-wealthy enclave on the coast. Malibu, Pacidifc Pallisades, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, La Jolla, and on down to Pacific Beach. Every few years they hire some lawyers to sue some government or just start building fences and walls to keep the riff-raff out.

[LeftyMom]

18. This just in: beaches smell.

Like fish and rotting seaweed, on a good day.

Also, the goddamn gulls get really loud, and sea lions sound like the most obnoxious dog in the world and elephant seals are louder yet.

Clearly the rich should move to Iowa and let the poors move to those smelly beaches.

[Solly Mack]

20. The world needs more sea lions and fewer assholes.

[xchrom]

21. du rec.

[smirkymonkey]

22. Awww! That is such a sweet photo,

How could any body be against them even if they do smell a little bad,

[Vattel]

23. Would cleaning the rocks hurt the sea lions or make it easier for them to enjoy their sunbathing?

[Hekate]

25. Ocean. Beach. Tide. Waves. Natural process.

Humans need to leave the sea lions alone -- they are wild animals, and in their way they are dangerous. Also we are dangerous to them, in our usual clueless fashion.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

28. Durn sea-lions should use the big sand box that's available rather than the rocks.

[greytdemocrat]

29. Easy answer...

[Uncle Joe]

31. Kicked and recommended to highlight mental disconnection.

Thanks for the thread and Happy New Year, marmar.

[msanthrope]

32. I fart in their general direction. nt

[bananas]

34. The seals are a tourist attraction

People come from all over the city to see the seals.
People love the seals.