Ben Tilly wrote:
>matz / zetabits.com (Yukihiro Matsumoto) wrote:
>>By the way, I was surprised to see so many people smoking in public in
>>France.  It's worse than Japan, which I had believed the worst country.
>
>What I have heard is that it is pretty bad everywhere
>except the US and Canada.  And even there people smoked
>pretty heavily until recently.  Today if it isn't a bar,
>it probably isn't full of people smoking.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that 
California not only bans smoking in restaurants--
it also bans smoking in bars (!). The only 
_legal_ exceptions are special "smoking bars" and 
there aren't many of those. It's really amusing 
(to me--sorry for those of you who smoke) to see 
a group of smokers puffing away right *outside* a 
pub.

To bring it (almost) back on topic, I suppose 
this means that the preferred location for a US 
Ruby gathering would thus be California. 
[Disclaimer: I live in California, so I just 
might have ulterior motives for that 
suggestion].

Kevin