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Remora LI's uncertain morality We just finished re-reading the day before yesterday's post. My God, we do go on and on, don't we? We'll allow the pro-legalization argument to settle, for a bit, in the stomachs (or, okay, brains -- the metaphors are getting awfully out of hand here, lately) of our poor readers. There's a lot to digest there, in a little space. And we will highlight the article du jour from the NYT -- it is surely this wonderful piece about the glamorous, highwire lives of certain executive secretaries who choose to defraud their bosses. Intro grafs ahead: "ike many busy executives, E. Scott Mead, a top banker at Goldman Sachs, trusted his secretary to help him run his life. Beyond answering the telephone and setting his schedule, she helped organize family vacations and managed his expense account. Mr. Mead may have trusted her too much. The secretary, Joyti De-Laurey, is to appear in court today in London, charged with embe

Even more astonishing is the fact that tobacco use not only spread at an unprecedented rate and in the absence of media advertising, but in the face of penaltiesthat remain unparalleled in the history of smoking. For example, the council of Bern, Switzerland, placed the prohibition against tobacco among the Ten Commandments, gave it the same penalty as for adultery, and initiated an Inquisition-like tribunal known as the Chambre du tabac to deal with offenders. In Turkey, smokers had the stems of pipes thrust through the cartilage of the nose and were seated backwards on mules as they were led through the streets. Meanwhile, Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov had Russian tobacco users whipped and their nostrils slit, whereas the Persian shah ordered tobacco traders to have their noses, lips, and ears cut off or molten lead poured down their throats. In India, the Mughal Emperor Jahangir also decreed that smokers should have their lips slit. He was lenient compared with the Ottoman tyr