Seems Tasco is groping mayoral wannabe Michael Nutter's sloppy seconds, trying to tell people how best to live their lives, and run their businesses. To that end, she packed Council chambers with asthmatics who hate waiting longer than smokers for tables at restaurants and nonsmoking career waitresses who consider Superman's dead wife a martyr though they probably never heard of her until the Man of Steel fell off a horse.

They trotted out pro-ban standards that can be boiled down to one point: Smoking's bad, mmmkay? Well no shit. As much as you want it to be, and continue trying to make it be, this issue isn't about the consequences of cigarettes. Anybody who can spell "lighter" agrees it's high time to prohibit smoking in most public spaces (or better yet, to allow business owners to decide for themselves). But that doesn't mean they should be prevented from lighting up in taprooms, where people go not for tapas, but to escape the type of assbag who whines about smoke in corner taverns without menus (See Eskin, Howard or Advocates, Pro-Ban).

So atta girl, Marion, noble heroine of recycled legislation. Feel free to preach on all you want about how businesses won't be affected (statistics-manipulating lies) and the public health will improve (going after McDonald's next?). But know one thing that your fellow "legislators" realized when the bill was put down last year: Ban smoking in the taprooms, and you might find yourself looking for a new job quicker than you can say, "Let's table this until after the election."

So, I'm boarding the plane home from Vegas the other morning, reeking like a degenerate who sat at the three-card table overnight instead of taking a pre-flight shower. On the outside, I'm still laughing about the middle-aged woman who just fell into a puddle of airport-hallway vomit. (What happened in Vegas went home with her.) Inside, I'm wondering how, after hitting two straight flushes, I'm still pretty much broke.

Seeking comfort, I pull out salvation in the form of an eight-leg parlay ticket. Should I hit all eight Sweet 16 NCAA tourney games, $5 will become $880. I needn't tell you how that turned out, but it makes me wish I'd have met Wharton economist Justin Wolfers, he of the recent "Point Shaving: Corruption in NCAA Basketball" study, before heading to the desert.

If you're inclined to believe Wolfers' research, as I am after two years of watching the games in Vegas sportsbooks, some 6 percent of games with large spreads over the past 16 years may have been manipulated with gambling concerns in mind. Specifically, players on favored teams may have shaved points for cash. So while you were cheering for 'Nova, some influential high-rollers might have been cashing in on a fix. A major problem? Damn right. Which is why the NCAA ought to take Wolfers' work seriously before scandal destroys the most exciting sporting event there is.

One of the highlights of my job is editing "Feedback," especially when the letters to the editor are laced with venom (like the pro-ban ones I'm sure to be sifting through next week). Generally, there's some behind-the-scenes dialogue that fleshes out the issue and deepens the writer/reader relationship but doesn't appear in the paper. The biggest lesson learned? You're an intelligent lot—for the most part. Case in point: Mike Trudeau's letter on page 5 about our "Was It Worth It?" series.

While I couldn't disagree with Mike more—politics have nada, zip, zero to do with our effort to commemorate local war casualties—I respected his right to disagree during a subsequent e-mail exchange. (But if you agree with Mike that the column is "repulsive," you ought to see the TV cameras encamp on a family's stoop while their dead kid bleeds out on the corner.) Well, come Saturday morning, Mike's e-mail-monitoring wife Monica decided to chirp in. (Hope you clear your cookies, pal.) "You are incredibly obtuse and an idiot," she wrote. "If my son died rescuing 100 orphans from a burning building, I would tell you it was not worth it."

Now, writing "How They'll Lose" got me used to crass insults (and there were plenty more in her half-thought-out diatribe), but Mother Monica's greater-good empathy just couldn't go without a public airing. Of course, no parent wants to lose a child. Under any circumstance. But not taking some refuge in the fact that their 9/11-firefighter-esque sacrifice allowed others to live? Or understanding that some military families find solace in the fact that their loved one knew they could die, yet enlisted anyway?

Well, that just makes you an obtuse idiot.

And a prying one at that.