A Pavlovian Response.

On the Cigar Afficionado forums we recently read of a comrade, enjoying a Hoya de Monterey in Maine's great outdoors, confronted by some indignant dowagers who claimed that the odor of his cigar had wrecked their soiree some twenty yards away. Our friend went to great lengths in hydrodynamical and micro-climatical analysis to determine that in no way could the aroma of his stogie have reached the ladies in perceptible concentrations. To which we replied:

"The actions by the Ladies of Disapproval had nothing to do with any real olfactory sensation. They saw you smoking. They have been trained by the Mass Culture, much like Pavlov's dogs, to associate the visual cue of cigar smoking with disgusting smells, and so their brain invented a reaction. You should have asked them to play a game of solitare, waited for the Queen of Diamonds to appear, and reprogrammed them.

"In these times with so few predilections for which the State permits its citizens to possess reservations that when one comes along, such as cigar smoking, where the State actually sanctions disapproval you can expect persecution with a ferocity not unlike the burning of witches."

Another State-sanctioned persecution? Perhaps consider the previous post...