The fact that the thinnest wire worked best in keeping a cigar ash from falling from the cigar makes me think no wire would be even better. If Una didn’t try this without a wire, her experiments don’t mean much.
^Complimentary link to the column.
What does “you know what they say about omelettes and eggs” mean? I’ve never heard that phrase in my life.
“If you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.”
The ash falls off at 1-2 inches on the non-wired cigar. I did not do a plethora of experiments on that because I thought it was obvious that it would not stay together without the wire; that was sort of the whole point of the column. I’m sure it’s not impossible to get a very long ash with no wire but I’ll bet it’s extremely difficult to do, especially if there is any hand movement at all. While doing this I wasn’t just sitting still, I was walking around, and pacing, doing some gardening, outside* in a very light breeze, with a considerable amount of arm and hand motion while holding the Satanic death sticks. I sincerely doubt that it would have worked well with no wire.
- No way was I going to have cigar smoke in my house.
May I (as fellow non-smoker) congratulate you on the sacrifice you have taken upon you for the Straight Dope and Cecil? Big Applause! I couldn’t imagine smokine one cigar, let alone several for comparision! Cigar smoke smells bad enough…
What I wonder about: the typical clichee is that all those journalists working for a newspaper smoke all the time (from the stress). Are the people who work for the Reader all virtuos non-smokers? Has this simply changed?
It’s interesting watching older movies from the 60s and 70s, where most people smoke naturally, and compare them to movies and TV series from the 90s onward, where only bad guys where Cigarette-Smoking Men, and compare it to real life. How many people have stopped smoking (and how many people have started it new?)
I’m surprised you didn’t get sick as a non-smoker. Back in the day, one cigarette would pretty much do me in.
I have heard that Winston Churchill used the cigar/wire trick while in Parliament to distract his colleagues during speeches by his opposition. I had never heard it about Clarence Darrow. I wonder whether the stunt has been attributed to anyone else.
Am I the only one who thinks the question was ambiguously worded? When I read “to keep the ash from falling and thus distracting the jury”, I was trying to figure out why the falling ash would distract the jury, and why avoiding that would be desirable. It took me until halfway through the column before I figured out what the writer meant.
Powers &8^]
I did get sick; Cecil says that at the end. I got really, really, really sick, in fact.
Are there no smokers on the SDSAB who could have taken the bullet for you? I know smoking has fallen in popularity, but it’s still not all that uncommon.
Minor point - was it just on my computer or did someone else encounter a ‘duplicate’ ad from Verizon that was not only on the right of the screen, but also hovered over the main body of the article, blocking out most of the OP and maybe the 1st paragraph of Cecil’s reply?
Cecil asks me to do things, and I do them if possible. I thought that cigar smoking meant you didn’t inhale much. And I didn’t, but it turns out I got enough smoke anyhow. And then there was the headache, and the vomiting, and the curling up in a small ball on the cool tile bathroom floor, and thanking the toilet bowl ala Bill Cosby…
I would think you could hook up an aquarium aerator pump to smoke a cigar.
I’d be happy to volunteer my services if cigar smoking is involved in any future SD experiments. 
Well, all Cecil says is that you “thought you were going to die”. It doesn’t really imply the type of seriously sick I would expect from a non-smoker toking on 5 cigars. I “thought I was going to die” when I had two slices of cheescake, but I wasn’t ashen faced and dry heaving. 
Ditto. See here:
“British lore claims that when Churchill would meet with foreign heads of state, he would insert a straightened paper-clip through the length of his cigar. As his cigar ash would grow longer and longer but not fall, it is said that Churchill would unnerve his often-hostile guests, allowing him to gain an upper hand during delicate negotiations.”
I first learned this about Churchill in a book about his sayings and doings I read as a child. It treated it as fact, but it sounds iffy now.
I thought that longer ashes signified the higher quality of a cigar, and that one should try not to ash to frequently, as the ash acts as an insulator and prevents the tobacco from burning too hot.
Actually, I was curious why you want to distract a jury. I would think (at least while you’re speaking) you’d want the jury hanging on every word. Maybe you want to distract the jury when the other side does a cross examination? That might be a bit hard to pull off. You’d have to light up and put out the cigar while one side or the other is questioning the witness.
In fact, I can’t imagine a judge letting someone smoke a cigar in a courtroom. Maybe a cigarette back in the old days, but a cigar would probably be considered inappropriate in a courtroom. It smells too much and just lacks decorum. Cigars are smoked when you want to relax. You do it after a meal with friends. It would be as if the attorney wore Bermuda shorts and drank a martini during the trial.
Paper clip? According to Al Boliska in Wipeouts! (1968), he ‘first pierced the cigar full-length with a long hat pin.’