Helgeson's Hikes

Friday, June 13, 2014

A Beautiful Story

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NO MATCH FOR NATURAL STUPIDITY.

I was driving through northern Illinois last night listening to a call-in program on WGN in Chicago.

People were calling in all upset about the goat's head sent to Cubs owner Tom Ricketts at Wrigley Field.

Some guy called in from Indiana and said, "Why are you all so upset cause someone sent a goat's head to Wrigley Field?

Aren't you the guys that sent a horse's ass to the White House".

I almost ran off the road!

Monday, June 2, 2014

Have you ever wondered why it's OK to make jokes about Catholics, the Pope, Jews, Christians, the Irish, the Italians, the Polish, the Chinese, the French, including French Canadians, the elderly, bad golfers etc. but its insensitive to make jokes about Muslims?

We need to level the playing field for the sake of political correctness.....

Jeff Foxworthy on Muslims.....

1. If you refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to liquor, you may be a Muslim.

2. If you own a $3,000 machine gun and a $5,000 rocket launcher, but you can't afford shoes, you may be a Muslim.

3. If you have more wives than teeth, you may be a Muslim.

4. If you wipe your butt with your bare hand but consider bacon to be unclean, you may be a Muslim.

5. If you think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide, you may be a Muslim

6. If you can't think of anyone you haven't declared jihad against, you may be a Muslim.

7. If you consider television dangerous but routinely carry explosives in your clothing, you may be a Muslim.

8. If you were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs, you may be a Muslim.

9. If you have nothing against women and think every man should own at least four, you may be a Muslim.

10. If you find this offensive and don't forward it, you may be a Muslim.

Why You Should Smoke Cigars

Why I Smoke Cigars
By Dennis Prager

There are few personal confessions more likely to alienate many Americans than to admit to smoking. Singles ads are filled with people who will never even go on a first date with someone who smokes. I strongly suspect that more women would date a millionaire who earned his money disreputably than a millionaire who smoked.

Drinkers are far more highly regarded than smokers, as are playboys, gamblers, lawyers, politicians and almost anyone else except child molesters.

So I have no doubt that some readers who until now have held me in esteem will lose respect for me when they learn that not only do I smoke cigars and a pipe, but I love doing so, have no interest in stopping and have been happy to pass this pleasure on to my older son. In fact, we regularly have some of our best talks while we enjoy our cigars.

For the record, I never smoke cigarettes, which I happen to dislike the smell of, and which I acknowledge to be dangerous. But what I write here largely applies to cigarette smokers as well. In fact, I find anti-smoking zealots far more dangerous to society than cigarette smokers, and would much sooner date a cigarette smoker than one of the zealots.

Having said that, however, it does need to be pointed out that there is little in common between cigar (or pipe) smoking and cigarette smoking. Most important, we don’t inhale. This is not meant in the way former President Bill Clinton meant it when he said he “never inhaled.” The purpose and joy of cigar and pipe smoking are to enjoy the taste of tobacco in one’s mouth. The purpose and joy of cigarette smoking are only vaguely related to the taste of tobacco.

And that leads to two other great differences between cigarette smoking and cigar (and pipe) smoking: First, there is no issue of addiction regarding cigars or pipes. I have been smoking both since I was 15 years old, and could stop tomorrow if I wanted to. Indeed, as a Jew who observes the Sabbath prohibition on kindling fire, I do not smoke for a day every week, and it is effortless. Likewise, I am frequently on the road lecturing, and often miss days at a time with absolutely no discernible effect. Second, because one does not inhale when smoking a cigar or pipe, the likelihood of lung cancer is minimal.

Yes, I am warned by doctors that I am more liable to contract mouth or lip cancer, but while physicians may see such diseases, in 40 years of smoking I have never met or heard of one person with either cancer.

Indeed, I am quite convinced that my one-a-day cigar or pipe may well have had a positive impact on my health given how much relaxation it induces. Stress kills far more people than cigars or pipes do.
It is a sign of the times that the latest James Bond film has prohibited 007 from smoking a cigar. One of the most benign practices a person can engage in was banned, but our macho hero can be shown drinking alcohol and bedding women (and without any mention of condoms!), not to mention killing people and engaging in behaviors infinitely more dangerous than cigar smoking.

We live in the Age of Stupidity. This new age has been induced by widespread college education and widespread secularism — Psalms is entirely accurate: “Wisdom begins with fear of the Lord” — which explains, for example, why only well-educated secularists came to believe that there were no innate nonphysical differences between men and women.

Nearly 100 years ago, before widespread college education and before widespread secularism, when America tried to prohibit a vice, it chose alcohol, not tobacco. It knew that there were immoral consequences to alcohol consumption — most child abuse, most spousal abuse, about half of violent crimes and most rapes are accompanied by alcohol. Nobody has ever raped because smoking a cigarette or a cigar numbed his conscience. And no one fears smoking drivers; we rightly fear drinking drivers.

Both in my hometown and on the road, I find great joy in visiting cigar stores and schmoozing with the owners and with the guys smoking there. In fact, cigar stores may be the last place men can get together without women.

Of course if you think I am really killing people due to the secondhand smoke they inhale from my cigar or pipe, I presume all discussion ends. I am then simply a killer who needs to be stopped. I find absurd the notion that more than 50,000 Americans are killed every year just by being in the presence of smokers. But if you believe it, all you need to do is open a window and enjoy yourself.

The late legendary comedian George Burns was a listener to my radio talk show. When he was around 90 years old, he invited me to his Beverly Hills home. In the course of our two hours together, he smoked two cigars and had a couple of martinis. I asked him what his doctor said about those habits. George looked at me and responded, “My doctor died.”

My father is 88 years old and has been smoking a few cigars a day (in my 87-year-old mother’s presence, I might add). They are both in near-perfect health. He not only taught me the joys of cigars. He also taught me the importance of thinking for myself and how to lead an honorable life that includes as much joy as possible.

http://www.dennisprager.com/why-i-smoke-cigars/

How Well Can You Spell?

While 281 spellers compete in the 2014 Scripps National Spelling Bee by spelling words that can make one's head spin (“weissnichtwo” and “cabotinage” to name a couple), there are many words we come across regularly that are commonly misspelled, according to the Oxford English Corpus.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/lifestyle/spelling-bee/

The Scotch-Irish Orangemen Connection to Masons

If you look at Klan or Masonic literature in the 1920s and 1930s, you find a list of political concerns that look surprisingly, well, Left-wing. Masons favored strict secularization in the public schools, as a bulwark against Catholic incursions. They also fought hard against foreign interventionism: Catholics, on the other side, were pushing for armed US intervention against the anti-clerical Masonic regime in Mexico, and later against the anti-clerical Left in Spain.

In the US and Britain, these interfaith tensions focused on Masons and anti-Masonic conspiracy theories declined in later years, but they remained strong elsewhere, particularly in regions with populations derived from Ulster or Scotland. The Orange Order, so powerful in such lands, is a close relative of Freemasonry.

The KKK Connection the APA and Masons

Similar Masonic precedents marked the post-1915 Ku Klux Klan, which became a national US phenomenon between 1921 and 1926, drawing perhaps five million members at its height. And at this stage, the KKK was at least as heavily devoted to anti-Catholic and anti-immigration causes as to anti-Black racism. The Klan found its local leadership in Masonic lodges, and especially among local clergy. In order to appeal to Masons and other fraternal organizations, the Klan offered a rich mythology and heraldry, with all the mystique implied by its hierarchy of “Hydras, Great Titans, Furies, Giants, Exalted Cyclops, Terrors,” its distinctive secret language, and an elaborate system of progressive initiations, of signs and countersigns. (I published on this at some length in my 1997 book Hoods and Shirts).

It’s an oddity of US political history that histories of the mighty Klan of the 1920s pay so little attention to the APA, which was its immediate ancestor.

American Protective Association

Also known as the American Protestant Association) . . .

Although not well remembered today, the great American popular movement of the late nineteenth century was the American Protective Association, which preached radical anti-Catholicism, and prepared to resist a feared Catholic coup d’état. Founded in 1887, the movement’s support ran into the hundreds of thousands at least, chiefly in the Midwest. Its founder was Henry F. Bowers, a Freemason, who structured the movement on Masonic lines, with regalia, oaths and initiations.

The APA oath specified that,

I do most solemnly promise and swear that I will always, to the utmost of my ability, labor, plead and wage a continuous warfare against ignorance and fanaticism; that I will use my utmost power to strike the shackles and chains of blind obedience to the Roman Catholic church from the hampered and bound consciences of a priest-ridden and church-oppressed people; that I will never allow any one, a member of the Roman Catholic church, to become a member of this order, I knowing him to be such; that I will use my influence to promote the interest of all Protestants everywhere in the world that I may be; that I will not employ a Roman Catholic in any capacity if I can procure the services of a Protestant.