Okay, okay, call me lazy, call me a fraud, I'll admit it straight away. I owe everything in today's short piece to Wikipedia, but I just couldn't resist it. Why? Well, it's a slightly anachronistic thing to say, but today I stumbled upon a Wikipedia page that so closely resembles a Fred and Fred blogpost that I just had to use it.
The page in question is the one on Friday the 13th. So why is it just our cup of tea?
Well, for starters it's about a popular notion that is interesting to think through. It tells you that the superstition revolving around Friday the 13th is in fact a rather modern thing, as there is no written evidence for it before the 19th century. Or that in Spanish-speaking countries and in Greece, instead of Friday, Tuesday the 13th is considered a day of bad luck.
What's more it even includes both Freds' very peculiar interests.
Fred #1 will be interested to know that there is a mathematical paper on the astonishing fact that the 13th day of the month is actually slightly more likely to be a Friday than any other day of the week!
Fred #2, on the other hand, will revel in the fact that the fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia (Frigga being the name of the Norse goddess after whom "Friday" is named and triskaidekaphobia meaning fear of the number thirteen), or - with a Greek term - paraskevidekatriaphobia, which is a concatenation of the words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή, meaning "Friday"), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς, meaning "thirteen") attached to phobía (φοβία, from phóbos, φόβος, meaning "fear").
And the both of us will be surprised to know that according to a study from 2008 fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur on Friday the 13th, because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home. Or that the famous rapper Tupac Shakur was pronounced dead on Friday, September 13, 1996.
Oh goody!
So, I guess I'll stop the plagiarizing and refer you, with mucho gusto, to the excellent and very 'Fredian' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th.
Enjoy!
The page in question is the one on Friday the 13th. So why is it just our cup of tea?
Well, for starters it's about a popular notion that is interesting to think through. It tells you that the superstition revolving around Friday the 13th is in fact a rather modern thing, as there is no written evidence for it before the 19th century. Or that in Spanish-speaking countries and in Greece, instead of Friday, Tuesday the 13th is considered a day of bad luck.
What's more it even includes both Freds' very peculiar interests.
Fred #1 will be interested to know that there is a mathematical paper on the astonishing fact that the 13th day of the month is actually slightly more likely to be a Friday than any other day of the week!
Fred #2, on the other hand, will revel in the fact that the fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia (Frigga being the name of the Norse goddess after whom "Friday" is named and triskaidekaphobia meaning fear of the number thirteen), or - with a Greek term - paraskevidekatriaphobia, which is a concatenation of the words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή, meaning "Friday"), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς, meaning "thirteen") attached to phobía (φοβία, from phóbos, φόβος, meaning "fear").
And the both of us will be surprised to know that according to a study from 2008 fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur on Friday the 13th, because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home. Or that the famous rapper Tupac Shakur was pronounced dead on Friday, September 13, 1996.
Oh goody!
So, I guess I'll stop the plagiarizing and refer you, with mucho gusto, to the excellent and very 'Fredian' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th.
Enjoy!
Funny, I always thought that Friday the 13th should have more accidents, not because of superstition, but statistically it's more likely to be in an accident if you're nervous. Since that most of the superstitious people in Europe and north America believe this, it's a good reason to believe that a lot of people are nervous on the same time. And the chances of accidents are higher if more people are walking around, while trying not to have bad luck ;)
ReplyDeleteI only assume this and didn't do the math, this could be a good math exercise though ;)
But what I do know is this: Most of the times that I find money on the street, is a Friday the 13th :p
Well you may be right, because there are conflicting studies about the risk of accidents on Friday the 13th. A British study found that there are far more accidents on Friday 13 than on Friday 6. However, Friday seems a more accident-prone day in general. I'm quite sure people perceive Friday 13 as a more dangerous day; I mean, you're much more likely to remember getting into an accident if it happens on Friday 13. But whether or not more of them happen, I'm not sure. Maybe people's nervousness on the one hand and people's tendency to stay home on the other just cancel each other out? Anyways, long story short. We dunno. ;-)
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