Man's smelly feet trigger police raid

Article

I've known some smelly-feet people but I don't think I've ever come across someone whose feet inspired a call to the local police station!

This Slim is in Fat City in more ways than one

Mexico's richest man casts controversial shadow -- article no longer found...

...but according to a more recent article, Carlos Slim is now the world's richest man.

Bill Gates Ousted; Carlos Slim Now Holds World's Fattest Wallet, Report Says

The Internet Patrol - Sprint Cellular Disconnects Customers Who Call Sprint PCS Customer Service Phone Number Too Often

I knew from my own experience that Sprint's customer service was nothing short of crappy, but this takes the cake! They're actually canceling customer's accounts if Sprint decides the customer has called customer service or billing too often!

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From: The Internet Patrol <info@theinternetpatrol.com>
Date: Jul 9, 2007 10:50 AM
Subject: The Internet Patrol - Sprint Cellular Disconnects Customers Who Call Sprint PCS Customer Service Phone Number Too Often

The Internet Patrol

The Latest News at the Internet Patrol Here is today's news from the Internet Patrol!

Sprint Cellular Disconnects Customers Who Call Sprint PCS Customer Service Phone Number Too Often 2007-07-08 03:04:17-04 If you have a Sprint cellular phone and Sprint cell phone service, or are considering getting a cell phone from Sprint, you'll want to know just how the Sprint phone company treats customers of their Sprint wireless phone service when they call Sprint PCS customer service. Because customers calling the Sprint customer service phone number too often are being terminated by the Sprint/Nextel service! Read more...

Count Your Blessings

I don't normally repost or post links to things like this, but for some reason this one touched me...

Count Your Blessings

Sick Health Care System

It didn't just become news when Michael Moore said it, but he's right. The health care system in the United States needs fixing. Whenever your level of care depends on what a supervisor at an insurance company is willing to allow, rather than what trained medical personnel (and the patient!) deem necessary, something needs to be done. And when the time of day can have life-or-death effect on your level of care in a hospital, changes need to be made...

Seattle Times review of Sicko

Night Shift Nightmare (Reader's Digest)

I can vouch for the differences in the level of care, not only between the day and night shifts, but also between the intensive care unit staff and the "regular" nursing staff. I was in ICU and, well, constipated for the whole time I was there. On the evening of the fifth day, I was transferred to a regular room, and when I told the duty nurse that I was consipated and had been since I got there, she gave me this stuff that looked like chocolate milk and smelled (and probably tasted) like nail polish remover. It did the trick, though, but not until the next morning. Unfortunately, that was when someone was going around taking patients' temperature and blood pressure. The nurse came around, found I was still in the bathroom, and went ballistic! Like my whole reason for being in there was less important than their need to follow procedure. (Granted, blood pressure problems was part of the reason I was there, but still...)

The woman taking the readings, for her part, was quite understanding, but I'd expect a nurse to have been a bit more understanding. After all, she has had medical training and is supposed to play a part in putting the patient at ease.

Though it turned out that the stuff they gave me to get me "moving" again (they called it a "black and white"; I have no idea what was in it) was NOT supposed to be given to me because of the nature of my particular problem. The nurse had reacted to my complaint, but without checking into what my medical issue was. And again, this was a night-shift nurse.

Not to put down the night shift -- I know they're called on to do more work, since there are fewer people on hand after dark. But, still, it's not too much to expect them to do a thorough job no matter what. And my story isn't anything like the one in the Reader's Digest article...

Not Really News, But...

...When my union's website dedicates an entire page to Wal-Mart and how they muscle vendors into either redoing their whole business model (and giving up profits) in order to keep Wal-Mart's prices low, including laying off workers and sending jobs overseas, I have to take note of it.

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know (posted at www.CSEA9200.com; article originally published in Fast Company, December 2003, page 68

Excerpt: "The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?"

The CSEA Unit 9200 site includes much more info about Wal-Mart and how it's bullying vendors and costing American workers their jobs and/or fair wages: Wal-Mart Awareness

Tom Joyner, are you reading this? You're all about supporting causes benefiting African-Americans, but who (among others) do you think is hurting when your favorite retailer is causing jobs to be sent overseas and driving companies out of business? Or have you been paid to NOT mention certain kinds of things that would point a finger at them?

Big Brother? No, more like Big Nanny

Towards a Nanny Internet -- "Are we moving towards a Nanny Internet? Between network neutrality, laws requiring dating sites to perform background checks and ISPs to rat out their users, laws banning anonymous posting, and cyberbullying legislation, one might argue that the Nanny Internet is shaping up nicely. Or not."

BUMP: Signs (and billboards, and spam) of the times

I found the following post while I was Googling for something else (never mind what).

I see ads when I watch television, or read a newspaper or magazine. I hear ads when I listen to the radio.

The football stadium in my city is Invesco Field. The baseball stadium is Coors Field. The basketball/hockey arena is the Pepsi Center.

When I surf the web I get hit with banner ads, pop-up ads, and an email inbox full of spam.

Companies buy product placement in the movies I watch and the video games I play.

I go to get the mail and come back with a fistful of credit card solicitations and other junk. I have to sign up for a no-call list to avoid getting a dozen telemarketing calls each day.

There exists something called the "Insight.com Bowl."

Billboards litter the landscape. When I pump gas, an ad on the pump handle informs me that candy bars are 3 for 99 cents. NASCAR... 'nuff said.

Ads are stuck to the floor at the grocery store, spoken in pleasant tones over the sound system, and printed on the back of my receipt. An ESPN college football analyst casually refers to the late-December bowls as "Capital One Bowl Week". During the half-hour before movies, when people used to chat pleasantly, we are now shown continuous ads for soda and pop music.

Blimps and airplanes pulling banners turn the heavens into ad space. A Super Bowl champion announces that he is going to Disneyland.

Am I worth anything beyond my ability to consume?

My apologies to Lonnie Jordan and WAR, but the following "lyrics" popped into my head as I reread this post:

Don't you know that it's true
That for me, and for you,
The world is a billboard...
(from The World is a Ghetto, by WAR)

When I first found this blog post, two things came to mind. First of all, the poster was absolutely correct. Advertising has gotten entirely out of hand, and the recent boom in stadium naming rights fees is a perfect example. I remember when the indoor arena at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in New Jersey was first built, and the area was named the Brendan Byrne Arena, after the governor whose efforts were instrumental in getting it built. Made perfect sense to me. But then some years later, when the naming rights craze came along, the arena was renamed the Continental Airlines Arena. I suppose it made a kind of sense, since the Meadowlands complex is right next to Newark Airport, but still, to discount the man who built the place in favor of the highest bidder just seemed stupid to me.

Then the whole naming rights thing caught fire. Now it's actually rare to see stadium names like Camden Yards, named after the section of Baltimore where the stadium is located, or Shea Stadium, named after Bill Shea, who was instrumental in getting National League baseball back in New York (in the form of the Mets). Who can work up enthusiasm for the ridiculously named 3Com Park, or Minute Maid Park? I would think the Astros (who play in Minute Maid Park) were probably happier, at least from a stadium-name standpoint, with the Astrodome. Too bad the former Enron Field (now there was a cool name) couldn't have been built as a domed stadium, and too bad about that Ken Lay business that forced the team to strip Enron's name from the building in favor of Minute Maid...

My New York Mets will begin playing in a new stadium in the 2009 season, and there was much public support for the idea of naming the new stadium after Jackie Robinson. Even the City of New York got into the spirit of things by giving Interborough Parkway the new name Jackie Robinson Parkway, since its northern end lies right next to Shea Stadium. But then the team went and sold the naming rights to Citigroup, and so the new stadium will be Citi Field, which sounds utilitarian if you don't know the story (or see the spelling).

Another thing that struck me with this post, was that that original blog, and the site that hosted it, have disappeared into the ether. I don't really want to go trampling on anyone else's "intellectual property," but is it wrong to repost a blog entry or article from a defunct site? I totally agree with the sentiment, but with the site being down there's no way for me to contact the blogger to get permission to repost...

When the Past Comes to Visit

Reposted from a Yahoo mailing list related to writing...

One of the strange aspects of web publishing is that it's ethereal. Unlike books, where the public can usually get their hands on an original edition. How many hard print authors would like to expunge their earlier works if only they could? A lot, I bet. Well, I can to some degree, and I've been exercising that right to date. But I probably won't forever. It's just going to take a lot of work to sort out and remove references to some early writers, artists and models who have asked to be 'edited out' of the history, or I have chosen to remove. That's the real work -- honoring those wishes.

Of course, as all the Myspace and other social network participants are about to find out, it's hard to totally remove your presence from the Net. How many people in their 40's to 60's are going to be haunted by strangeness they posted on Myspace in their teens or twenties? A lot. Especially given that everything on the net has been archived since the relatively recent arrival of the likes of Google. I've read that they have vast disk farms which will allow future wayback machinery to dig it all out as a function of time, even if the system today is clearly focused on caching and delivery current content. That old stuff, uncounted terabytes of content, is getting stored. Future detectives are going to have some very interesting and rewarding work (like publishing something in 2038 about a congressional candidate's Myspace postings in 2006).

Imagine if the detailed records of our current politician's activites in the Frat house in the 1960's or 70's was possible to dig out? Down to every girlfriend, every drug taken, every beer consumed, not to mention their immature thoughts about
everything imaginable. Every forgettable event and mistake in their lives. Despite pseudonyms, real identities aren't hard to figure out. A person's foolish youthhood should be forgotten and forgiven, not recorded in intimate detail forever. But I guess the Myspace bloggers will also represent most of the voters and journalists eventually, so maybe that strangeness will just be accepted as part of the culture. But that seems hard to believe today.

When I asked Shadar, the original poster, for his OK to repost this here, this was his reply:

Feel free to echo my comments into any forum you wish... although please attribute it to me as you indicate below. I suspect you might get some heated discussions out of it on some forums.

Digital culture is changing so fast its impossible to predict the future, but I do know that I'm glad I (and more importantly everyone else) has forgotten most of the insanity of my first 25 years on this planet. Also that I've never had to explain away any of that stuff in an interview because it was never recorded (we're talking 1960's and 70's). . Privacy and the forgetfulness of time are wonderful, wonderful things. People could re-invent themselves, and unless you had a criminal record (those were recorded for all time), then the 'old self' disappeared to be be replaced by the new.

And our ideas definitely change during our lifetime.

Problem with digital is that its all there staring at you forever... every single bit. Even if you erase it, if it left your PC, odds are somebody's else is keeping it. And now we have Google's disk farms recording (or about to record) the entire friggin' world. Ouch.

I'm glad to see a blog post about "booming systems"

I actually thought about looking into making LL Cool J's "The Boomin' System" or "Cheesy Rat Blues" play in the background for this post page...

http://www.eie.fceia.unr.edu.ar/~acustica/biblio/boom.htm

UPDATE: Sony BMG music group resorting to spyware

It just occurred to me today, over a year after I'd posted this article, that the Jakarta Post could have another motive for running this story. Indonesia is not a party to the current copyright, trademark, and patent conventions, and thus is a haven for illegal duplication of music and movies, largely for distribution in so-called developing countries. Since the multinational major labels like Sony BMG, Universal, and the others have been pressuring the Indonesian government to adopt the international intellectual property protections, it must make the Indonesians feel good to be able to point out the egg on Sony's face over this spyware mess. Yet another example of opposing parties pointing out the dirt on the other guys just to divert attention from their own dirty doings.

---

(Original post date 11/14/05)
The Jakarta Post, an Indonesian newspaper, has reported on its website that a number of new music CD releases from Sony BMG actually install spyware on users' computers. The article also points out that, with all the means now at new artists' disposal to completely bypass music companies altogether, such a move on Sony's part can only alienate consumers, some of whom are even considering lawsuits. I recently bought Shakira's new CD, Fijacion Oral volumen 1, which I haven't installed on my computer just yet, and now I'm not sure if I should, even though I really want La Tortura in my MP3 player (and I barely understand what she's singing, with my poor Spanish). I may even have to pass entirely on buying Oral Fixation volume 2 when it comes out this month.

Lorem ipsum, with an explanation

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Keep reading...

Vestibulum volutpat. Donec mauris elit, molestie non, mollis sit amet, rhoncus nec, diam. Integer lectus metus, porttitor ut, auctor at, imperdiet bibendum, dolor. Vestibulum quis tellus id nulla cursus hendrerit. Quisque in dolor eu felis ullamcorper faucibus. Praesent luctus, ipsum a molestie adipiscing, felis lorem porta urna, nec posuere ligula nibh vel nisl. Suspendisse et purus. Donec lacus. Praesent aliquam sem ut nisl. In libero. Suspendisse quis nisi. Morbi tempor. Sed condimentum, ligula in mollis nonummy, arcu magna sodales tellus, eu venenatis dui neque vel augue. Fusce id purus sit amet augue dignissim consectetuer.

Don't stop yet...

Nam iaculis fringilla tellus. Suspendisse tempor varius nulla. Quisque facilisis, lacus at condimentum semper, pede leo congue tellus, eget ultricies neque eros quis neque. In quam velit, varius vel, luctus nec, volutpat eu, sapien. Morbi consectetuer lacus a elit. Aliquam erat volutpat. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Aenean orci massa, commodo at, fermentum id, fermentum malesuada, velit. Phasellus ultricies, elit in rutrum egestas, est dui convallis nisi, commodo blandit arcu magna sit amet sapien. Mauris posuere mauris eget nulla.

Curabitur aliquam. Ut sit amet ipsum non dolor consectetuer dapibus. Curabitur ac nulla id nibh rutrum imperdiet. Nunc nisl. Sed velit ante, molestie a, sagittis ullamcorper, nonummy a, pede. Sed magna. Donec nec nulla id eros interdum convallis. Proin dapibus. Donec malesuada. Sed cursus dui. Pellentesque feugiat. In augue. In elit. Sed id nisi. Aliquam erat volutpat. Phasellus ipsum elit, porta tempor, semper vitae, venenatis ac, purus. Sed tempus. Donec euismod aliquet est.

Just a little farther...

Morbi purus eros, feugiat gravida, pulvinar ac, scelerisque gravida, dolor. Sed elit tortor, eleifend vel, bibendum ut, rhoncus non, purus. Etiam egestas tortor vel felis. Nullam aliquam. Vivamus ut augue pellentesque leo pretium aliquam. Vestibulum diam neque, hendrerit nec, convallis vulputate, hendrerit eget, augue. Sed sit amet metus eu orci pulvinar dignissim. Praesent tempor dictum sem. Morbi metus turpis, facilisis sed, vehicula vel, sodales commodo, erat. Nam sapien. Nam ut augue.

This is an experiment. If you've read this far, do me a favor and post a comment, just to let me know someone is reading this thing.

Europeans say (North) Americans have no sense of irony

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4699357-103425,00.html

I absolutely love it when people make sweeping generalities like this, especially when it includes a part of the population that includes me. More, please! More! And when they say that faith and irony can't coexist, again putting all (North) Americans of a great variety of races and cultures and income groups and religions in one basket -- I can't get enough! And I have a feeling that the writer said North Americans rather than just "Americans" because they'd rather deal with irritated Canadians and Mexicans than singled-out angry United-States-ians.

Smells Like Mass Media 3

I came across a story online (lost the URL) saying that Angelina Jolie is looking to 'rescue another baby from an atmosphere of terrible strife.' Word is the baby she has in mind is Sean Preston Federline.

Syndicated radio host Wendy Williams, among others, have expressed surprise that Britney Spears apparently expected some behavior from her husband other than what she's getting. Common sense says that if he cheated on someone else by seeing you, it's only a matter of time before he cheats on you by seeing someone else. What goes around, comes around. Shar Jackson must be laughing and gloating all the way to the bank -- she reportedly has a reality show in the works.

Then again, who doesn't? Even rapper DMX showed up in court for his sentencing appointment (late, and with an attitude) with reality-show cameras in tow. Of course, DMX's fifteen minutes of fame have expired, which probably explains why he stays in trouble with the law, so that his name can stay in the papers just a little bit longer.

Earlier this week, the comic strip Blondie had a gag about reality shows. Dagwood was watching a reality show where contestants were locked in a room and fed a constant diet of nothing but reality shows on TV. When each had all they could take, they would run screaming from the room, trying to get out. The last one in the room would be declared the winner. It's probably only a matter of time before someone tries that idea for real...

None of the reality-show producers seem to be aware of the scientific principle that an observer cannot fail to have an effect on the thing being observed. The only way any of these shows could be "reality" would be to conceal the cameras from the contestants. Because once they see them, they're more aware of how they look to potential onlookers, which will naturally affect their actions.

Of course, when there are no more potential onlookers -- that is, when TV viewers have started staying away from reality TV in droves -- we'll finally get relief from this broadcast infestation. Until then, as always, we'll find other things to do...

Shat Overboard!

ABC has gone overboard in advertising William Shatner's new game show, Show Me the Money! Especially when every sentence finds ways to stick the first syllable of Shatner into legitimate words like "fantastic" and "outrageous."

Here's word from others who agree:

• Things That Make Me Die Inside, part 4 (Entertainment Weekly Popwatch)
• Dancing with the Stars Finale: Touchdown! (obviously not really about Shat, but check the fourth paragraph after Emmitt's photo)

Kool Aid Fools

Remember the Mickey D clown car? Well, here's a couple of fools for Kool Aid. I hope they have endorsements or sponsorships or something to show for this...

If Charles Barkley Were President

Video interview of Charles Barkley, pointing out what he sees wrong with politics as it's done today. He makes some good points, too...

If Sir Charles Were US President

It just occurred to me that if "Sir" Charles Barkley were to become president, we'd have to call him "Lord President."

NOT!! :-)

Why Friday the 13th Really Is Unlucky for Some

(taken from the UrbanLegends.About.com site)

Paraskevidekatriaphobia: Fear of Friday the 13th

I just finished reading the abstract of a study published in the British Medical Journal in 1993 entitled "Is Friday the 13th Bad for Your Health?" With the aim of mapping "the relation between health, behaviour, and superstition surrounding Friday 13th in the United Kingdom," its authors compared the ratio of traffic volume to the number of automobile accidents on two different days, Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th, over a period of years.

Incredibly, they found that in the region sampled, while consistently fewer people chose to drive their cars on Friday the 13th, the number of hospital admissions due to vehicular accidents was significantly higher than on "normal" Fridays.

Their conclusion:

"Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a
result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying at home is recommended."

Paraskevidekatriaphobics — people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th — must be pricking up their ears just now, buoyed by seeming evidence that their terror may not be so irrational after all. But it's unwise to take solace in a single scientific study — the only one of its kind, so far as I know — especially one so peculiar. I suspect these statistics have more to teach us about human psychology than the ill-fatedness of any particular date on the calendar.

Friday the 13th - The Most Widespread Superstition?

The sixth day of the week and the number 13 both have foreboding reputations said to date from ancient times, and their inevitable conjunction from one to three times a year portends more misfortune than some credulous minds can bear. Some sources say it may be the most widespread superstition in the United States. Some people won't go to work on Friday the 13th; some won't eat in restaurants; many wouldn't think of setting a wedding on the date.

Just how many Americans at the turn of the millennium still suffer from this condition? According to Dr. Donald Dossey, a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of phobias (and coiner of the term "paraskevidekatriaphobia"), the figure may be as high as 21 million. If he's right, eight percent of Americans are still in the grips of a very old superstition.

Exactly how old is difficult to say, because determining the origins of superstitions is an imprecise science, at best. In fact, it's mostly guesswork.

13: The Devil's Dozen

It is said: If 13 people sit down to dinner together, all will die within the year. The Turks so disliked the number 13 that it was practically expunged from their vocabulary (Brewer, 1894). Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue. Many buildings don't have a 13th floor. If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil's luck (Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey
Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names).
There are 13 witches in a coven.

Though no one can say for sure when and why human beings first associated the number 13 with misfortune, the belief is assumed to be quite old, and there exist any number of theories — all of which have been called into question at one time or another, I should point out — purporting to trace its origins to antiquity and beyond.

It has been proposed, for example, that fears surrounding the number 13 are as ancient as the act of counting. Primitive man had only his 10 fingers and two feet to represent units, this explanation goes, so he could count no higher than 12. What lay beyond that — 13 — was an impenetrable mystery to our prehistoric forebears, hence an object of superstition.

Which has an edifying ring to it, but one is left wondering — did primitive man not have toes?

Despite whatever terrors the numerical unknown held for their hunter-gatherer ancestors, ancient civilizations weren't unanimous in their dread of 13. The Chinese regarded the number as lucky, some commentators note, as did the Egyptians in the time of the pharaohs.

To the ancient Egyptians, these sources tell us, life was a quest for spiritual ascension which unfolded in stages — 12 in this life and a 13th beyond, thought to be the eternal afterlife. The number 13 therefore symbolized death — not in terms of dust and decay, but as a glorious and desirable transformation. Though Egyptian civilization perished, the symbolism conferred on the number 13 by its priesthood survived, only to be corrupted by subsequent cultures who came to associate 13 with a fear of death instead of a reverence for the afterlife.

Anathema

Other sources speculate that the number 13 may have been purposely vilified by the founders of patriarchal religions in the early days of western civilization because it represented femininity. Thirteen had been revered in prehistoric goddess-worshiping cultures, we are told, because it corresponded to the number of lunar (menstrual) cycles in a year (13 x 28 = 364 days). The "Earth Mother of Laussel," for example — a 27,000-year-old carving found near the Lascaux caves in France often cited as an icon of matriarchal spirituality — depicts a female figure holding a cresent-shaped horn bearing 13 notches. As the solar calendar triumphed over the lunar with the rise of male-dominated civilization, it is surmised, so did the number 12 over the number 13, thereafter considered anathema.

On the other hand, one of the earliest concrete taboos associated with the number 13 — a taboo still observed by some superstitious folks today, evidently — is said to have originated in the East with the Hindus, who believed, for reasons I haven't been able to ascertain, that it is always unlucky for 13 people to gather in one place — say, at dinner. Interestingly enough, precisely the same superstition has been attributed to the ancient Vikings (though I have also been told, for what it's worth, that this and the accompanying mythographical explanation are apocryphal). The story has been laid down as follows:

Loki, the Evil One

Twelve gods were invited to a banquet at Valhalla. Loki, the Evil One, god of mischief, had been left off the guest list but crashed the party, bringing the total number of attendees to 13. True to character, Loki raised hell by inciting Hod, the blind god of winter, to attack Balder the Good, who was a favorite of the gods. Hod took a spear of mistletoe offered by Loki and obediently hurled it at Balder, killing him instantly. All Valhalla grieved. And although one might take the moral of this story to be "Beware of uninvited guests bearing mistletoe," the Norse themselves apparently concluded that 13 people at a dinner party is just plain bad luck.

As if to prove the point, the Bible tells us there were exactly 13 present at the Last Supper. One of the dinner guests — er, disciples — betrayed Jesus Christ, setting the stage for the Crucifixion.

Did I mention the Crucifixion took place on a Friday?

Bad Friday

It is said: Never change your bed on Friday; it will bring bad dreams. Don't start a trip on Friday or you will have misfortune. If you cut your nails on Friday, you cut them for sorrow. Ships that set sail on a Friday will have bad luck – as in the tale of H.M.S. Friday ...

One hundred years ago, the British government sought to quell once and for all the widespread superstition among seamen that setting sail on Fridays was unlucky. A special ship was commissioned, named "H.M.S. Friday." They laid her keel on a Friday, launched her on a Friday, selected her crew on a Friday and hired a man named Jim Friday to be her captain. To top it off, H.M.S. Friday embarked on her maiden voyage on a Friday, and was never seen or heard from again.

Some say Friday's bad reputation goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. It was on a Friday, supposedly, that Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit. Adam bit, as we all learned in Sunday School, and they were both ejected from Paradise. Tradition also holds that the Great Flood began on a Friday; God tongue-tied the builders of the Tower of Babel on a Friday; the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on a Friday; and, of course, Friday was the day of the week on which Christ was crucified. It is therefore a day of penance for Christians.

In pagan Rome, Friday was execution day (later Hangman's Day in Britain), but in other pre-Christian cultures it was the sabbath, a day of worship, so those who indulged in secular or self-interested activities on that day could not expect to receive blessings from the gods — which may explain the lingering taboo on embarking on journeys or starting important projects on Fridays.

To complicate matters, these pagan associations were not lost on the early Church, which went to great lengths to suppress them. If Friday was a holy day for heathens, the Church fathers felt, it must not be so for Christians — thus it became known in the Middle Ages as the "Witches' Sabbath," and thereby hangs another tale.

The original About.com article ran a poll for readers to see what percentage is superstitious about Friday the 13th. To participate in the poll, click here.

The Witch-Goddess

The name "Friday" was derived from a Norse deity worshipped on the sixth day, known either as Frigg (goddess of marriage and fertility), or Freya (goddess of sex and fertility), or both, the two figures having become intertwined in the handing-down of myths over time (the etymology of "Friday" has been given both ways). Frigg/Freya corresponded to Venus, the goddess of love of the Romans, who named the sixth day of the week in her honor "dies Veneris."

Friday was actually considered quite lucky by pre-Christian Teutonic peoples, we are told — especially as a day to get married — because of its traditional association with love and fertility. All that changed when Christianity came along. The goddess of the sixth day — most likely Freya in this context, given that the cat was her sacred animal — was recast in post-pagan folklore as a witch, and her day became associated with evil doings.

Various legends developed in that vein, but one is of particular interest: As the story goes, the witches of the north used to observe their sabbath by gathering in a cemetery in the dark of the moon. On one such occasion the Friday goddess, Freya herself, came down from her sanctuary in the mountaintops and appeared before the group, who numbered only 12 at the time, and gave them one of her cats, after which the witches' coven — and, by tradition, every properly-formed coven since — comprised exactly 13.

The Unluckiest Day of All

The astute reader will have observed that while we have thus far insinuated any number of intriguing connections between events, practices and beliefs attributed to ancient cultures and the superstitious fear of Fridays and the number 13, we have yet to happen upon an explanation of how, why or when these separate strands of folklore converged — if that is indeed what happened — to mark Friday the 13th as the unluckiest day of all.

There's a very simple reason for that — nobody really knows, though various explanations have been proposed.

The Knights Templar

One theory, recently offered up as historical fact in the novel The Da Vinci Code, holds that it came about not as the result of a convergence, but a catastrophe, a single historical event that happened nearly 700 years ago.

The catastrophe was the decimation of the Knights Templar, the legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian Crusades to combat Islam. Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a church-state conspiracy, as recounted by Katharine Kurtz in Tales of the Knights Templar (Warner Books: 1995):

"On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force 'confessions,' and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake."

A Thoroughly Modern Phenomenon

There are drawbacks to the "day so infamous" thesis, not the least of which is that it attributes enormous cultural significance to a relatively obscure historical event. Even more problematic, for this or any other theory positing premodern origins for Friday the 13th superstitions, is the fact that no one has been able to document the existence of such beliefs prior to the 19th century. If people who lived before the late 1800s perceived Friday the 13th as a day of special misfortune, no evidence has been found to prove it. As a result, some scholars are now convinced the stigma is a thoroughly modern phenomenon exacerbated by 20th-century media hype.

Going back a hundred years, Friday the 13th doesn't even merit a mention in E. Cobham Brewer's voluminous 1898 edition of the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, though one does find entries for "Friday, an Unlucky Day" and "Thirteen Unlucky." When the date of ill fate finally does make an appearance in later editions of the text, it is without extravagant claims as to the superstition's historicity or longevity. The very brevity of the entry is instructive: "A particularly unlucky Friday. See Thirteen" — implying that the extra dollop of misfortune attributed to Friday the 13th can be accounted for in terms of an accrual, so to speak, of bad omens:

Unlucky Friday + Unlucky 13 = Unluckier Friday.

If that's the case, we are guilty of perpetuating a misnomer by labeling Friday the 13th "the unluckiest day of all," a designation perhaps better reserved for, say, a Friday the 13th on which one breaks a mirror, walks under a ladder, spills the salt, and spies a black cat crossing one's path — a day, if there ever was one, best spent in the safety of one's own home with doors locked, shutters closed and fingers crossed.

Day Old Post

Of course, all the stuff in that post about Joe Torre being fired turns out to be idle speculation, since General von Steingrabber has apparently consented to let Joe Torre at least finish out his contract.

Baaaasebaaaall, movies, and the Mets

It's been a long time, I shouldn't'a left you,
Without a dope post to read (or two)
Think about all the weak posts you slept through --
Time's up! Sorry I kept you...

(apologies to Rakim, and for this post title, more apologies to the guy who wrote that baseball song that he then customized for every major league team)

But it has been too long since a new post has shown up here. I created a post offline last night, then forgot to save it to my flash drive so I could take it to work and post it from there. They always say the memory is the first thing to go. (grin)

So the Yankees, embarrassed and angry that the $200-million-plus paid to their band of suspects didn't get them past the first round of the playoffs for a second straight season, want to fire Joe Torre and replace him with Lou Piniella. Well, they're right about someone having to lose their job for incompetence and lack of foresight. Too bad that somebody can't be George Steinbrenner.

In yesterday's NY Daily News Mike Lupica makes all the all the right noises to avoid sounding like a Steinbrenner hatchet-man when he says, in so many words, that Torre isn't responsible for the free-agent acquisitions that turned the Yankees from a team to a bunch of individuals who take the field at the same time and play wearing the same uniform. He admits that firing Torre won't make the pitching staff any younger or any better. It won't solve Alex Rodriguez' protracted I-problem. But then he says that some kind of change has to be made, and that nobody gets to be Yankees manager forever, not even Torre.

Well, he's right that nobody gets to be Yankee manager forever, and I never thought Torre would even try to bend that rule. But firing him for the failures of his team is the wrong move. What they need to do is get rid of the guys who are too wrapped up in themselves (Alex RodrIguez, Gary SheffIeld) to be team players. A caller to a radio call-in show on WFAN here in New York pointed out this past Sunday that during post-elimination interviews, Jeter's sentences were dominated by "we," while Pay-Rod's were dominated by "I" (hence my mention of his "I-problem"). Kinda vindicates Steve Phillips, former Mets general manager, for breaking off negotiations with Rodriguez back when he was a free agent, claiming that Pay-Rod wanted his own publicity staff and an office with a secretary. Phillips probably exaggerated when relating what he says Rodriguez wanted, but A-Rod definitely turns any team from a unit of 25 players to a "24+1" unit, and that never works. Even Reggie Jackson, king of I-problems, knew that he couldn't be that separate from the team for very long and expect success. At least I think he did...

Bill Madden of the Daily News suggests that some apparently believe that if Piniella is hired in Torre's place, he might be able to get more out of Rodriguez. They got along well when Piniella was managing the Seattle Mariners and Rodriguez was their start shortstop. But that same story also points out that it was after Rodriguez left, winding up in Texas with a $252 million contract and a nickname ("Pay-Rod") I'm sure he hates, that the Mariners set a regular season record with a 116-46 record. I'm sure that's not a coincidence.

Even Derek Jeter gets some of the blame in the Daily News stories, which point out that Jeter was quick to come to Jason Giambi's defense when the sterioids stories began hitting the news, while doing and saying absolutely nothing to bring A-Rod into the fold when he began floundering. Maybe Jeter, the team captain, could have been more supportive of A-Rod, but that wouldn't change the fact that Jeter is a team player, and Rodriguez is not. Case closed.

Meanwhile, there's a report that, if Joe Torre is indeed fired, the Texas Rangers would be interested in hiring him, since the recent firing of Buck Showalter leaves the managerial position open. If Torre goes down there and tears up the American League the way the Mets did the National League this year, Buck Showalter will be vindicated in the claims he made back in 2002, that he planted the seeds that grew into Yankee world championships in the late 90s and the Arizona Diamondbacks championship in 2001. After all, Showalter, who was given an unusual amount of say in personnel decisions, helped create the teams that went on to win it all in New York and Arizona. If Torre gets fired in NY, takes the Texas job, and wins it all in 2007 or 2008, it would probably be right to conclude that Showalter should be in the front office, not on the field. Not that he's a bad manager, per se, but if Texas winds up being the third consecutive team he helped put together that goes on to win a World Series within two seasons of firing him as manager, he should seriously consider seeking a front office job and leave the field managing to others.

There's also an article in the sports section of yesterday's Daily News suggesting that maybe Torre isn't as close to being fired as all the screaming headlines suggest, that this might be Steinbrenner's way, though an underling, of making sure the Yankees remain the top baseball story in New York, even though the Mets are the only New York baseball team whose season is not over. Wouldn't surprise me at all; they say Steinbrenner hates it when the Mets make the front or back pages of the NY newspapers for any reason, baseball-related or not. Even in the aftermath of 9-11 it became an issue when Mets players were in the Ground Zero area volunteering their services -- visiting the injured in area hospitals, helping to feed the rescue and cleanup workers, etc. -- while Yankees players were conspicuously absent. The Yankees players, no doubt egged on by the front office, accused the Mets players of grandstanding to make the papers, while the Mets players accused the Yankees of not taking the opportunity to do something to help.

Meanwhile, outside the stadium...

This, from yesterday's New York Daily News, near the very end of the Lupica article calling for Torre's dismissal and replacing him with Lou Piniella:

Across Rupert Place, a couple of kids from the neighborhood, Nelson and Alvin G, from 162nd and Woodycrest, were playing basketball at Macombs Dam Park, which will be razed soon for the new Yankee Stadium.

"What did you think about the Yankees?" Nelson G was asked.

The kid smiled. "Let's go, Mets!" he said. Then, he was chanting it. "Let's go, Mets! Let's go, Mets!"

Then there were two more kids coming from the next court... laughing and yelling for the Mets across the street from Yankee Stadium.

Take that, General von Steingrabber!

"The Last King of Scotland"

Stanley Crouch, professional grouch for the NY Daily News, has good things to say about this movie, namely how it personalizes Uganda dictator Idi Amin Dada, generally portrayed by history as a monster in a uniform. Crouch says it does a good job of showing how Amin was able to sway people into seeing him as "not the animal he's made out to be," and that in doing so Forest Whitaker does the "unimaginable."

What I want to know is, why is this movie called "The Last King of Scotland"? I know a pivotal part of the story is how Amin manages to get a young doctor from Scotland to agree to be his personal physician, and how this man tries to reconcile the man he knows as his patient with the animal Amin was made out to be by the rest of the world. But it's a bit... disconcerting, to see a pic of a maniacally-grinning Whitaker, in uniform as Amin, with "The Last King of Scotland" as the caption to the photo.

"One team plays games, the other plays baseball"

That is the headline at the top of Lisa Olson's story comparing the Mets NLCS team and the Yankees' failure to launch.

She make some good points in comparison, but the point, not mentioned in the story, that resonates with me is this:

Pedro Martinez, the staff ace, was unavailable for much of the season, and totally unavailable for the postseason; Orlando Hernandez, not the staff ace but maybe the best postseason pitcher in the game, was also unavailable for the postseason -- and still, the Mets swept the Dodgers. They needed a lot of help from the bullpen -- in fact, no team that has swept the first round of playoffs has had the starting pitchers consistently leave the games so early -- but the bullpen came through, as bullpens are supposed to, and the Mets are in the league playoffs while the Yankees can only "participate" in the postseason as spectators.