Friday, February 13, 2009

I'm Not Superstitous

So today is Friday the 13th. I'm not too worried. As the Pogo cast and crew never tired of saying, Friday the 13th is a much bigger deal when it falls on a Wednesday. Additionally, in about 10 minutes from the time I write this, the official Unix time will be 1234567890. And I don't believe that this heralds the end of the universe. There's a big eye-rolling fuss over the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, so that must be the end of the universe. Our calendars end at the conclusion of each December, and I haven't noticed any universal conclusions associated with those.

So why the lackadaisical attitude toward these deeply-ingrained cultural fears? It's simple, really. I've have long harbored a belief that superstitions bring bad luck.

5 comments:

The Young Swell said...

I heard a rumor that I'm starting, which stated that when the Mayan calendar runs out in 2012, all the Mayan magic will expire. Those expired magic spells will allow all the gold that Spain stole, and shipped across the sea to finance useless Armadas, to turn back into lead.

That will surely be bad luck for somebody.

Lockwood said...

Thanks for the Heads-up, Wee Mousie. I'll sell off all my Mayan gold now, while the getting's good. That should come to... almost... nothing.

Silver Fox said...

I've been telling a lot of people recently that my calendar ends at the end of this year - they hardly ever get it in comparison to the Mayan ending in 2012. Every calendar's gotta end somewhere! [That last is a take off on a locally famous quote about the Carlin Trend of gold mines in Nevada: "Every trend's gotta end somewhere."]

Happy Unix celebration - started back in 1970.

Lockwood said...

SF- The Carlin Trend was The Big Thing when I was an undergrad, but I hadn't heard it had petered out. I understand there's a pretty large deposit near McDermitt in the Pliocene calderas that was never developed because the company that held the claims refused to be bound by Oregon's environmental requirements. But it does seem as if the trend toward lower concentrations and higher tonnages must be the wave of the future, even if the specific Carlin-style deposits are found and played out.

Anonymous said...

The world doesn't end in December 2012; it changes. And somebody is gonna pay!