More Nonsense about the Number 13

Jonah Goldberg provides a sad roundup of false theories about why the number 13 is unlucky:

Dossey traces the fear of 13 to a Norse myth about 12 gods having a dinner party at Valhalla, their heaven. In walked the uninvited 13th guest, the mischievous Loki. Once there, Loki arranged for Hoder, the blind god of darkness, to shoot Balder the Beautiful, the god of joy and gladness, with a mistletoe-tipped arrow.

"Balder died and the whole Earth got dark. The whole Earth mourned. It was a bad, unlucky day," said Dossey. From that moment on, the number 13 has been considered ominous and foreboding.

There is also a biblical reference to the unlucky number 13. Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th guest to the Last Supper.

Meanwhile, in ancient Rome, witches reportedly gathered in groups of 12. The 13th was believed to be the devil.

Thomas Fernsler, an associate policy scientist in the Mathematics and Science Education Resource Center at the University of Delaware in Newark, said the number 13 suffers because of its position after 12.

According to Fernsler, numerologists consider 12 a "complete" number. There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 apostles of Jesus.

In exceeding 12 by 1, Fernsler said 13's association with bad luck "has to do with just being a little beyond completeness. The number becomes restless or squirmy."

No, really, it does not. Jonah, I thought better of you than this. The real explanation is not hard to find. Heck, it's on wikipedia.

Goldberg compounds the problem by linking to that awful Mental Floss "Thirteen reasons people think the number 13 is unlucky" article, which has 13 more incorrect explanations.

Sigh. I suppose I'm going to be fighting this one for the rest of my life, just like pepper and rotten food.

"Neanderthals" and Hominid Diversity

I hate headlines like this:

Neanderthal diet: 80% meat, 20% vegetables

If you read this article you discover that this study is based on one population of Neanderthals from one site in Germany around 40,000 years ago. It's like studying the bones of medieval European peasants and saying, Human diet: 80% bread.

Neanderthals were a cold-adapted breed, so perhaps they generally had meat-heavy diets like Arctic people today. But they, like all other hominids, could eat a variety of foods, and I am quite certain that their diets varied enormously across their large range.

There was no single "paleo" diet. The diets of ancient humans probably varied as much as those of modern hunter-gatherers, that is, the percentage of calories from meat and fish ranged from more than 90 percent to as little as 20 percent. Maybe Neanderthals had a narrower range than that, but I doubt it was very much narrower.

It can never be said too often that the most important thing about humans is our diversity.

The Weeping Rebels of Malheur

Matt Taibbi:

The Bundy militiamen are like a Black September version of an Iron John forest retreat: a bunch of weepy middle-aged guys who dressed up in crisply pressed outdoorswear and took over a bird sanctuary so they could play outlaw for a few days while they "worked on themselves."

They gathered around a bonfire (there really was a bonfire) and presumably engaged in Robert Bly-style mythopoetic healing, getting back to their manly roots by stroking their rifles, wearing camo undies, and complaining about all the wrongs done to them by women/the federal government/wild birds/whoever. . . .

There's no doubt that these people are dangerous, but their ridiculousness is a huge part of who they are. Incidentally, this is true of groups like the actual al-Qaeda, too, led as they are by men in beards and Rick-Perry-style "smart glasses" who play at being religious scholars and intellectuals when in fact they are the kind of people who are afraid of cartoons and lie awake at night wondering if it's permissible to play chess with a menstruating woman. Just because a person is dangerous does not mean he's not also absurd.

I've mostly been ignoring these buffoons, figuring that the sooner they disappear from the news the sooner they will disperse, allowing the FBI to arrest the leaders without violence. But Taibbi cracks me up.

The Cult of Leadership

Richard Cohen gives voice to one of the most irritating commonplace ideas about politics and history:

Without leadership, every problem is insurmountable. With it, no problem is unsolvable.

Oh, sure, if we just had the right leadership we would know what to do about work-life balance for parents, inequality, autism, malaria, declining biodiversity, terrorism, unemployment, drug addiction, climate change, cancer, and the Israel/Palestine mess (the actual subject of the essay). We would have fusion power, free internet without ads, affordable non-polluting cars with unlimited range, scheduled flights to Mars, and better pop music. And columnists who make sense.

Oh God Not the Holy Grail Again

ABC News is running this exquisitely inane headline:

Experts Claim They've Found the Holy Grail

Experts in conning gullible headline writers, they must mean. The objects is supposed to be in the Basilica of San Isidro in Leon. The story says:

The two researchers, Margarita Torres and Jose Manuel Ortega del Rio, authors of the book, Kings of the Grail, believe they found conclusive evidence from ancient Egyptian scrolls documenting that Muslims stole the infamous cup from Jerusalem and took it to Egypt. They say it was then disguised with jewels and eventually given to Spanish King Ferdinand I as a gift.

Because if I had the Holy Grail, that's just what I would do -- disguise it and then give it to one of my greatest enemies without telling him what it is, so that he won't know what he has and won't do anything for me in return, and the great treasure will then languish in some obscure church until genius researchers identify it in the 21st century. It all makes perfect sense.