Friday the 13th

Human superstition never ceases to amaze me. To be fair, I have become a fan of Halloween, which is quite amusing even when I do not consider its superstitious origins. Then I heard the students today worrying (somewhat mockingly) about it being “Friday the 13^th!"

Today is apparently a very unlucky day. From what I can gather, it all comes down to numerology. Thirteen is supposed to be a very unlucky number, and Friday is (for reasons I still do not understand) the unluckiest of days. As far as I can tell, it has been another Friday like any other.

Still, that did lead me to overhear the other popular superstitious theory, which is that the world is supposed to end this year, according to the Mayan calendar. While I will say as advanced as that old Earth civilization was for its time, even they could run out of space on the calendar, I do wonder if people knew how close this world has come to ending. Invasion aside, one can never tell what space debris or other forces will rain down on the Earth.

On a side note, when it comes to the mathematics of it all, 13 is just a number. I have never observed any luck about it one way or the other.

On another side note, speaking of mathematics, in my further “assistance” with the government, it surprises me how stubborn even Earth scientists can be, especially in their insistence that mathematics is a universal language. While I would agree that a quantity represented by any number, say 10, is universal, but the mathematics of solving an equation based on different systems of calculation are different in confounding ways. Humans think that just because they have ten fingers, which is what their mathematic system is based on, that everyone in the galaxy does, but try telling them that an equation based on 12 and 8 digit mathematical systems translated across languages is easy. The universal translator was not built in a day, you know.