Friday the 13th roundup
(1) It’s Friday the 13th. Make of that what you will.
(2) The US ice dancing skaters were probably robbed of a gold by a French judge showing favoritism to the French ice dancing pair:
Still, it doesn’t seem like they have much of a chance at a reversal, despite the outcry regarding the questionable scoring by a French judge, Jezabel Dabouis, who favored the winning pair from France by a wide margin, while the other judges gave the two pairs much closer scores.
So, what else is new? Isn’t this sort of thing an old old story in a sport like ice dancing or ice skating in general?
(3) California’s a beautiful state. But not that beautiful; Mark Zuckerberg is planning a move to Miami to avoid the “billionaire tax.” See this:
With Zuck’s move to Florida, California’s total taxable wealth from billionaires has plummeted to well under $1T from over $2T just a few weeks ago. The loss of this tax revenue was totally avoidable but is now forever. All because Gavin Newsom stood motionless as this stupidly written bill, from a fringe union and a handful of socialist academics with an axe to grind, meandered its way into the public conversation without any action from him and freaked everyone out. These were all people that were paying 13%+ in state income tax every year WITH NO COMPLAINTS UNTIL A FEW WEEKS AGO.
(4) Virginia’s extreme pro-Democrat gerrymandering moves forward:
Republicans had argued that the referendum should be paused following a lower court ruling that found Democrats had “failed to follow their own rules for adding the redistricting amendment to a special session; failed to approve the amendment before the public began voting in last year’s general election; and failed to publish the amendment three months before the election, as required by law.”
Nevertheless, Virginia’s Supreme Court is letting it go forward, and says they may rule on it after the referendum is voted on.
(5) In no surprise whatsoever, US talks with Iran have stalled:
… President Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, had a series of talks with Iranians in Oman. The talks failed to end the deadlock, with the Iranian top negotiator and Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, threatening to attack U.S. military bases in the Middle East shortly after the meeting.
So now Trump’s sending another carrier to the area. Bluff, or not?
It is worth noting that during Operation Midnight Hammer last June, when the U.S. struck key Iranian nuclear weapons facilities, two aircraft carriers were deployed in the region.
Pres. Trump has indicated he’ll allow a one month period to bring about a satisfactorily negotiated “deal”, which timeline coincides roughly with the end of the Ramadan observance mid-March. After that, barring Iranian capitulation on a wide front of issues in the negotiations — nuclear weapons development, ballistic missile inventories and construction, “human rights” i.e. not slaughtering Iranians — (a capitulation not expected whatsoever), it’s going to be a series of bad days for the mullahs and their IRGC, I reckon. Hope can then rekindle for the Iranian peoples and they can build their way to freedom out of their enslavement.
(1) We’re being treated to Friday the 13th for two consecutive months. Since February has 28 days, and 28 is a multiple of 7, do the math. The March following February has exactly the same calendar as February, but with days tacked on after the 28th.
Calendars run in cycles of 28, with each non – leap year calendar appearing 3 times in those 28, plus with 7 of the 28 calendars being leap year calendars appearing 1 time each in those 28.
Therefore, yearly calendars with two consecutive months sporting consecutive Friday the 13ths show up 3 times out of the 28-instance cycle — 3 instead of 4 because no leap year has consecutive months sporting consecutive Friday the 13ths (February has 29 days in leap years, and 29 is not a multiple of 7).
[Extra credit: The 28-calendar cycles are violated when the year is a multiple of 100. Years that are a multiple of 100 are not leap years, except that a further exception to the exception occurs when a calendar year is a multiple of 400. So 2000 *was* a leap year after all, but 1900 and 1800 were not. Quiz next Tuesday.]
It is interesting to note that, under the Gregorian calendar, the 13th of the month falls on a Friday more often than any other day of the week.
It is interesting to note that most statements beginning “it is interesting to note” are not interesting to note.
Haven’t even thought to turn on the Olympics and the Anti- American Americans
And Zuck paid for the fraud to get the Auto-Pen administration and now runs away from the Marxists in California. Guess the Billionaires want to keep their money yet cry taxes should be hiked on Billionaires.
bof (5:12 pm), I do not believe your first sentence is true. I believe the 13ths are evenly distributed among the days of the week over the cycles of (Gregorian) calendars.
I do believe your second sentence is true.
#4
Thanks to the spineless GOP in Indiana, now VA is going to single handed flip the House. Get your impeachment clothes on…sigh… just when it looks like we may have the left/Ds in somewhat under control they come roaring back with GOPe help. We can’t fight two fronts.
(2) As neo points out, “So, what else is new?” Exactly.
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(3) makes me detest California even more [I moved there some years ago owing to factors very much *other* than politics, taxation, wildfires, and the like].
The bright side is, Zuckerberg’s employees are almost entitely left-leaners: good riddance. But the not-so bright side is, there’s a decent chance that someone(s) will cast votes in their names long after they’ve vacated California.
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(4) I believe it was pundit Samuel Francis who many years ago dubbed the Republicans the Stupid Party. In the years since, I have seen only scant countervailing evidence.
— — — — —
(5) Someone else’s turn . . .
LOL, not a surprise that the French judge is named Jezabel….
Re: Trump / Iran
I’m with sdferr.
Trump isn’t bluffing. He’s getting his ducks in row and showing he is giving Iran a fair chance to negotiate. I suspect Trump and Netanyahu know they will have to go the hard way with Iran.
I think regime change is for the best anyway. I’m not sure how that will be accomplished while minimizing collateral damage.
For French I’m working way through Simenon’s well-known series of crime novels about Chief Inspector Maigret. Ordinarily the books are in third person, but in this one Maigret speaks for himself. Here he discusses the immigrant problems of his day:
______________________________
Is it generally known that there is one squad solely
concerned with the two to three hundred thousand North
Africans, Portuguese, and others who live on the outskirts of
the Twentieth Arrondissement (municipal district of Paris),
who camp out there, one might
more accurately say, scarcely knowing our language or not
knowing it at all, obeying other laws, other reflexes than our
own?
–George Simenon, “Maigret’s Memoirs” (1950)
______________________________
The more things change…
Judged Events are Crooked Department.
1) The mother of my (3) children is an Olympic Gold Medalist in a judged sport. It has had many “controversies.”
2) I have competed at the national level in one sport and the international level in something completely different and I know from my scores that the more the individual judge actually knew the higher scores I got. One of the judges apologized to me for other judges scoring.
In addition I and my partner have overhead judges talk about the crooked nature of competitions. I liked the sport/activity anyway but human nature is what it is.
3) If you don’t want to be judged take up a non judged sport – Luge, Bobsled, Speed Skating, Alpine skiing, etc.
M J R, it is easy to see that the 13ths are NOT uniformly distributed among the days of the week. (It would be too tedious to verify that the 13th is slightly more likely to fall on a Friday, i.e., that a plurality of months begin on a Sunday.)
Since the number of months in 400 years is 4800 which is not a multiple of 7, it is clear that the 13ths can not be uniformly distributed among the days of the week. You may think that the next 400-year cycle will start on a different day of the week, so that everything will even out over a 2800-year period. In fact, since there are 97 leap years in a 400-year cycle (3 of the 4 century years are common years), the number of days in 400 years is 400 x 365 + 97 = 146,097 = 20,871 x 7, so each 400-year cycle will start on the SAME day of the week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th#Distribution
bof (8:11 pm), to my apprehension, the differences delineated in the table at the start of the section you cite, titled, “Distribution of the 13th day per weekday over 4,800 months (400 years)”, underscore my point.
First, I shall correct an imprecision on my part: where I wrote, “the 13ths are evenly distributed among the days of the week over the cycles of (Gregorian) calendars,” I needed to state that the distribution of the 13th day per weekday is a uniform distribution.
That stated, I need to insert “very nearly”: the distribution of the 13th day per weekday is very nearly a uniform distribution.
But why “very nearly”? Because:
– 400 years is not a multiple of the 28 calendar year cycle, and so some calendar years may be represented one time more than some other years.
– the fact that years that are multiples of 100 (but not of 400) break the 28-year cycle when they occur also gives rise to an oh-so slight lack of uniformity in what we’re trying to track.
The frequencies in the table you cite . . .
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
685 685 687 684 688 684 687
. . . support my amended contention that “the distribution of the 13th day per weekday is very nearly a uniform distribution.” In fact,
– had the time span under consideration been, for example, 392 years or 420 years, both of which are multiples of 28, the occurrences would have been almost exactly the same for each weekday,
AND
– had the 100-year yearly calendars all been leap years (AND had the time span been 392 years or 420 years or a multiple of 28), the occurrences in that table would all have been identical.
That was my point, but my imprecision plus the multiple-of-28 issue plus the non-leap years among the century years issue have resulted in this clarification.
Yes, you are technically correct, but I hope and trust we can come together on this, given my clarifications and caveats. (It’s not like 13th-occurrences any day of the week is seriously out of step with any of the others, and I have presented reasons why they are not identical.)
I was born on the 13th of the month (not February) and so was my mother and a nephew. Thus have never considered it an unlucky number. YMMV.
California is participating in the old, Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prices action with their proposed tax policy expansion. In today’s language it is call FAFO. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch.
Florida has a session of their Legislature in April 2026.to propose a redistricting plan. Also SCOTUS is deciding on whether the use of race to draw majority minority districts is required or even allowed by the constotution. So we have not heard the last of the redistricting news.
Wow M J R, very impressive calendar knowledge!
Now do the Jewish calendar bwahaha.
https://hebrewcalendar.tripod.com/
Interestingly although the Jewish calendar is insanely complicated – just for starters there are six possible year lengths instead of two – there are only 14 possible calendars, same as Gregorian.
Here is another aspect of the Jewish calendar: years can start (first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year) only on certain days of the week – Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Despite all the complexity there is always a fixed number of days from Passover to Rosh Hashanah so Passover can start only on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Notably missing from the Passover start list is Friday. Does anyone see any theological implications from this?
“These were all people that were paying 13%+ in state income tax every year WITH NO COMPLAINTS UNTIL A FEW WEEKS AGO.”
13%!!! I think about the 39% I pay in taxes here in Italy, with a VAT of 23% on everything, and a plethora of other fees.
The bureaucratic, centralizing state is insatiable, even in the better form we have now with Meloni. We would need a Milei, but there’s nothing in view, and most people can’t even imagine a different course: it’s simply so, and the best you can do is to put yourself in a favorable position inside the patronage system.
FOAF,
https://www.torahclass.com/topical-teachings/1329-the-passover-problem-solved/
Interesting discussion of calendars by MJR and others.
All I have to add is that I received a calendar as a Christmas gift, but the 5th month was missing.
I was dismayed.
*GROAN*
(also, I will steal that! 🙂 )
FOAF (12:43 am) (and others), when I was a very young boy, 5 years old or so, I was very obsessed with calendars. Some of that has stuck with me.
As to “Now do the Jewish calendar,” I think I’m going to defer to the link you provided and to RTF ‘s link (7:45 am). But thanks for the compliment [wink] — and I also get to credit you for the unusual information in your 12:46 am post. See ya . . .
M J R, I also had a calendar obsession at that age. Nowadays they would say we were “on the spectrum” lol
@ West TX
so your May Day is a may-be.
or a “m’aider” although Wiki says it should be “aidez moi”.
[Looking through the lens of French grammar, it may be a short form of venez m’aider, “come [and] help me”). [3][4] Venez m’aider is the closest phonetic phrase to “mayday”, but the technically accurate stand alone reflexive imperative conjugation would be aidez-moi.]
And I am sorry to say it took me at least 30 seconds, plus RTF’s “groan”, to get your joke. 🙁
MJR,
I would think most young children of a non-digital age would have learned numbers from kitchen clocks and calendars while sitting at the kitchen table. Plus how to use a dial phone from observing its use 2 or 3 times.
When I was 7, and well versed in clockery, the teacher kept he after school for a few minutes to test my ability to tell time, etc. I never learned if that was because she thought there was some deficit in my ability, or if she did that with every student in turn.
Rufus, a lot of what that link says does not correspond to what I learned from my Jewish upbringing. Which does not necessarily mean it is not true. However there is one glaring inconsistency with the Jewish calendar. They da the 15th of Nisan – the first day of the Passover holiday – is on Friday. But it *cannot* occur on Friday in the existing Jewish calendar. Since the calendar was not adopted until around the 4th century AD it may be possible though that it could have occurred on a Friday around the time of the crucifixion. I have no knowledge of how things were done at that time, it likely involved direct observation of the new moon each month since that is what the calendar is based on.