Where'd the H Come From?

My very colorful boss said something yesterday that got me thinking. He used my Lord's name in vain, and like so many people do, he added an H. in between the Jesus and the Christ. Why is there an H? Well....Jesus Hominum Salvator, or Jesus, Savior of Man is often noted as IHS. It is noted such because Emperor Constantine, back in 312, before an important battle saw a vision of a cross and heard something along the lines of "you shall conquer under this sign" or, in Latin, "in hoc signo." Hence IHS. Or, Jesus H. Christ. Funny how most people that use it do not understand why.

Along the same line, what are antioxidants? No, really, what are they. Without googling it. Don't know? Then why would most Americans, who don't know what they are, spend an extra $1.50 on a drink that says "full of antioxidants"? The same reason why when grocery shopping with a good friend he said "buy this yogurt, it;s probiotic, do you know what that means? It means that its full of bacteria to help your digestive system!" I replied "why, I could buy that one that says 'probiotic' on it, or I could buy this generic one that costs $1.00 less." My friend was not satisfied about me making a worse choice for just a dollar. That is until I explained to him that yogurt by its very nature is probiotic. Yes, all yogurt is probiotic. That is yogurt. Yogurt is, will be, and always has been teeming with good bacteria to help you out. It is a marketing ploy. (Also, news for health nuts, all those products that say "all natural" on them...they're not all natural. The FDA has really loose guidelines for "all natural" so all that it means was that at one point in time, whatever you're putting into your body came out of the ground. And then probably was played with in a lab for a very very long time before you ate it.)

Paraskevidekatriaphobics would be a bad thing to be afflicted with today. It is a phobia of Friday the 13th. Which is...today! 8% of Americans suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobics.

LEGEND HAS IT: If 13 people sit down to dinner together, one will die within the year. The Turks so disliked the number 13 that it was practically expunged from heir 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.

Other wierd things: there were 13 people at the Last Supper - the cruxifiction happened on a Friday. Thirteen used to represent femininity (which was bad back in the day) because it was believed that there were 13 mentral cycles in a year. In Pagan Rome, Friday was the execution day. Back in the day, Friday was known as the "witches sabbath". The witches used to celebrate their sabbath in the graveyard where their goddess came down and formed a perfect coven (which is comprised of 13 people).

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.

Anyway, happy Friday! Whether it be the 13th or not!