waded.org » 13 http://www.waded.org Wade Dorrell’s tech & arts blog from the Idaho high desert Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:06:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 The sum of all fears is 34 http://www.waded.org/2009/04/02/the-sum-of-all-fears-is-34/ http://www.waded.org/2009/04/02/the-sum-of-all-fears-is-34/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:27:36 +0000 Wade http://www.waded.org/2009/04/the-sum-of-all-fears-is-34/

A picture taken in an elevator in a residentia...

Image via Wikipedia

I wonder which was chicken, and which was egg… does “4” sound like “death”, or does “death” sound like “4”?

Tetraphobia, fear of the number 4 — (phonetically similar to ‘death’) in Korea, China, and Japan, as well as in many East-Asian and some Southeast-Asian countries, it’s not uncommon for buildings (including offices, apartments, hotels) to lack floors with the number 4, and Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia’s 1xxx-9xxx series of mobile phones does not include any model numbers beginning with a 4. In Taiwan, tetraphobia is so common that there are no 4′s or x4′s for hospitals. [Source: Wikipedia]

Then there’s Italy’s unlucky “17”, which through a butterfly’s wingflap is the sum of “deadly 4” and good ol’ “unlucky 13.”

“17 is Italy’s unlucky number, because in Roman digits 17 is written XVII, that could be rearranged to "VIXI", which in Latin means literally "I have lived" but can be a euphemism for "I am dead".” [Source: Wikipedia]

]]> http://www.waded.org/2009/04/02/the-sum-of-all-fears-is-34/feed/ 0