Day 4: Knock knock knocking on... wood

Where did the euphemism "knock on wood" come from?

Motivation: My mom sent me an interesting forward the other day about where certain expressions came from and then today someone said "knock on wood"and it made me wanna know where the phrase came from.

Answer: 

I started this with a google search per my norm, using the phrase "origination of knock on wood."

Of the options, one was a source from the UK, so I figured that was a good place to start since the British are so much dang smarter than we are and we got our language from them.  (Well, the language I am willing to claim, not some of the slang from the youngsters today.)

Here is what I found on the origin of "knock on wood."  

The derivation may be the association that wood and trees have with good spirits in mythology, or with the Christian cross. It used to be considered good luck to tap trees to let the wood spirits within know you were there. Traditions of this sort still persist in Ireland.

The British version of the phrase - 'touch wood', predates the American 'knock on wood' and was itself preceded by a Latin version - 'absit omen', meaning 'far be that omen from us'. This dates from at least the early 17th century, when it is quoted by John Heywood in his collections of proverbs. It isn't clear when 'touch wood' began to be used as a token of good fortune but it must have been by 1850, when the academic correspondence magazine Notes and Queries published this:

There probably is some old English expression for averting evil, but it does not come to mind; "I touch wood," "Bar omen," "Bar ill-luck," seem clumsy.

'Knock on wood' is known from the early 20th century; for example, The Syracuse Herald, February 1905:

Neglecting to knock on wood may have been responsible for the weather's unseemly behaviour today.

Well, this didn't really answer my question... so back to the search.  So I went back to good ole wikipedia and came up with this:

• The early pagan tradition of "knocking on wood" was meant to drive out mischievous wood nymphs before they took an unfortunate suggestion and turned it into reality.

• In some countries, such as Spain, it is traditional literally to touch wood after an event occurs that is considered to bring bad luck, such as crossing paths with a black cat or walking under a ladder or noticing it's Friday the 13th. This is usually done when there's no salt at hand to spill over your shoulder, which is considered the "traditional" way of avoiding the bad luck caused by those situations.

• In Italy, "tocca ferro" (touch iron) is used, especially after seeing an undertaker or something related to death.

• In old English folklore, "knocking on wood" also referred to when people spoke of secrets – they went into the isolated woods to talk privately and "knocked" on the trees when they were talking to hide their communication from evil spirits who would be unable to hear when they knocked. Another version holds that the act of knocking was to perk up the spirits to make them work in the requester's favor. Yet another version holds that a sect of Monks who wore large wooden crosses around their necks would tap or "knock" on them to ward away evil.

• In Romania, there is also a superstition that one can avoid bad things aforementioned by literally knocking on wood ("a bate în lemn"). One of the possible reasons could be that there is a monastery practice to call people to pray by playing / knocking the simantron.

Rumination: I don't really like the wishy washy responses about this.  I would much prefer someone to tell me the exact person who started this saying and why they did it.  I guess I will accept the consensus about the wood nymphs/spirits in the tree, but why call it knock wood or touch wood?  Why not knock tree?  Ridiculous, I say.  I suppose history and I shall agree to disagree on this one.  Ridiculous.

Day 3: Picture This

Does having images on your blog enhance readership?

Motivation: At the behest of both a professor and fellow student, I am contemplating the idea of adding images to my post.  However, I do not want to, so I am going to try to get to the bottom of whether or not adding images enhances people's interest in reading a blog.  This may just be a task of finding the results I want to hear, but maybe there are some more scientific approaches that have been reported.

Answer: 

I started this with a google search per my norm, using the phrase "images on blogs readership."

Of course I got several hits that had nothing to do with what I was asking.  Then I found an interesting blog that talked about using photographs on blogs being a good way to enhance readership.  Well after reading it, I realized it was speaking of actual photographs that the blog writer takes and it is to either advertise product, show pictures of yourself to your readers or to show projects and steps to creating things (think Pinterest.)  But these don't so much apply to this blog, but they do apply to my "parenting" blog.  I'll admit I've slacked on the photograph taking for that blog.  Back in the day (circa 3 years ago) I would participate in "Wordless Wednesday" where you weren't supposed to post a real blog, just post pictures.  I would use this to post pictures of my kids or pets.  And occasionally I would use real pictures on some of my product reviews.  I haven't done this in awhile because I like to think I'm too busy, but I think it could be a touch of laziness or lack of motivation on my part.

Okay, so back to the search as I am more specifically looking for IMAGES, not photographs.  Cause yes, those are wonderful when applicable.  

I found a helpful site that gave me 10 tips on marketing your blog and although it didn't have the specific answer I wanted and it was 3 years old, it was interesting and I did find one sentence that KIND OF leaned towards my way of thinking, "Cut the clutter of 23 affiliate banners, animated adverts and other distractions. Remember, your site should be attractive to human sensibilities."  I think of graphics/clip art/what have you as clutter and a distraction.  But again, this is subjective.  

Moving on... So I found this site that talks about how adding captions to an image is extremely important in grabbing attention, but it doesn't say you have to have an image, but says an "awesome headline" is a definite attention grabber.  

And then I came to the last link I had opened in a new tab that was from 2012.  It was about the shocking truth about web graphics and conversion.  Now I am going to fully embrace this article because it told me what I wanted to hear:

"Many years ago, advertising legend David Ogilvy commissioned research into the use of images... Images can reduce readership. Yes, they catch people’s attention. But without some very specific conditions in place, that attention does not translate into people reading the body copy—or coughing up cash."

The author of this article went on to talk about the right and wrong ways to use images in a blog post or on a website (which one of them was also about using captions).  Here is a list of things that should NOT be used:

• "Stock photographs that are obviously stock photographs—their generic dullness and lack of imagination rubs off on you. Just because a stock photo is attractive doesn’t mean it will be effective.
• Poor quality images of any kind—better to not show anything than to show something pixelated, over-compressed, badly resized, of a low resolution, or otherwise shoddy-looking.
• Crowd shots. Try to use photos that have a single main subject—people find crowd shots boring because there’s no one to focus on.
• Bigger than life-size images of faces. According to Ogilvy, readers avoid them because they seem slightly grotesque.
• Historical subjects—unless you’re catering to an audience of history enthusiasts, it’s a safe bet your readers will find historical shots boring."

I also discovered from reading this that using images in a blog that are left aligned is a no-no.  Oops!  I do that sometimes when advertising on my other blog.  Gonna have to work on that.

Rumination: Ineffective images are distracting and unnecessary.  If I post a stock image that I get from a google image search to incorporate into the blog I would have to think of a very worthwhile way to do it (which would include a caption.)  Or hey, why not do a pull quote as well... why don't I get all fancy and embed bells and whistles on my website?  I'm going to go with the idea that some images are good and some images don't matter.  In a perfect world I would get paid to blog, but I don't... so I will have to work on perfecting these things one piece at a time.  For now, it's all about content, content, content.

Day 2: Dead Football Players

Have any pro football players ever died during a game?

Motivation: While my husband watches football I'm usually doing other things, but will occasionally catch a player getting injured... which made me wonder if any pro football player has ever died during a game.  I don't really care about arena league or anything, just NFL.  But if the answer is no, I might expand my query.

Answer: 

Apparently this is a popular topic because as I typed it into google search, it came up quite quickly under suggestions.

"...the only time a player actually died on the field, nobody touched him.

It happened {41 years ago}.  A routine NFC Central showdown turned into the darkest day in NFL history. With just more than a minute left in the game, Detroit wide receiver Chuck Hughes dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of 28."-- AOL News

Apparently he collapsed on the field, was taken off by a stretcher and boom, that's all she wrote.

I then found a very nifty wikipedia link that gave me a list of football players who have died and how.  It was very interesting and even included players that had left to go into active military and died... very tragic.

But it did give a couple names that said (in-game) behind them, so of course I clicked on those players (besides Chuck Hughes) to see what information it gave me.  And I do want to point out that there was a Minnesota Vikings players named Korey Stringer, whom it said died of heat stroke during practice.  But that wasn't specifically what I was searching for, so I didn't look into it.  

So the two other names were Stone Johnson and Howard Glenn.

"On August 30, 1963, the rookie Johnson, a sprinter in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, suffered a fractured vertebra in his neck in a preseason game against the Oakland Raiders in Wichita, Kansas. He died 10 days later, on September 8 at the age of 23."

"In 1960, the AFL's inaugural season, Glenn joined the AFL New York Titans as an offensive guard. Glenn sustained a broken neck in the first half during a game vs. the Houston Oilers on October 9, 1960 at Jeppesen Stadium and died later that day."

Rumination: In summation, yes, ONE NFL football player has died during a game... but not in the way I was wondering about.  He died of a heart attack.  The information about Stone Johnson and Howard Glenn was interesting in that they both died from injuries SUSTAINED during a game.  So I would say that is pretty impressive that despite how injurious professional football seems to be, it's not a death sentence.  I'm sure lots of players have lasting effects from injuries they received during their careers, but no instantaneous deaths.  I'm very surprised by this information!

Day 1: Social Security Numbers

Where do they come up with our social security numbers?

Motivation: filling out health insurance forms, I got to wondering why 3 of us had the first 2 digits and the other two didn't...

Answer: 

(found at wikipedia)

"The Social Security number is a nine-digit number in the format "AAA-GG-SSSS".  The number is divided into three parts.

The Area Number, the first three digits, is assigned by the geographical region. Prior to 1973, cards were issued in local Social Security offices around the country and the Area Number represented the office code in which the card was issued. This did not necessarily have to be in the area where the applicant lived, since a person could apply for their card in any Social Security office. Since 1973, when SSA began assigning SSNs and issuing cards centrally from Baltimore, the area number assigned has been based on the ZIP code in the mailing address provided on the application for the original Social Security card. The applicant's mailing address does not have to be the same as their place of residence. Thus, the Area Number does not necessarily represent the State of residence of the applicant regardless of whether the card was issued prior to, or after, 1973.

Generally, numbers were assigned beginning in the northeast and moving south and westward, so that people on the East Coast had the lowest numbers and those on the West Coast had the highest numbers. As the areas assigned to a locality are exhausted, new areas from the pool are assigned, so some states have noncontiguous groups of numbers.

The middle two digits are the Group Number. The Group Numbers range from 01 to 99. However, they are not assigned in consecutive order. For administrative reasons, group numbers are issued in the following order:

1. ODD numbers from 01 through 09.
2. EVEN numbers from 10 through 98.
3. EVEN numbers from 02 through 08.
4. ODD numbers from 11 through 99.

As an example, Group Number 98 will be issued before 11.

The last four digits are Serial Numbers. They represent a straight numerical sequence of digits from 0001-9999 within the group.

On June 25, 2011, the SSA changed the SSN assignment process to "SSN randomization". SSN randomization will affect the SSN assignment process in the following ways:

1. It will eliminate the geographical significance of the first three digits of the SSN, currently referred to as the Area Number, by no longer allocating the Area Numbers for assignment to individuals in specific states.
2. It will eliminate the significance of the highest Group Number and, as a result, the High Group List will be frozen in time and can be used for validation of SSNs issued prior to the randomization implementation date.
3. Previously unassigned Area Numbers will be introduced for assignment excluding Area Numbers 000, 666 and 900-999."

Rumination: I still don't get it.  So from what I'm getting with the first 3 numbers, it has to do with zipcodes?  Or region codes?  I couldn't figure it out, so I did a little more googling and found information here that gave me the states and their SS# codes.  Now I get it... kind of.  So the zip codes and state codes have nothing to do with it?  Group numbers are random?  I get the organization method of the numbers, but ... random?  And the last 4 are in the group... so if your numbers were 999.99.9999... group 99 is at number 9999 for you after your birth.

If this isn't right, oh well.  This is what I get out of it and I feel satisfied with my findings.  Of course apparently after June 25, 2011 they have pretty much randomized the numbers... and that I totally comprehend!