Hello, everyone. Happy Friday the 13th!

I recently published a short memory of my first time hearing The Doors’ album Strange Days approximately 50 years ago as a high school student in Illinois. The Doors first two albums were released in 1967, and the second, Strange Days, has always been my favorite. The piece also touches on what it was like to grow up in the middle of the country during a time when a great cultural revolution was happening on both coasts. 

My latest column for Skeptical Inquirer, “We Already Know the Las Vegas Shooter’s Motive,” has just gone up on the web. This latest shooting has created a challenge for investigators because the usual motivations have not presented themselves. I argue that we already know what the motive was, and I discuss the role of the media in the promotion of mass shootings.

Finally, it’s October and superstition is in the air. I have done a number of interviews for newspapers, websites, and radio in the last few days, and as a result, I will send out a Friday the 13th wrap-up sometime next week. But for now, here is a National Geographic article, “Friday the 13th Is Back. Here’s Why It Scares Us,” (with pithy quotes from me) that first appeared a few years back. National Geographic tends to recycle this article whenever the scary date rolls around.

In addition, a college newspaper from Illinois recently used the National Geographic article as a source for their own piece on Friday the thirteenth, and in that article (which can be found here) I learned a fun fact: several tattoo parlors in the Chicago area (and perhaps elsewhere) are offering sale prices on tattoos. $13 for a 3-inch X 3-inch tattoo. I’m not the tattoo type, but that sounds like a bargain—provided you are brave enough to get inked on Friday the 13th.

That’s all for now.