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Path: ...!news.misty.com!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!panix!.POSTED.panix1.panix.com!not-for-mail From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@KeithLynch.net> Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom,rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Re: Happy "Dennis the Menace" Day Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:22:43 -0000 (UTC) Organization: United Individualist Message-ID: <vqvssj$k1$1@reader1.panix.com> References: <vqsu2t$uv$1@reader1.panix.com> <m3edhrFo61qU1@mid.individual.net> <87a59p8uhd.fsf@comcast.net.invalid> Injection-Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:22:43 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: reader1.panix.com; posting-host="panix1.panix.com:166.84.1.1"; logging-data="641"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@panix.com" X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010) Bytes: 2852 Lines: 42 Don_from_AZ <djatechNOSPAM@comcast.net.invalid> wrote: > ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) writes: >> Well, you can shave a tiny bit off the odds as that was a Monday, a >> typical day for a strip debut. Why should Monday be the most typical day on both sides of the Atlantic? > And a tiny bit more off the odds, since if somebody wanted to write > about a child who was a "menace" it would be obvious to call him > "Dennis" for the rhyme. True. I checked the OED to see when "menace" first appeared. It was in 1300 with essentially the modern meaning. I then checked Wikipedia's Dennis disambiguation page. The earliest person with a first name of Dennis it listed was from 1750. What about daily comic strips with recurring characters? Those seem to have begun in 1894. So that's when all three elements first came together. About 48,000 days ago. Or about 7000 Mondays. So for the two strips to begin on the same Monday had about a 1 in 7000 chance. Of course if it wasn't the same Monday, only one of them would have survived, as the other would have successfully sued for trademark infringement. So there is some selection bias. Similarly, the fact that life has thrived on Earth for long enough to develop intelligence says nothing about the likelihood that it has happened anywhere else. It only proves that it's physically possible. We could be alone in the universe. Another similar coincidence is the two similarly-themed TV sitcoms about monstrous or supernatural families, The Addams Family and The Munsters. They began just six days apart, so neither could have been at all based on or inspired by the other. (TAF was based on a comic strip, and TM was based on Universal's monsters.) If you're wondering about the similar shows Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, the latter started a year after the former, so was probably inspired by it. Similarly with Lost in Space and Star Trek. -- Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/ Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.