The game, illegal but tolerated, is played by nearly one-third of a population that marries deeply held superstitions with a proclivity for fun.
Are each of the faiths to be allowed exceptions and exemptions – for example, so that any faith school can exclude well-qualified teachers because they do not share the ancient superstition with which a particular school seeks to brainwash small children's minds?
The Guardian explained to the British that no disrespect was intended: "It is in fact an inflexible usage, amounting almost to a superstition, with the Americans that the Stars and Stripes must never be dipped under any circumstances … as improper as for a man to keep his hat on in church".
"He had a running superstition with the physiotherapist, Rob Jenkins, that every time they saw a pig in a field, my dad would score and they would win," 22-year-old Cross told BBC Sport.
The player had previously developed a superstition with regards to taking spot kicks, but conquered the issue after successfully converting two penalties in the team's Carling Cup victory over Tottenham in 2010.
These women embraced a prefab superstition with utter conviction, as if it were objective fact and I was really, truly endangering them.
Like many ghost story protagonists, Braddock is a practical man with no patience for superstition, coupled with an old sea dog's imperviousness to howling winds.
"It tends to be based on superstition, with scientists reacting emotionally, which is always a great irony.
For Paine and other radicals, the colonial rebellion along the Atlantic seaboard was a flash point in a global struggle to replace tyranny and superstition with clearsighted freedom.
This is a book whose nameless central character exists in a claustrophobic world of religion tainted with superstition, with only her ailing older brother for support.
