apparently these people say that when an inferior planet (or I suppose any planet) is on the other side of the sun and traveling towards the west, it is in “retrograde motion”.

The statistics recently at my household strongly support the Mercury Hypothesis. Four days ago I turned on my computer and it immediately made a really terrible frying sound and shut down. Basically, it died. My new Mac just arrived at my front door via UPS.

Which caused me to think: Shouldn’t we see higher sales of appliances and gadgets while Mercury is in retrograde? These stats should be available somewhere. If my computer’s failure was indeed part of a wider pattern, we should almost certainly be able to detect that pattern based on the behavior I exhibited immediately following the technology failure I suffered. Sales get charted. To put it mildly.

I doubt there’s a CEO of an electronics company, or a person in charge of inventory at a retailer, who wouldn’t want to know if there is a higher probability (think POTENTIAL) of a sales rise of any significant amount during certain periods. Managing inventory well — not running out of product but also not stocking too much — has real bottom-line benefits.

Businesses are used to making decisions on educated guesses, as in sales there are no ABSOLUTE PREDICTIVE TOOLS. You make the best choice you can based on past observed patterns of consumer behavior. Data on those patterns is valuable. In other words, there is a massive market out there for someone who could truly predict periods when it is MORE LIKELY that people would have to replace broken devices.

Yet I have never heard of a single business that adjusts its inventory based on Mercury. That’s so weird. They’re throwing away money!

One more observation from my own experience: For a human male, there is an inverse relationship between open contempt for astrology and getting laid.

A story of enlightenment and hope. It’s good to hear about them

Who knows, years down the road your experience may help your friend look outside the box.

Total. Selection. Bias. Later and for whatever reason, I started to question my own “belief”/statement. I would notice increases in support calls and I would look it up… Is Mercury retrograde? No? I thought so. I would continue on my business.

I have a friend who is completely immersed into astrology. He does all kinds of charts for me. Every time I have a “major” event coming up, he goes and looks it up to make sure the date is good. He’s invested so much money into becoming a “professional” astrologer. At one time I tried to talk with him about it, but he’s so far into it, I think he’ll never come out. So, I just don’t talk about it with him.

‘scuse me, I need to lie down…

Against natural order of movement? Meaning it goes against the human sense of natural order of things.

Please note:
Apostrophes are vital
to communication,,,
,,,as in,,,

I can’t believe IT’S not butter!
,,,or,,,
I can’t believe IT. Snot butter!

GAry 7
PS – OK! SO! It took a period AND an apostrophe.

Mmmm… limoncello! Best served very cold in a frozen shot glass!

I was speaking of Sue’s explanations of Astrology, that support her beliefs, not necessarily evidence to support Astrology itself. Perhaps I should have used a different word for that.

But with “Taurus : Red is not your colour. Beware of matadors or anyone Spanish or non-vegetarian. Avoid china shops, Pamplona & the stock exchange.”

Umm .. I think we WANT bulls in the stock market don’t we? Esp. right now when its such a bear market. Or generally going down the gurgler … :-O

Not until its healed at least twelve deaf people, cured Phil of his ABBA worship and exorcised the demons that possess people to like boy bands and Michael Bolton anyway!

If you dangle your mp3 player from a string and fly it around a cardboard tree in front of a home movie camera, I’ll be your acolyte!

That should read :

“A Morality play was a early type of theatre … back when Kings ruled Europe with swords and knights and all the other fantasy story stuff plus all the smells of unwashed mobs, unsanitised houses, and disease and when everyone held attitudes towards women, slaves, serfs, aristocrats versus peasants, ad nauseam, that were … well .. quite literally from the Dark Ages.”

Be execllent if we could actually correct such typos and grammar bad stuff andspacing erors ad nauseam here wouldn’t it? *SIGH*

Since ‘amoral’ isn’t a word that’s used very often these days and morality plays are a thing of the very distant past (ie. Middle Ages / Dark Ages), I’ll explain this one a bit more. Probably over-explain actually but .. shucks.

A Morality play was a preachy phantomine type theatre that went from village to village acting out moral dramas even preachier and far more devoutly unquestioningly religious than modern soapies back when Kings ruled Europe with swords and knights and all the other fantasy story stuff plus all the smells of unwashed mobs, unsanitised houses, and disease and when everyone held attitudes towards women, slaves, serfs, aristocrats versus Freemen, ad nauseam that were …well qiute literally from thedrak ages.

‘Amoral’ means without regarding mortality. Not quite ‘immoral’ which is deliberatley against what is mral but unconcerwned or indifferent towqhether something is moral or not. “Lets see amorality play” then would mean “lets witness or put into action our strategies for the game or life or whatever what is unconcerned with or indifferent to morality. Lets setaside -for play purposes – any questions over the morality of what we’re doing.”

Quite a difference! All in onespace. Or rightly one space.

No I don’t!

Thou comment be awaiting thine moderation sayst I!

—–
“We apologise for the error in the last edition in which we stated that Mr Fred Nicolme is a defective of the police force. This was a typographical error. We meant, of course, that Mr Nicolme is a detective in the police farce.”
- ‘Derby Community newspaper’ (Other info. unavailable.)

Punctuation’s implications :
Note
The teacher said ‘the Inspector is a fool.’
‘The teacher’, said the Inspector,’ is a fool.’

& for spacing the difference betwixt
lets see a morality play
or amorality play

Commas misplaced, word order reversed
Can make writer object
Shout, swear & curse ….

“Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I’m not sure about the universe.”
- Albert Einstein

Quoting from bad memory and from King something or other I think? ‘King Lear’ mayhaps?

-Shakespeareusedbardlangague but Anne hathaway with him..

This was meant to go in italics and be properly spaced and read WWIII NOT WW II! Even a bad astrologer could predict WW II – now!

“Hmm.. Let see what the stars hold in store for us all.

[Picks up the newspaper, flips to the daily astrology column, ignoring the cover news of World War III breaking out which is, naturally, below a celebrity, shock horror, behaving badly .. by saying rude words and engaging in intercourse with somebody they're not married with two kids to. Meanwhile on page 55 there's a small paragraph on the LHC working and changing our whole picture of the cosmos wuth marvellous new discoveries and 10,000 people dying terribly in some other poor third world country.]”

Cynical? Moi?

Warning : Predictions may or may not have anything to do with Reality. Most likely not.

[Picks up the newspaper, flips to the daily astrology column ignoring the cover news of World WarII breaking Out which is, naturally, below a celebrity, shock horror, behavingbadly ..]]

Ah here we are .. Today’s

HORROR-SCOPES :

Aries : Today will be your last day before you are either machine-gunned to death, run over by a truck or eaten alive by bedbugs. Make it a good one.

Aquarius : LOOK OUT!!! LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! Bugger I just foresaw I will be too late, you’re dead, no need to write anymore .

Pisces : Feeling something’s fishy and rotten smelling? Yes that‘s a harbinger of your imminent demise. Still got to be better than this current incarnation of yours where you’re wet, smelly and alcoholic! In fact, I predict you’ll be so drunk whenyouread this that I do believ you’ll beleive anything I tell you!

Gemini : You or your twin &/or other half will die a particularly nasty, drawn out and agonising death today. My condolences either way.

Leo : Avoid zoo’s, avoid safari parks in Africa and elsewhere, avoid poachers & you’ll be okay. Maybe. If you’re lucky. And quiet. And don’t eat the wrong wildebeest.

Cancer? : Yep. Sorry.

Sad-git-hairy-ass : Enough said.

Libra : Women beware of your tampons today. Men beware of your women! Also avoid scales whether fish, reptilian or measuring – they’ll be bad news for you all month, indeed all your life.

Scorpio : Today you will die in your sleep in the early morning. In fact, you’ll die before you ever get to read this, so why am I bothering to write it?

Virgo? : No, you’re not. Unless you’re very young in which case maybe you are. Anyway its none of my business. Avoid eating/ ordering fortune cookies this week and, even more so, avoid misfortune cookies.

Taurus : Red is not your colour. Beware of matadors or anyone Spanish or non-vegetarian. Avoid china shops, Pamplona & the stock exchange.

Capricorn : Beware the ides of march, the first of the month, the last of the month, the thirty-first of the month, the sixteenth, thirteen , second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh, eighth , tenth, seventeenth, nineteenth and indeed any day of the month with either an ‘e’, ‘a’, or any consonant at all in it.

NB. The 13th star sign Ophiuchus (serpent bearer) not included. Seeing as astrological lore holds that Ophuichans are sceptical, logical thinkers who don’t believe in superstitious mumbo-jumbo that’s just as well really.

Well, I was all out of Pledge…