Just when you thought astrology couldn’t get any more ridiculous:
Words fail me. And somehow, deep in my heart, I’m glad they didn’t have someone dancing to Ophiuchus.
-
About Bad Astronomy
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. Science Getaways
Subscribe to BA
Death from the Skies!
Order a copy of Death from the Skies! from Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.
"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?"
-- Adam Savage, Mythbusters
"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot UprisingSocial/Networking/Cool Stuff
DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space- DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
- A Planet of Viruses: Autographed Book Sale
- Animal Friendships: My cover story for Time magazine
- The Future of E-books–podcast of my interview on Wisconsin Public Radio
- Thursday, February 16: Science and social media panel in New York
- A Scientific Jonah: My profile of Joy Reidenberg in tomorrow’s New York Times
Copyright © 2012, Kalmbach Publishing Co.
Privacy - Terms - Reader Services - Subscribe Today - Advertise - About Us
March 11th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Good grief! For a moment I tought it was Donald Duck singing!!
March 11th, 2009 at 8:55 am
There’s nine and a half minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
“I AM the Ram. I AM the Ram.” So, God is an Aries?
March 11th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Well, as “Mama” said, “Astronomy is one of the many tools of the devil.”
March 11th, 2009 at 8:57 am
It’s a salute to Mr. B Natural!
March 11th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Dance your astrology off | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
Antiscience | Just when you thought astrology couldn’t get any more ridiculous:Words fail me. And somehow, deep in my heart, I’m glad they didn’t have someone dancing to Ophi.
March 11th, 2009 at 9:02 am
The pain! It makes me claw at my ears! Isn’t stuff like this banned by the Geneva Convention?
The “singer-lyricist-composer” of this stuff is Harvey Sid Fisher.
In case you’re a masochist and want to listen to the whole song for each sign, here’s the YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/user/astrologysongs
You can even buy CDs!
March 11th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Somewhere, I own a cassette of Harvey Sid Fisher (the guy in the video) singing the astrology songs. I used to listen to it when driving to work. I love cheese!
March 11th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Melissa Auf der Maur, formerly of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, has a hysterical video of herself doing interpretive dance to “I Am the Ram” on the sidebar to her website “Lightning Is My Girl.”
March 11th, 2009 at 9:09 am
That is practically painful. And scary because I’m a Libra and I belly dance, too. How did they know? Do all Libras bellydance? Are all bellydancers Libra? Did I receive some psychic memo from the stars that I should do that? Help!
Phil, please, I beg of you, aim for some high quality stuff. My head hurts!
March 11th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Whoa – some people have absolutely no pride. What the hell is that and why would anyone waste even two seconds recording it?
March 11th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Oh god, this is awful!
March 11th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Damn you, Phil, for I can not unsee this.
Oh god.
(Sciencegoddess: Libra here, and very unfamiliar with bellydancing.)
March 11th, 2009 at 9:36 am
This would have been so much funnier in the form of a spoken word performance by William Shatner.
March 11th, 2009 at 9:40 am
For an intentionally funny take on astrology, check out Weird Al’s song “Your Horoscope for Today.” You can find it on youtube.
March 11th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Gawd, what a coincidence! Back in the ’80′s in a planetarium at a Midwestern university. I used to do a constellation ID show called “Born under the sign of Ophiuchus.”
March 11th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Hahahahahahaha!!!!!
“VirGOOOOO! VirGOOOOOO! VirGoooOhhhOhhh”
March 11th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Thanks for that. I can’t get those damn songs out of my head now.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Ha – classic!
March 11th, 2009 at 10:18 am
…Dammit, now my tummy hurts. It’s TOO MUCH LAUGHTER
March 11th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Im terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought now.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:22 am
I seem to recall The Daily Show making fun of this ten years ago. It may have been as part of their “moment of zen” around the time Craig Kilborn was replaced by Jon Stewart. Does anyone else remember if this is so?
March 11th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Didn’t they play this in Guantánamo?
March 11th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I just couldn’t sit all the way through this, absolutely horrible.
I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade, which means I will now rain on just about everyone’s when I say that this is just as terrible as christian rock and songs about science.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:32 am
I thought the EPA banned that sort of thing as a type of toxic waste!
March 11th, 2009 at 10:44 am
I read the comments and was warned off seeing this. I recall being told by the gardener (a Black Hebrew from Philadelphia) at the Tel Aviv University Observatory that we are minions of Satan and the telescope is an instrument of the Devil to spy on God. Yuri Mekler, Irena Kupo and I still went on to discover the Io cold torus around Jupiter. I am waiting for punishment–maybe God will strike Cassini.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Sciencegoddess wrote:
“That is practically painful. And scary because I’m a Libra and I belly dance, too. How did they know? Do all Libras bellydance? Are all bellydancers Libra? Did I receive some psychic memo from the stars that I should do that? Help!”
Perhaps we should forward this to ‘Ask Dr. Science’ It sounds like a good question for his show…!
March 11th, 2009 at 10:47 am
I got through about 10 seconds of this intolerable crap. I would be horrible regardless of the subject matter. Barf!
March 11th, 2009 at 10:51 am
My ears. Need to clean them with steel wool and bleach.
Yikes, songs about anything other than the human condition usually go badly, but this takes bad lyrics to new levels…of Dante’s hell, that is.
I think in Hell, you hear these songs for eternity.
You’ll wish for fire or becoming the Dark One’s eternal lunch.
What a dancer, though. No?
March 11th, 2009 at 10:56 am
I’m glad they didn’t have someone dancing to Ophiuchus.
That’s actually banned by several obscenity laws in Alabama and Mississippi.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I’m a Libra and I don’t bellydance (maybe I missed the memo, ScienceGoddess!) but all of a sudden I want to learn…
As sad as this is, after I watched this I had to play something else to get it out of my head. It’s such a terrible set of songs, which of course, just means that it’s easier to get stuck in your head. (I recommend Duck Tales opening theme.)
Could I just add that you can’t CHANGE when you were born, so ‘I was born a Capricorn’ is a silly line to me. Unless Capricorns can switch from being Capricorns to being like… Leos. In which case, I would have to look at this astrology thing again.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:06 am
w_nightshde:
That’s not JUST cheese,,,it’s rancid Limberger,,,
Sciencegoddess:
NAw, my youngest daughter TEACHS belly dancing and she’s a Capricorn ( or, at least, she did, as a summer gig at UC Davis).
Richard:
Saw a cartoon 15 years ago:People lined up to enter heaven, told by St Pete, “Here’s your lyre. Welcome to heaven.”
Second panel shows people lined up entering hell and the devil saying,” Welcome to hell. Here’s your accordion,,,”.
For this particular offense against taste, I wonder if there’s somewhere lower than hell???
I’d really like to get it as far away as possible,,,
GAry 7
March 11th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I don’t even have audio and I’m disgusted. Yet, I can’t look away. It’s almost like the pictures of the woman with larvae coming out of her areola.
Harvey Sid Fisher is a sick genius. Such body language, such grace. Captivating.
I am a “gemini”, which, to astrologers, means one of my “personas” likes it, and the other; not so much. Dang those planets and stars for this curse and this blessing.
Astrology is nothing but an excuse to justify acting like a tool.
Why can’t astologists see that it’s not the stars that affect personality and health. If anything, it’s the environmental factors imposed on the mother during pregnancy, i.e.: temperature, disease, and nutrition.
A child carried during winter months may have different traits than an otherwise identical child carried during the summer months.
It has been documented that different traits are more or less prevelant depending on the month the child was born in, which, logically, must be the outcome of the time they were in the womb, not the outcome of the pleiades being at a particular place in the night sky.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Scene from Clockwork Orange
March 11th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Damn, I thought my wife’s 15 year old VCR tape was the only surviving fragment of this. When we burned it, I thought the world would finally be safe . . .
March 11th, 2009 at 11:40 am
OK, a Libra who doesn’t belly dance and a Capricorn who does. Whew! I was worried. Good thing all Leos aren’t dressed in skin tight leopard suits, because that would be horrendous.
The best thing I ever heard was a christian friend say “The day of your birth (astrology) doesn’t determine if people get along or not, SINFULNESS does!”
I’m sticking with the scientists!
March 11th, 2009 at 11:42 am
The dear, departed Dirch Passed did it better than anyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYBw8mKub1w
(What? You don’t speak Danish?!)
March 11th, 2009 at 11:45 am
@Sciencegoddess
Ah, but they might be on to something about sinfulness. After all, it is very exciting for a non-sinful person to be around a sinner. Living vicariously through them. And the sinner can derive entertainment from tempting the righteous soul…or at least just watching their reactions.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:56 am
To all those who viewed the the video and have warned people off, thank you. I don’t have to watch it
And I’m sorry you went through such pain for my benefit.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Furries, belly dancers, spinning flower children, horrible music and worse concepts…
…seems like just another average summer day on the Pearl St. Mall to me.
March 11th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
@ w_nightshde:
That would have to be Camembert — PHOOEY!
March 11th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
# Sarcastro Says:
It’s a salute to Mr. B Natural!
Doesn’t the ‘dancer’ look like Vivian Schilling (MST3K 1001 – Soultaker)?
He can’t sing, she can’t dance… okay, now it makes sense….. huh?
J/P=?
March 11th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Phil, what have we done to deserve this torture? I had to switch it off after exactly 36 seconds … Oh, the humanity; my refrigerator sounds better than this guy!
March 11th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I can’t believe I watched the whole thing. Also, why didn’t they have both dancers out for the Gemini song? That would’ve made a lot more sense … oh wait. It’s not supposed to make sense.
March 11th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
What? They couldn’t find an actual singer to sing those songs?
March 11th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
… not quite as I imagined a rendering of the music of the spheres.
Besides, it’s terribly wrong. Musica universalis is everywhere (duh!), and it is quite harmonious.
March 11th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!
Oh wait – here’s the stop button.
March 11th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
If anyone is looking for ear cleanser, I highly recommend:
March 11th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
TS – “I say that this is just as terrible as [....] and songs about science.”
Hey are you dissing Tom Lehrers ‘The Periodic Table’?
I’ve read all these comments first and on one hand they almost tempt me to see if it can really be that bad, on the other hand I realise that I risk my already somewhat tenuous grasp on sanity. I suppose on the balance of things (well can we guess my sign yet
) I’ll play it safe and suffer vicariously through your warnings.
March 11th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
I almost was able to watch it all. He got to Libra and the next thing I remember is that all of a sudden I was lying on the floor with my toungue bleeding.
March 11th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
He’s off-key! At least in the two snatches of songs I jumped to. He’s lucky his major intestine didn’t throttle his brain (nod to Douglas Adams, and Hitchhikers Guide).
“During a recitation by their poetmaster Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in my Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the mid-galactic Arts Knobbling Council survived only by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled “My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles” when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. “
March 11th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
You think it was hard to watch this? About 5 years ago, Chicken John Rinaldi actually talked Harvey Sid Fisher into coming to his Odeon bar here in SF, and the house band played the astrology songs to a packed and confused house. I was part of that madness, but was too self-medicated to remember what role I played.
March 11th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
WJM Says: “If anyone is looking for ear cleanser, I highly recommend:”
Whoa! Another David Lynch fan? Spooky.
- Jack
March 11th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
great. now i’ll never get ‘p-p-p-pisces’ out of my head.
terrible.
March 11th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
I think my favorite line is in the Gemini song: “One twin does the making love, the other likes to watch.” That is frakkin’ creepy.
March 11th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
You’re a skeptic
You’re a skpetic
whatever sign
you pick
means nothing.
March 11th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
We need skeptic horoscopes:
LIBRA
You are a carbon based lifeform that evolved on the third planet of your solar system. Your likes include: breathing a mildly oxygenated nitrogen based atmosphere, a temperature between 10 and 30 degrees centigrade, gravity of 9.8m/s/s and the badastronomy weblog.
PISCES
You are a carbon based lifeform that evolved on the third planet…..
[repeat]
March 12th, 2009 at 12:18 am
This is just sad…
March 12th, 2009 at 1:09 am
My corporate firewall does not permit the intrusion of YouTube.
For this I am eternally greatful.
March 12th, 2009 at 1:37 am
Where’s William Shatner when you need him?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN3MGN899yE
March 12th, 2009 at 5:13 am
TS said:
Heh, you must never have heard the song “Oxidative Phosphorylation”. . .
March 12th, 2009 at 6:39 am
I. What.
D:
March 12th, 2009 at 10:07 am
I am speechless. I may have to seek legal remedies.
July 19th, 2010 at 12:56 am
Dear Phil,
Am I permitted to respond?
Harvey Sid Fisher