A few days later she came in with a computer file of mathematics that was far beyond my weak math skills. She explained (patiently, I was only a poor, weak man manager) that the numbers showed that the gravitational pull of the obstetrician who delivered you was more powerful than that of the planet Jupiter. I guess that means I was born under the influence of Dr. Hunter rising with Nurse Johnson attending?

@30, QuietDesperation, who says: “That’s why I always say the people peddling the bunk are *not* the dumb ones. Same with politicians and political pundits who sell a lot of books.”

Ah, another one who thinks that smarts inherently comes with a dishonest nature. Or, by inverse implication, that poverty is the only place one may ever find sincerity and a sense of virtue, ethical behavior and altruism.

What utter rubbish!

QD made no such association. Again, you seem to take someone’s observation and extrapolate all sorts of tacet implications from it that aren’t necessarily present at all.

The fact remains that many shysters and con artists are clever enough to be raking in more cash than a whole cross section of (at-least-) equally intelligent but more scrupulous scientist and engineer types. There are a few who quite obviously believe their own hype, but it seems both reasonable and likely that there will be a large proportion who don’t believe their spiel – it is merely a means by which to part a fool from his/her money.

Are you also capable of thinking anything out first before speaking or commenting on it? Or is it all, you know, just all about flinging boogers of wise opinion out there quicker than anybody else can?

Glass houses. Bricks. Just sayin’ . . .

@#64 Nigel Depledge, who says, “And I think you have completely missd the point that Mark was making.”

Hardly. I got PRECISELY the point he was TRYING to make. And he’s dead wrong. As you are in thinking I can’t recognize a spurious argument. You can check out #77 for more.

So, let’s see:
Seasonal variations of one kind or another lead to an association of some characteristics with the time of year (or, perhaps more significantly, the season) in which a person is born. This may or may not have led to the beginnings of astrology, but it has certainly been used as some vague affirmation of astrology, even though astrology is – as we all know – bull.

Mark Wilden makes some comment to this effect, suggesting that there may be the tiniest fragment of truth in the basic idea of astrology – that the time at which one is born influences one’s character.

You then gave him a thorough kicking about astrology being wrong, wrong, wrong, and that he too is wrong because he said it was true, despite the fact that he prefaced his initial comment with a statement to the effect that he knows astrology is wrong.

I point out that you missed his point, and you tell me that I’m implying you can’t recognise a spurious argument? WTF?

I did not see any of his comments as a defence of astrology, but as a mere observation about how he can see why some folks might think that there is something to it. But, hey, perhaps that was just me giving him the benefit of the doubt. You seem to think you know better than he or I what either of us was thinking.

No, it isn’t in the slightest reasonable. Not only that, your excuse in #43 STILL insists that the time of year one is born affects you. That’s still WRONG.

And this is rubbish. You are wrong to dismiss the point out of hand – the reasoning might be faulty, and that commenter’s defence of the probable origins of astrology may have been unclear, but it does chime with several things I have read in the popular-science press, such as New Scientist.

The time of year you are born does influence some aspects of your character or behaviours. At least one study has shown this with some statistical significance.

The reasons for this are not clear, but it is certainly nothing to do with the planets or the constellations on the ecliptic. IIUC, the most convincing hypothesis to explain this is to do with seasonal variations in nutrition.

Of course – as I allude to in a previous comment – seasonal variations in nutritional intake are decreasing in most of the societies that used to hold astrology in some regard.

Hardly. I got PRECISELY the point he was TRYING to make. And he’s dead wrong. As you are in thinking I can’t recognize a spurious argument. You can check out #77 for more.

One might actually think these guys have had plenty of time (at least a factor of 5 longer than modern science has ever had, you know, just figuring out trifles like general relativity, quantum mechanics and biological evolution via natural selection) just to determine whether ANY of their principles are reflected in the realities as exhibited by nature. Alas, they haven’t yet found any, but that doesn’t exactly stop them from believing in their schtick. Oh how powerful and all-consuming faith, loyalty and tradition can be when it comes to facing the otherwise devastating horror of truth.

Whoa! Too bad you weren’t nearly so explicit in your previous post. Or is the difference between what you say now in #43 and in your previous post @#13 worth only the amount of a “tiny grain”?

You SAID in #13: “The study does seem to support the most important tenet of astrology – that what part of the year you’re born in can affect you. In other words, Virgos may indeed share some characteristics they don’t share with Taurans. This seems perfectly reasonable.”

No, it isn’t in the slightest reasonable. Not only that, your excuse in #43 STILL insists that the time of year one is born affects you. That’s still WRONG. But you imagine that a study dealing with mice under lab conditions using artificial light cycles (“environmental imprinting of the mammalian circadian clock and its response to subsequent seasonal change under seasonal light cycles.”) can be equated with a group of a dozen distinct behavioral types which astrology reckons describe all of humanity.

Are you serious??? That any baby who is transported from the northern hemisphere to the southern within days of its birth during the solstice seasons will inevitably confront different light cycles REGARDLESS of the planetary configuration under which it was born??? That, whatever the effect of light circadian rhythms, you explicitly discount the planetary positions as “the most important tenet” of astrology???

Are you kidding???

There are no tenets to astrology that have any bearing on reality, let alone an importance such as you ascribe, and there is absolutely no reason to think (the science study notwithstanding) that the time of year affects people in such a way as to distinguish one type of personality born under a particular zodiacal sign from another, or that there are any such distinctions to be found in any population of humans anywhere, regardless of where and when they were born.

That exceedingly tiny little grain you evidently wish to support your opinion must be mighty weighty indeed to be able to support your claim for a plausible platform for discussion. It is a joke. Face it.