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.

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.

How astonishing your insight is.

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?

http://hjhop.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-could-adult-ever-take-mike-adams.html

#goaheadandbeadicktomikeadams

Scrolling across it watching the representations of planets whip by, I was reminded of the scene in Heinlein’s Methusalah’s Children when the escaping Howard families dive their ship toward the Sun and then use Slipstick Libby’s device to render it inertialess, so that the light pressure gives them enormous outward velocity.

Another neat feature of that novel is that when they manage to return, Slipstick figures out how long they’ve been gone based on the new positions of the planets.

In his article, he implies that the changing relationships among Sun, Moon and Earth, and their seasonal effect on light at Earth’s surface are part of the basis of astrology. What then of the distant planets, which figure just as prominently in classical astrology? And what of the constellation of artificial satellites?

Ouch. Those stretches Mike Adams made in his article bent my head backward. Apparently, correlation equals causation in his world. That statement about human menstrual cycles being tied to lunar cycles is amazing. I guess humans and the moon are tied together some way. I’m just wondering why no other mammals have their cycles tied to the moon?

It’s one of my major pet peeves as well. Anyone who thinks women are tied to the moon hasn’t spent a lot of time actually studying them. (And yes, that goes for women who think that as well. Most people are sloppy observers, even of themselves, and women seldom note very carefully when they last menstruated.) The female menstrual cycle is so variable that there’s no conceivable (hah!) way it has anything at all to do with the Moon’s orbit. A woman with a regular cycle could have a 27 days cycle followed immediately by a 32 day one. Being “late” is not unusual, which is why doctors don’t recommend panicking about unplanned pregnancy until a woman is at least two weeks overdue for her period.

It’s a pet peeve of mine, when woomeisters link the female menstrual cycle to the Moon. They’re simply perpetuating an ancient error rooted in sloppy observation.

He ment Cow and Chicken ofcourse.

Imagine a person born in a space colony somewhere in the asteroid belt in the far future, completely raised in a hermetically-sealed environment in which artificial lighting is scheduled to go through some cycle or another. Now: do you really think there is a “grain of truth” to the contention that the positions of the planets at the time of birth, OR that the light cycle the colonist experiences determines whether they are a Virgo or a Taurus?

Yes, the light cycle will influence some (but not all!) of the traits that are typically assigned as typical of “virgo” or “taurus”. However, IIUC, what has more influence than light is temperature and nutrition (note that it is only in the last 30 years or so that fruits and vegetables are readily available out of season). Assuming what I learned as an undergrad student was correct.

So, the next time a superstitious person talks about astrology, we can and should admit to this “grain of truth”: there isn’t a jot of truth in it, and the subject CAN be safely dismissed as the cock-and-bull baloney that it is.

And I think you have completely missd the point that Mark was making.

That statement about human menstrual cycles being tied to lunar cycles is amazing.

That’s an old one, long since debunked. More women don’t have a cycle that matches that of the moon than do. Unless you consider any whole number from 26 to 30 to be equivalent to 29.5.

So a person born in December in Australia will have more in common with someone born in June in The United States, than two random December babies from around the world. Every point of time in the year has it’s exact opposite daylight pattern occurring right in the opposite hemisphere and of course to varying degrees along any line of longitude.

True.

IIUC, astrology has a long history in the northern mid-latitudes, not so much elsewhere.