answer_for_astrology_skeptics Dafremen Recently, one of those open mouth insert foot types made an interesting point. What makes me and people LIKE me think that there are only twelve types of people on the Earth? Doesn't the fact that some folks born on the same day of the month are VERY different disprove this notion? Indeed it does, and I would never argue that there ARE only 12 types of people. In fact, according to the rules governing astrological personality impression, it will take almost 2 and a half million years before a SINGLE person will be born with personality traits that are identical to anyone else born before them. The ONLY exception to this are people born on the same day, of the same month of the same year within 4 seconds of one another. These are known as astral twins or time twins, and both astrologers AND empirical scientists doing studies on the subject have found STARTLING similarities in the lives and characteristics of time twins. They marry at the same time, die at the same time, have practically all of the same likes and dislikes, name their kids the same, etc. The idea behind Sun sign characteristics (ie insights_into_aries, etc) is that the PROBABILITIES are that your Sun sign characteristics will tend to be dominant in your personality. If however you have Moon imprinted or other imprinted characteristics which counter your natural Sun sign tendencies, it CAN cause the Sun Sign description to fall short of accurate. Only an accurately drawn up Birth Chart can do this for you. I have just recently begun looking into this in order to draw my conclusions and I must say, the results have been REMARKABLY accurate. Given your day, month and year of birth...along with your time of birth and city of birth, a picture of your personality WILL emerge which is INCREDIBLY accurate in its details about your innermost motivations. It is obvious that any "logic minded" person who knocks astrology has NOT looked into it. They speak wherefrom they do not know and do not want to know. In fact, they sound a lot like a certain software engineer(ME)did before he bought a book in a box of psychology books for a buck, some two years ago. I WAS the consumate astrology skeptic. I sounded just like the closeminded critics who I now defend astrology against. If you don't REALLY look into it, (like I did, conducting 157 interviews over a 6 month period online and in person), you will NEVER believe the truth. You will continue to push it aside as "for entertainment purposes only." It has been said that EVERY open-minded, curious individual who has investigated astrology has become enthralled by the science. I'm happy to say that I have been added to those ranks. Any person who believes that forces which can lift the world's mighty oceans will NOT affect the forming of their personality, the seat of which is a PHYSICAL brain, is deluding themselves in the name of nothing but vanity and ignorance. Nuff said. Anyone with a SERIOUS interest in the subject is invited to visit Professor Seward's Sun sign information website at: zodiac.fragzaintskillz.com As an amateur, I would also be happy to draw up a birth chart for anyone with a GENUINE interest who sends me the information which I mentioned above. This is time consuming, not because of the chart that needs to be drawn up, (that takes 5 minutes) but because of the descriptions that must be typed in. If I recognize you, you'll prolly get it more quickly. If I don't you may have to wait. If you lie about your birth time information, you will get the results you asked for. If you are truthful about them, I am quite certain that you will be amazed. You have my email address. 021020 ... freakizh oh! oh! i wanna have one of those (i have one already though, but a gift by daffy would be nice). do you have time for me? :) see what i wrote you at pictures_of_blatherites 021020 ... ????????????? "EVERY open-minded, curious individual who has investigated astrology has become enthralled by the science." Well I guess if you define "openmindedness" as the willingness to believe pseudoscientific bullshit without skepticism, then certainly, you'd be correct. But otherwise, it's the same heads-I-win-tails-you-lose tactic used by anyone who is dogmatically espousing their RELIGION. If you don't accept the religion's beliefs, then you weren't "openminded" enough, or you weren't in the state of mind necessary for proper enlightenment. Blah blah blah. Admit it, Astrology is your religion. You talk about openmindedness, but you've already made up your mind, and you'd probably never be willing to accept that Astrology is bullshit, regardless of the evidence. "Time twins", eh? Sounds like something that you'd hear on the Art Bell radio show, which is a showcase for quacks who can "scientifically" prove all sorts of crackpot theories, from ghosts to ESP to bigfoot. But personally, I believe in bigfoot--and don't tell me that you DON'T believe in him until you've thoroughly searched every forest on this planet and found him absent. And read "Making Sense of Astrology". It has been said that, upon completion of this book, readers whose heads aren't too far up their asses will be unable to believe in Astrology. 021020 ... hey now! in dafs defense (which i never thought id be saying), the anonymous question mark person is the one who seems narrow-minded to me. but thats just my humble opinion. 021020 ... ????????????? I don't think there's anything wrong with believing in the Zodiac, but to say that you're close-minded if you DON'T believe in it--that's stupid and hypocritical. 021021 ... hey now! eh 021021 ... Dafremen Indeed it is. You are the only one that has said that here. (although you do it in an attempt to paraphrase ME.) Openminded means going into research WITHOUT the intent of disproving or proving something. It means going into research with the intention of finding the TRUTH, regardless of your own personal beliefs, feelings or biases. THAT is my position and I stand by my statements. There is nothing superstitious about the idea that a person's personality development being affected by forces which influence much larger bits of matter than our tiny brains. In fact, to DISREGARD those influences, upon MUCH reflection, seems in and of itself the most foolish and self-centered of the two notions. Doesn't it seem curious that with the rise of Christianity and the persecution of witches and heretics, interest in astrology fell? In fact, the skeptics of today are the heirs to years of brainwashing and anti-astrology propaganda that has been going on since well before the Age of Enlightenment. Further blows were dealt to astrology's "credibility" by the discovery of new planets in the late 1700's, 1800's and in the early part of this century. This skepticism has continued to be fueled by three things mainly: 1. The mainstream media's use of Sun sign horoscopes (which only take one part of a VERY complex combination of factors into account)as entertainment. Human beings are complex, not only must external forces be taken into account (astrological and locally environmental factors) but genetics also plays a part. Only a fool would deny that these things ALSO play a factor in establishing a person's personality. Look though you might, you will not find that fool here. An @sshole, perhaps, a long-winded boring nihilist, some would say yes, but a fool no. 2. The unwillingness of many less-competent but popular mainstream astrologers to take chances in their daily columns. In order to maintain their popularity, they rely on vague statements and generalities, to appeal to a larger audience. "Better correct and vague(thus vaguely correct to more people)than insightful and wrong" is their motto. This is a shame. 3. The stress given to predictive astrology (the attempt to predict coming events) over humanistic atrology (assisting people in understanding themselves and the people around them.) I feel that humanistic astrology is astrology's strong suit, and that if we are ever to overcome the centuries of anti-astrology brainwashing that has been going on, we must stick with those things that any reasonably well read amateur can present correctly. From everything that I have observed up to this point, predicitve astrology is iffy, and only successfully pulled of by VERY accomplished, very intuitive and well-learned astrologers. It's like having a guy who flies model airplanes take the Yoke of a commercial airliner. Not only that, predictive astrology cannot be empirically demonstrated, IMMEDIATELY. Humanistic astrology can, and for those of us with a logical mindset, HAS been, again and again. Even Sun sign-only personality profiles (such as the insights series, are more than likely to present a compelling picture, enough, perhaps to get most people to dig into the subject more.) It is a fascinating science, one that was capable of convincing even a hard-to-crack skeptic like me. (Hell it took 157 interviews to convince me that there was something to this stuff. To have gone on to 1000 would have only proven my desire to overlook and disprove what my research indicated. IT would have proven my lack of objectivity.) Here are the places that got me started: The Zodiac and Its Mysteries by A.F. Seward (not available in print except as an antique, but online at a website which I have created, typing in each chapter EXACTLY as it appeared in the book. The URL can be found above.) Linda Goodman's Love Signs Linda Goodman's Sun Signs The Only Astrology Book You'll Ever Need (Which up to this point, I've only found useful for technical information and chart calculation information. Her sun sign information is nowhere NEAR as insightful as Ms. Goodman's or Professor Seward's.) You are free to look into astrology in-depth and judge for yourself. You can do so with an open mind or a closed mind, and only you will know if you have made the right call in the end. IN either even, if you just sit on your hands criticizing, you have earned only the right to wallow in ignorance, like the superstitious, pseudo-scientists that you seem to hold in such contempt. Let's face it, unfounded skepticism based on NOTHING, is pseudoscience. That is your curent position, that of a pseudo-scientist. You are skeptical for it's own sake and THAT is a shame. P.S. Enlightenment is such a charged word. It seems obvious that you chose it for it's connection to spirituality and religion. Astrology claims NO religious affiliation. Different astrologers will mix their own personal idealogies into their interpretations. This is NOT astrology. Astrology is the science which they mix IN with those personal ideologies to make them more convincing. My personal ideology, as you are probably well aware, is that we are made of matter, will go back into the ground and become something else, like a tree or a plant, or maybe just dirt. I do not believe in a spirit, I do not believe in ghosts or aliens. Since astrology, I have refused to say that I KNOW those things do not exist, I just have reserved judgement until more facts are known for or against those subjects. Pyramid and crystal power do not impress me, nor does numerology. Then again, I haven't looked into these things as of yet. I believe in the foundations of empirical science, of logic and of mathematics. IT is upon these foundations that I have built my OWN belief system, having started with the notion that everything is made of matter and energy and that nothing can be created or destroyed. For more of my beliefs, you're welcome to read a letter which I wrote on the DAFFY blathe. IF any of these things sound like the irrational thinking of a fuzzy mind, then your definition of fuzzy mindedness is very broad and covers many of our world's GREATEST empirical thinkers as well. Mudmen burn people for witchcraft without investigating the possibility that witchcraft may or may not TRULY exist first. You have set yourself up as that mudman in at LEAST this discussion. If you ARE the rational thinker, that it appears you would like people to think you are, you would be well advised to look into the facts carefully and meticulously before you take such a stand. Yes freakizh, I would be glad to. Don't expect anything fancy, I'm still figuring this stuff out and trying to find what works and what doesn't. : ) 021021 ... ????????????? I don't think one has to extensively research every form of quackery to disbelieve it. You probably don't believe in phrenology, but how deeply have you researched it? How about dowsing? What about various types of augury? What about the Bible Code? Alchemy? Telepathy? There are so many pseudo-sciences that to research them all to determine their fallacy would be an obscene waste of time. 021021 ... ??????????????fan don't worry, little one. the smart people recognize and appreciate the clarity, the logic of your argument. you just can't reason with the dumb ones...it will make your head explode, eventually. 021022 ... hey now!s narcissistic brain calling people you dont know "dumb"... ha! i bet im smarter than youuuuuu areeeee! ;) 021022 ... amys "answer" i'm trying to think real, real hard. is this a yes or no question? 021022 ... krimilda dafreman: i'd also like to have one of those charts... i love your insights into all the signs and i'm a gemini, not as skeptical as i could be... should i email you? 021022 ... Dafremen Please do, Krimilda. As for the destractor/skeptic, I will debunk or embrace one "pseudo" science at a time thank you very much. To ignore it claiming lack of time is ridiculous considering how much time was wasted PROVING the Tychonian model of the Solar System, which proved to be patently FALSE. Scientists with REAL reservations have all of the time in the WORLD to disprove bullsh*t. It's when the "bullsh*t" resists disproving that they throw up their hands and state "we've wasted enough time on this." 021025 ... stork daddy well dafremen...it's just like freud's theory of the id and ego, it might be a plausible description to some, it might have aspects which correlate to some empirical observations that can be made, but there is never any way of proving or disproving that the the observable is caused by this unobservable system. Anyone can imagine a cause when they already have the result to work with. The inability to prove or disprove puts it outside the realm of science. If a person fit Freud's model they were mature, if they didn't they were repressing something. It was a procrustean bed, just like all of the horoscopes i've ever been exposed to have been. It's always vague enough to claim you no matter what your course of action or personality type. "You value interpersonal relationships" Who doesn't? Anyways, i don't want to be a monkey with a hammer. Although if you were calling me a monkey, thank you, thank you so very much, you're one of the few people left who's nice to me. There would be a quick way of "disproving" astrology. One could take a reasonable sized sample of people throughout the world born in the same month, and administer a personality test. I'm thinking the test wouldn't do better than chance in describing personality. And even if the month of birth does have an influence on personality, who's to say that it isn't the effects of the seasonal weather, or cultural expectations. I guess the cultural variety and meteorologic variety found in an international sample could point away from that though. I think a sample like that, if selected randomly, and given an accurate personality test, would most likely show patterns closer to chance than some systematic proof still. From one sample, inferring based on the tendency of samples means to form a normal distribution and as the size of the sample approaches infinite to exactly equal the mean of the population, we could infer from the single sample how reasonable it is based on how many degrees of standard error there should be. The only reason i'm mentioning this is to show that sometimes we can infer that something is a certain way because it's always been that way, and use our minds to save ourself the crude physical task of proving it. If you don't use your brain you're gonna have to use your feet. Perhaps i will make such a test, i'm interested enough. I'm not saying it's been proven or disproven, only that it is far from an airtight theory. Of course scientists make mistakes, mistakes are how we figure out what progress is. Artists make mistakes, and individuals make mistakes. Mistake cannot be avoided in human enterprise, because we seek a knowledge more vast than we are. Which is why free expression carries so much of its human mistake with it. 021025 ... Dafremen Sure stork, but how do you explain things like...oh I don't know..the fact that my wife colors or cuts her hair once a month like clockwork? (She's had blue, red, blonde, brunette, green and she's been bald three times, permed it, straghtened it, long short...you name it. The longest she ever went was 3 months....that's in 13 years!) That she has to rearrange the furniture once every 3 days or she goes absolutely NUTS? How do you explain details like this? (all described in The Zodiac and Its Mysteries Cancer Chapter Women Section) How? How also does one justify DENYING the role that the Moon, Sun and other gravitational bodies play in the basic development of our personalities on a physiological level(which in the case of the brain, amounts to psychological level..just ask any psychiatrist...hell ask Freud himself)? Does it make any sense to say NO these things that cause the SUN to wobble slightly DO NOT affect us during our early development? Or in fact, is that REALLY just an avoidance of something that not only seems empirically POSSIBLE, but seems empirically LIKELY? Are we so enamored of our high and mighty role as kings of all that we survey that we refuse to entertain the notion that we are more products of our environment than we would like to admit? Empirical science has established genetics, behavioral psychology, and the theory of evolution to describe why things are the way they are and yet cannot for the life of them explain why astronauts lose 10% of their bone mass per month in low earth orbit. The universe, even in our own backyard is full of HUGE mysteries that all of the resources of the finest minds have been unable to solve. This is one of those. Please look into the research being done into time twins, or astral twins. These are people born in the same area on the same day within seconds of each other. The "coincidences" in their lives are UNCANNY. Even hardcore skeptics cannot explain it away. Eventually they will shrug their shoulders and blow it off as we are now doing with astrology. That is a NON answer. There IS something to this, if I can't demonstrate it empirically, I can at least know it intuitively through objective observation. I also can observe the results of the information's use first hand in the improvements that it has made to MY quality of life and the quality of life of those around me. I do not NEED to know how my VCR works to enjoy the benefits of its use. Does it WORK? That is really all that matters in the end. The skeptics would have folks discard the VCR for lack of PROOF that it works. Not everyone can see those 3D pictures, Rollusions or Rolovision or whatever they are called...the skeptic would say that they are not there for that reason alone. They would say that folks are inventing them in their minds. The skeptics are dead wrong on the astrology question. Having BEEN one of their ranks, I speak wherefrom I know, emphatically. There is SOMETHING to this stuff and its not just psychobabble or wishful looking for facts that fit...it's REAL. Do the research for yourself..that's what it took to convince me...163 OBJECTIVE interviews and counting. Einstein once said, "Those who would set themselves up as Judges in the fields of Truth and Knowledge are shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." He was speaking of the closeminded scientists and skeptics of HIS time. He was speaking to folks like me as I was, and those who still are as I was. The skeptics. 021026 ... reitoei Some of the accuracy might be attributable to "self-fulfilling prophecies": someone hears what astrology says theyre like and subconsciously accepts that and finds remote similarities. but who knows? 021026 ... stork daddy There are certain things one should be skeptical of. The theory that nuclear warheads would cause peace is one of the ideas i wish people had been more skeptical of. Also, the problem i have with time twins is this: actual in the womb twins show empirical differences in temperment, personality, and even gasp aptitude. They also show many similarities of course. And of course we are physically affected by the planets. Anything with gravity that forceful will affect us. However, no cosmic body has as much gravitational affect on our actual bodies as the earth, so i find the focus on the sun and moon a bit misleading. The only reason the sun pulls the earth around is because of the massive electrical force holding all of the earth's particles together which causes any pull on one particle of it to affect multiple others. The sun does not rip pieces off the earth, or pull people screaming from their beds. This is because the entire earth moves with the sun's motion, the gravitational affects are not therefore, put to each of us directly, but are cancelled out with the relative motion of the entire earth. We are part of a system, this allows us to move within the system without encountering the force outside of it. But still, my main point is this, even if they mapped out how the physiological brain is affected by the moon or sun's gravity, they could never (not knowing with any degrees of precision yet how brainstructure affects personality) say that this is why our personality is like that. My problem with it is this. It runs against the seeming purpose of our minds. If our minds are to be adaptive to an immediate envoirment, they should develop as much around that immediate envoirment as much as possible. I would think personalitys dependant on the sun and moon and not paying enough attention to the tribal councils and sabre tooth tigers would be weeded out as unadaptive (since you chose to bring up evolution.) I think evolution is a fine descriptive tool for personality. What works is what we use. Sometimes what worked for a long time doesn't work anymore, and this shows the seperation between the internal and the external, that agonizing tape delay of memory, but still our minds are formed by our memories, and the memories or heritage of those who went before us, and those who survived. I'm not sure if i'd rather be skeptical or naeive. Sometimes i'm really not sure. Of course i really don't consider myself a hard boiled skeptic. I just like to argue, remember? I'd be interested to see if your profile worked on me. Of course, you might just write down things you already know about me from the writing you see here. Although that might offend your belief in free expression disattached from the expressor's reality. I do know this much. I'm really horny during the full moon. I guess i could come up with a million reasons why. So far, my most plausible one is that i'm really horny every other day as well. All my friends are geminis. They really can be a bit duplicitous. Or are they just like me, hiding a well of sincerity? and isn't that itself duplicitous? but seriously...like seven out of nine of this group are geminis. Five out of nine are left handed. I fit in there. Okay...i've gone off my rocker. anyways, happy star gazing. I prefer to explain my pains and triumps by what they're "supposed" to signify, a personal, social, biological exchange, where the moon is just a solitary source of reflected light, like everyone else's eyes. And you're right, if it works, don't ask. But if it doesn't always work....? 021026 ... stork daddy There are certain things one should be skeptical of. The theory that nuclear warheads would cause peace is one of the ideas i wish people had been more skeptical of. Also, the problem i have with time twins is this: actual in the womb twins show empirical differences in temperment, personality, and even gasp aptitude. They also show many similarities of course. And of course we are physically affected by the planets. Anything with gravity that forceful will affect us. However, no cosmic body has as much gravitational affect on our actual bodies as the earth, so i find the focus on the sun and moon a bit misleading. The only reason the sun pulls the earth around is because of the massive electrical force holding all of the earth's particles together which causes any pull on one particle of it to affect multiple others. The sun does not rip pieces off the earth, or pull people screaming from their beds. This is because the entire earth moves with the sun's motion, the gravitational affects are not therefore, put to each of us directly, but are cancelled out with the relative motion of the entire earth. We are part of a system, this allows us to move within the system without encountering the force outside of it. But still, my main point is this, even if they mapped out how the physiological brain is affected by the moon or sun's gravity, they could never (not knowing with any degrees of precision yet how brainstructure affects personality) say that this is why our personality is like that. My problem with it is this. It runs against the seeming purpose of our minds. If our minds are to be adaptive to an immediate envoirment, they should develop as much around that immediate envoirment as much as possible. I would think personalitys dependant on the sun and moon and not paying enough attention to the tribal councils and sabre tooth tigers would be weeded out as unadaptive (since you chose to bring up evolution.) I think evolution is a fine descriptive tool for personality. What works is what we use. Sometimes what worked for a long time doesn't work anymore, and this shows the seperation between the internal and the external, that agonizing tape delay of memory, but still our minds are formed by our memories, and the memories or heritage of those who went before us, and those who survived. I'm not sure if i'd rather be skeptical or naeive. Sometimes i'm really not sure. Of course i really don't consider myself a hard boiled skeptic. I just like to argue, remember? I'd be interested to see if your profile worked on me. Of course, you might just write down things you already know about me from the writing you see here. Although that might offend your belief in free expression disattached from the expressor's reality. I do know this much. I'm really horny during the full moon. I guess i could come up with a million reasons why. So far, my most plausible one is that i'm really horny every other day as well. All my friends are geminis. They really can be a bit duplicitous. Or are they just like me, hiding a well of sincerity? and isn't that itself duplicitous? but seriously...like seven out of nine of this group are geminis. Five out of nine are left handed. I fit in there. Okay...i've gone off my rocker. anyways, happy star gazing. I prefer to explain my pains and triumps by what they're "supposed" to signify, a personal, social, biological exchange, where the moon is just a solitary source of reflected light, like everyone else's eyes. And you're right, if it works, don't ask. But if it doesn't always work....? and then...is the vcr broken if the remote control is out of batteries? deep thoughts campers. 021026 ... Dafremen You have made the mistake of assuming that astrology disregards environmental or genetic factors. It does not. Not only does astrology acknowledge the great importance these factors play in our personalities, but goes on to warn us that it is FOR this reason, if no other that noone should take astrological knowledge of human personality characteristics to mean that we are identical to each other. That WOULD be absurd. As part of a system, (and being formed of the EXACT material of which that system is made) we are affected by those external in much the way that the entire system is affected. To say that we are SHIELDED by the Earth is a stretch, for we ARE earth, blood, bone and brains cells all made of earth, all destined to return there. The atmosphere may protect us from solar radiation, but it DOES NOT shield us from gravitational effects, nor entirely from seasonal changes in temperature and differences in the length of days. To say that humans are not affected by temperature, I think we can both agree is absurd, to say that changes in the duration of daylight is ALSO absurd, the photoperiod required by some plants to bud shows that such a connection is not only possible in nature, but prevalent. I would ask you to, for a second, take the perspective of a mind that is STILL discovering the very connections to its own bodyy. A free floating thought process in a physical brain if you will. Some of your FIRST awarenesses will be of those changes, however slight, in the inputs to you. Your inner ear's cochlea, in particular will establish your sense of location and orientation. BEFORE you open your eyes, before you become aware, before you begin to make cognitive steps, you are a raw, primitive brain that must now discover and explore. You haven't become aware of your eyes yet, and if you have, you have yet to learn how to use them, the ears? Sensory white noise to you, you haven't learned to distinguish sounds from one another, haven't learned how to use the stereo rangefinding capabilities yet, haven't learned how to filter anything out yet. You are basically a raw all channels receiver for EVERYTHING that comes in (which you shortly thereafter learn to filter out.) Do you HONESTLY know enough about the formation of the foundation personality to say that the subtle influences of one body upon another are not detected at this level? Are you HONESTLY knowledgeable enough to say what is and is NOT probable in determining basic personality traits?(Is ANYONE for that matter?) I for one am not, not only that, I believe that EVERY authority on the subject admits that we STILL know VERY little about the inner workings of the ADULT human psyche, let alone about the formation of that psyche. Your Dr. Freud had his contemporary in a Dr. Carl Jung, father of modern psychology who believed most emphatically that these possibilities were real. He was brilliant, NOT because he grabbed hold of a theory and an opinion and stuck with it, but because he was willing to adjust his hypotheses to fit his observations rather than looking for reasons to confirm why his older theories could still hold water. You might go on to say that I am using the unknown nature of the human mind as a hidey hole, an unprovable argument for me to hide behind. NO! I have done what YOU refuse to do. Rather than wallow in my skepticism, I, AS A SKEPTIC, an objective skeptic but STILL A DISBELIEVING SKEPTIC, created a set of objective questions based upon the information that I had found. I went with and against the Sun signs of my interviewees, to make it truly objective. After 157 interviews, I am not CONVINCED that Sun sign information is FACT, but am convinced enough that it is useful information on the PROBABILITIES of human personality. That is sufficient. 021026 ... stork daddy look, first of all i don't agree with freud on anything, except for the idea that there are things of significance we aren't aware of at all times, that is, the limits of conscious awareness. The details of his theory are pretty strange. So i wouldn't call him my doctor freud. secondly, a probabilities chart would suggest a systematic connection between personality and month of birth, thereby "proving" (as near as we can prove anything in the realm of personality), so it would suffice as you mentioned. Thirdly, being in a system does shield us from the direct effects of what would happen if we were outside of that system and exposed to the same force. If i'm in a car which is pulled by something, let's say a giant vacuum, as long as i'm inside the car my head isn't going to be being sucked against the dashboard, because the force is applied to car, and i, being a subset of the car, move with it, but move freely within it. The majority of the sun's force is applied to the massive interconnection of particles we call the earth. Of course gravity can affect a single particle, just look at earth, it is what keeps us all from floating away, well except for the things which are lighter than air. It is only in pulling against the massive electrical force holding the majority of the earth together that the sun shows its force. Against free floating particles, its force can only be manifested as much as the free floating particle's mass allows. Gravity from the earth affects us much more than the sun is what i'm saying. So why wouldn't that play a greater part in personality development if this is all about gravity? Seeing as our brains are constantly being pulled down. Actually, couldn't i stand on my head and change my personality? (of course it does if you do it long enough.) I'm not saying i know for a fact how the sun's gravity affects us, but if one assumes it has affects, one must explain the affects of gravity we can witness directly, since the common denominator in both is gravity. My main problem with astrology is how it gets its data. How does it make these predictions? What justifies them? Does it make it's predictions based on probabilities it gathered in a survey of people born in the same months? And if so, and indeed those born in the same month show remarkable similarities, why even bring the moon into it, why not look for explanations we can perhaps prove first? If that isn't how they get the data, how do they? How can they tell what a person's personality most likely will be like by the position of the moon? How does the position of the sun affect how jealous a person will be, how well adjusted? How does it affect it in a way that makes it more worthwhile studying than that person's personal history? Where is the inferential leap from the earth to the sun made? If not from the data collected, then where? If it is from the data collected then why can't it stand on it's own without the moon or the sun being the explanation for it? you wanna profile me? i promise i won't lie just to mess you up. 021026 ... Dafremen Your example of the car struck me as a perfect example of why it is we fail to see eye to eye on this. You claim that your head not being sucked into the windshield is an example of how being a subset of the system shields you from the effects of the vacumm. However, as a subset of the system, you ARE being pulled by the vacumm right along with the car! Your head not going into the windshield is NO proof that you are shielded from the effects of the vacuum. Remaining where you WERE would have been evidence of your being shielded by the effects of the vacuum. The Earth is NOT a car, nor is it a closed environment as far as gravitational effects are concerned. To deny the effects of that acceleration on your person as that car is accelerating right along with you is to deny that which is right before your eyes, namely, the acceleration of your person by the vacuum. Let's say that you were introduced to the car during a forward pulling vacuum, another person during a rear pulling vacuum, can we agree that THEY would not feel the same effects as you would as a subset of that system? I agree that the evidence I have collected so far COULD stand on its own as "proof" of the probability of this stuff having some validity. (You'll notice how reluctantly I use the word proof. I'm STILL a skeptic at heart.) For me, that simply is NOT enough. I, being the logic minded software engineering skeptic that I am, wanted a WHY that would allow me to embrace these findings more fully, particularly since they ARE counter to everything I have believed. I sat for days thinking of some WHY behind it, some LOGICAL why behind it. The fact that we are made of Earth and only of earth came first. SEcondly, the effects of these bodies..in particular the Sun and Moon upon the Earth itself. These two seemed to not only provide what COULD be a logical explanation for how the human personality could be affected on a very basic level,(although once again, the HOW it works EXACTLY STILL eludes me) but it also seemed to NOT contradict ANYTHING which empirical observfation has led me to believe thus far. THAT is why. I would have skeptics like myself bombarding me with questions and HARD ones, much as you are doing now. I am NOT the type of person to put myself in that situation without logical theories to back up my findings. At this point, I have gone beyond Sun sign only astrology and have begun to explore the other influences that are attributed with being able to influence human personality. My current INTUITIVE findings are that there is INDEED a more than coincidental similarity here. Do I know why? No. Wish I did, it would make this conversation much easier to bring to an end.(Not that I would want such a thing.) What I am doing now is searching for accurate SOURCES of information. Sources that seem to be less vague, less as you said, general and easy to make fit whatever conclusions one might wish to draw. I have one source of that information right now and I'm not really as impressed as I was with my other sources, but hey, this is a new investigation requiring a new period of trial and error. I must say that some of the details in these charts I've drawn up about my family and myself have been very interesting. The repeated mention in entirely unrelated entries for ME for instance that mention my travel to foreign lands, the importants of people of foreign birth in my life, my ability to pick up languages easily. (I speak fluent Spanish, Not like a gringo either, I'm mistaken for a white Mexican all of the time, learned it in Mexico after marrying a woman of Mexican birth.) Much of my chart mentions my searching after the true meaning of life(and FINDING it), philosophy and delving into unknown areas of knowledge. My fondness for solitude and reflection, my tendency to lead a solitary existence and have very few people who are close to me. (All true and all true BEFORE I ever got into studying this astrology stuff.) There is significant mention of my writing abilities, my fondness for poetry and music, (my incredible good looks!) Are these broad terms? Lucky coincidences? Why don't the other natal charts I am doing reflect similar attributes and personality traits? Librans are called aloof and somewhat fickle in love, yet I am not, coincidentally my Scorpio rising calls for me to be INTENSELY loyal to one person in love. Which I am. You might say these are counter points that make an incorrect guess impossible. I would then point out that MANY of my Libran aquaintances are just as fickle in love(having a tendency to declare their love too soon in a relationship) as the Sun sign descriptions say they are. They DON'T have that Scorpio rising attribute. They are not jealous either, not most of them,(in fact my jealousy puzzles them and I've been rebuked on several occasions) I am...that is ALSO a marked Scorpio trait(Aries comes to mind as well.)) I'm afraid the 'coincidences' taken separately are easily dismissed, but as a collection of 'supposed' insights, they are entirely too compelling to be so easily dismissed. I couldn't, and if you REALLY look into it, in an objective way, chances are, you won't be able to either. (That's not to say, that coming to a different conclusion than I did makes you UNOBJECTIVE. That would be my falling into the same foolish trap, and I am NOT that person. I never was.) The only way to say that something is patently FALSE, is to come up with FACTS that disprove that thing. I have been unable to do so. I cannot emphatically say that it is true or false, only that it APPEARS to be true based on my observations and research. I will send you a chart. I will take the hours to do that, NOT to give you ammunition to bring back here to play the little dismissing items one by one game, but to give you what I got that one day 2 years ago at the West End auction. A point at which to start in your OWN personal research, if you are so inclined. (I discovered a book in a box of psychology books that I bought for a dollar. I opened the book because I wanted a laugh and as somethign to do while my wife bid on housewares (Zzzzz) What I read in the book astounded me, it was MY perspective. I turned to the missus' description...that blew me away. I went on to observe my kids, taking guesses based on what I found in the book, BING I suddenly could understand the little rugrats! Not enough, I needed to know for sure, so developed my plan of attack and began conducting interviews with EVERYONE I could. You know the rest of the story. ) Until the chart arrives (you're about 6th in line) you can see that same book (I've typed it in and put it online) at zodiac.fragzaintskillz.com . (As you read the book, if you do, remember to throw out the Godfearing turn-of-the-century rhetoric and anything that doesn't describe a characteristic.) Good luck in your investigation. I WILL be interested to hear what you find. 021027 ... non believer hello???? 021027 ... stork daddy okay but still, my point above is that within an accelerating system, any accelerations within the system, as subsets of the system are subsumed by the acceleration of the system and are not necessarily affected directly in the way we assume we are talking about when we describe forces. For instance, if i'm sitting in my car and i push on the dashboard, the car doesn't move. I can accelerate all day, but because i'm within a system that is part of a larger system, my individual motions do not affect the motion of the larger system. This works both ways. If the car is moving at a constant speed (as our earth is) and i am at all points connected to that system then i will be able to move as if i was standing still. And moving forward or backward won't make a difference. The effect is only different to us because we have eyes, or because the speed changes and inertia shows itself. This is much like the earth being pulled at a constant speed. Because i move with the motion, the whole system which subsumes me moves with it, there is no cause for my brain to be pulled against the side of my skull. Because my entire skull is moving as fast as my brain, and my entire body with that. Yes, being within a system changes things. I can move around as if there was no force operating on me in terms of the sun's pull. It's as easy to walk left as it is right on the earth. This is because we're a part of a system travelling at a constant speed. I still find it interesting, but i disagree that it would be the affects of a gravitational pull, since the gravity of the earth is much stronger on us, and it would only make sense then that a person could change their personality by standing on their head. So i disagree that we aren't shielded from the effects of the sun's gravity in all but the most insignificant sense. There simply isn't enough mass to be pulled on at a level that would contradict the overall motion of the earth enough to not be stabilized within our heads. But i will wait patiently and decide for myself. Although i've disagreed with most of the things you've said about scorpios so far, so i don't know. i'm too skeptical to be skeptical though so we'll see. Anyways, if it's too much work i understand. Good luck with the others. 021027 ... phil stork and daf take your super powers somewhere else 021027 ... phil argh.. I can't stand reading all that crap. Pain... no. realy. I didn't read it. ha ha! The reason I don't believe in astrology is because it's bullshit. How could it possibly work, even from a theoretical point of view. To get a car running takes a lot of knowledge. Let alone to put a radio in that car and drive it down the road. What I am saying, don't you ever get a flat tire? Are you sure your engine is running right. I doubt it daf. I doubt you will ever know more than the simplest tricks to this life. Let alone play around with astrology as a humurous pastime. So... I have an idea of how astrology was created: First you start with a survey. Of people and their personalities. All the people who ever existed from the past to the future. Find all these weird "character traits" such as lifespan, number of kids, severed limbs, heir to the throne, ect. Then you study the rotation of the moon, the planets, and most of all the placement of the sun. (oh let's forget the things here on earth, and things we don't don't know about in space) And THEN make up some hokey pokey way it all works together (from fake knowledge of astronomy, which I am sure was hot stuff at the time). no, no, no. I am the master, I can take two lines on a piece of paper turn into a 3 hour play about whatever those two lines want it to be about. It's called eyeballing it. It's not scientific, anything as Merlin's astrology is none to scientific. No. If you were playing a game of pool using astrology you would miss every shot. But since the game is being played inside your head every shot is going in. I personally think that astrology effects the motion of the hyenas in Africa which in turns effects the spawning of tree bark in the amazon, which conclusively changes the time it takes, the number of times, and the fluid content of my urination. Mysteriously irregardless of the actual amount of beverage I've been consuming. Which then in turn effects the personality of every living thing on this planet. It's just coincidences that happen to form a pattern. Every time the sun moves over here, this happens to the personality of these children here. I see it all the time man! here smoke some of this I'll show you my book. I was going to name it "Balls Burning in My Name" but I did think it ran on a bit. So I named it Astrology after my cat, his name is AcIdHeAd. He's a sagatarious, in the 3rd quadrent of the shylack system. How do you go from...star here star there, sun here, moon there, womb there. TO president, 12 inch dick, pascifist, 2 dogs one named Ted, and a left foot that gets sore every thursday, alchoholic with a taste for sodomy, nice to mother, loses a lot of toothbrushes, and think the world of Jane Fonda. Is it "fill in the blank" "secret code search" "madlib" "you sunk my battlesship" type shjt? Or just a bunch of suave sentences you can pick from based on crude facts you gather about a person, like the clothes they are wearing, family heritage, ect. while you're eyeballing them from behind a booth with little monkey pickpocket. Take your superpowers back to the circus, and take that stork daddy fellow with you, have him make some pies or something. sheesh. 021027 ... Jeca A)the doctor who DELIVERED you had more gravitational influence on you than the closest planet. B)when the greeks and romans used the zodiac, yes, the position of the sun according to the background stars corresponded to certain times of year. NOW THE SUN ISN'T EVEN IN THE SPOT IT'S SUPPOSED TO, THE TIME ITS SUPPOSED TO, TO HAVE ITS SUPPOSED EFFECT. Any leos out there? well when you were born the sun wasn't in leo... 021028 ... ????????????? Oh yeah, that's right... forgot about that... Anyone remember back in... '94(?) when some Astrology people decided to change the system to compensate for the planetary shifts of the past couple thousand years? They wanted to change the date boundaries of each sign for the same reason, but it never caught on because people had become accustomed to "their" signs and the "personal insight" it gave them. I think they wanted to add a new sign, too. Anyone remember this? also, see time_twins 021028 ... stork daddy phil...you're stupid. if i was going to make stupid pie...i think you'd be a prime ingredient. that's how stupid you are. i could make a stupid pie substantial enough to serve everyone on this website using just what you just wrote. i was arguing against astrology anyways. oh well. i don't really care. it doesn't really matter where the sun is now as opposed to where it used to be. if there really were patterns worth discerning, they could be adjusted. i think what it is i'm fairly opposed to is the idea of there even being personality patterns based on the sun's position. that is, i don't think there was a correlation to begin with, not that there is and it's just no longer being accurately represented. if there is some common bond greater than chance these people share besides month of birth, a new system could be devised. i don't think there is enough , this other fellow does, and that's that. and yes, of course i know that the doctor has more gravitational influence on us than the sun which is what i was trying to explain, but if i didn't put it in terms of the earth i think it would've just been dafreman going on about how huge the sun is and how the moon pulls on the seas. the fact remains, the earth has the greatest gravitational effect on us. the only reason the sun doesn't, is due ot the reasons already stated. and phil, of course it's bullshit, but at least parts of it were decipherable. implications being..i never got why people would complain about something being written when truly this is adding to the clutter not eliminating it. just don't read it if it bothers you. anyways i'm not even going to give you high marks for your berations because they could use work. it was like watching the drunken fury of the french coast guard as they lose a hard fought naval battle to one of those plastic six pack connector thingys. oh well...i'm off to bake pies. don't even ask for a slice. 021028 ... ????????????? Yeah, the meanings based on planetary position COULD be changed to compensate, but they HAVEN'T been. So if the planetary positions over the past few thousand years have changed, but the supposed meanings said planetary positions denote have not... I'd say that alone makes a pretty good case for the fallacy of Astrology. 021028 ... stork daddy but don't you see how it also allows astrologists to say, well we simply need to make adjustments. they can still claim there's a science there, and that there measurements were what's off, not that there is nothing there to measure. it just buys them time. 021028 ... ..... ..... 021028 ... test just a test to see if this'll post 021102 ... Dafremen The number of arguments you people have presented based on nothing here are ASTOUNDING. I base my THEORY on objectively observed probabilities, nothing less. Incorrect assumption made by stork daddy: The sun has no effect on a subset of the system because it's effects are constant. The sun's GRAVITATIONAL influence WOULD be constant if the Earth's orbit were circular, it is not. It is elliptical. Therefore the gravitational effects of the Sun are constantly changing from weaker to stronger as the Earth approaches and recedes from the Sun. In addition, the tilted axis of the Earth's rotation ALSO influences the Sun's effects on Earth life. One need only look at the effect this has on the Earth's weather patterns throughout the year, particularly in our northern climates to see how easy it is to overlook the obvious in search of some way OUT of being placed in the position of empirical fool. I've worn those jester's bells you wear right now, I know what desparation to dismiss astrology feels like. TRust a fellow skeptic on that one. Secondly you listened and built on Jecca's incorrect assumptions. Two heads to pull out of the backside for the price of one. Good enough, less typing that way. Jeca's incorrect assumption: The gravitational pull of the doctor who delivered me had a greater influence than other bodies in our solar system. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but as stork has so kindly pointed out, we are subsets of a system, hell we are MADE of that system and IT (along with us as subsets of it) has a GREAT mass and is heavily influenced by SEVERAL and slightly influenced by ALL of the bodies in question. Once again,(and I hate to keep repeating this for the OBVIOUS CONCLUSION IMPAIRED), the Moon itself is capable of lifting our OCEANS several feet into the air TWICE a day, every day. IT actually causes you to WEIGH MORE twice a day. It is PREPOSTEROUS on ANY level ESPECIALLY an empirical one to deny the effects of at LEAST TWO heavenly bodies on human physiology. Those are the Sun and the Moon. I repeat, IMPOSSIBLE to logically refute these effects. In addition, Jeca, the Earth is caused to wobble slightly in it's orbit by each and every one of the planets. All of em, hell even a few asteroids. This has as much to do with the great mass of the earth as it does with the mass of those bodies. The attraction is MUTUAL, please don't forget that again. I really hate repeating myself. Before anyone bores us all with a repetition of how minute these gravitational effects are, I ask you to hold ONE brain cell in your hand and look at it carefully. Then get a microscope and try it again. Jeca incorrect assumption 2: Although she never says this, she implies that because the Sun no longer occupies the same areas of the sky as the CONSTELLATIONS of the zodiac once relied upon it doing, that this makes astrology poppycock. She is right about one thing, the Sun DOESN'T occupy that area anymore, the constellations were probably designated in a time when men did not have watches or calendars, but DID have knowledge of astrological probability. The constellations aren't accurate anymore. As even a BEGINNING AMATEUR astrologer could tell you(which is why you're all really beginning to bore ME..can you believe it? Now if you had looked INTO this stuff..), astrology doesn't rely on the constellations, but the ACTUAL positions of the signs in relation to the earth. The signs fall along the ELLIPTIC that ALL planets (save Pluto which has a highly erratic orbit) fall in and have fallen in for all of recorded human history and before. Again I repeat, for the OBVIOUS CONCLUSION challenged, astrological signs fall along the same plane as the orbit of the planets around the sun, therefore thier locations DO NOT CHANGE. Where the Sun goes, so go those signs, they are Earth and Sun relative, always have been,probably always will be. If, Jecca, Stork Daddy, you two would spend as much energy reading about astrology as you have spent here presenting ridiculous and incorrect assumptions based on NOTHING but ignorance of astrology and skepticism, you might have avoided these poor people all of this long-winded claptrap, and my long winded blah blah. Ahh phil, tired of riding the fence I see. You made a good point. The one I just made which is that this is tiresome redundant crap. It's the same garbage based on no research that inspired me to look into this stuff to determine whether I was right (in being a skeptic of astrology) or just talking out the side of my neck. I preferred NOT to continue to argue against something which I know nothing about, as you and our other esteemed colleagues have, without checking into it first. I know logic WELL, and I know probabilities WELL (I am a software engineer and worked for a company that made video gambling machines for 6 years) and there's something about sending someone a chart that describes their having a prominent nose and large bushy eyebrows, then having them respond that indeed it's true, THEN looking in the mirror (having shared this SAME astrological rising sign with this person) and noticing your OWN prominent nose and large bushy eyebrows that leaves one feeling rather foolish for saying "THIS STUFF IS HORSE CRAP" without first investigating(Particularly when noticing that your NEIGHBOR who ALSO shares this same Rising sign ALSO shares that characteristic.) Sure, it COULD be coincidence, I could be making things fit, but THAT is not now nor has it EVER been my purpose. I am after the TRUTH, period. The long and the short of it is THIS: I KNOW my motivations and my mind whereas you apparently and probably DO NOT. You all look absurd, and I mean that with as much respect as I can muster under the circumstances. Seriously, you sit on intellectual thrones and make like apes and it simply has GOT to strike you as incredibly foolish what you are doing right now if you would stop and think about it. It's like going to a debate without investigating the subject of the debate first. I suppose you could all join in a big huddle and peer-talk and back-pat your way into a "victory" but what victory IS THERE besides the truth? It's foolishness, plain as day. You could go get some quick facts and you will STILL look foolish unless you investigate as I have done. (Not agree with me, investigate like me. Your conclusions are your own. If they are incorrect, that will come out in the wash, as all of your others up to now have done. If mine are incorrect, they will also be dismissed eventually. So far they've held up for 10,000 years and are the foundation of the MAsonic order which has been around for over 700. It's funny how successful people of power seem to flock to the competent astrologers. Haven't figured that one out myself. I am still reserving judgement, but as you can tell, I'm becoming more convinced as the days pass.) Here's MY theory phil: There is some phenomenon here that we don't know or understand the whys of. It's real and we'd all rather deny it, because (if you're like me) you find the idea of fate or predestiny to be repugnant, even in physiology. So there is this REAL phenomenon (based on my research thus far) that was discovered over 9,000 years ago...probably much longer ago than that. Back then people lived in close groups (tribes), and knew each other from the time they were born until the time that they died. They knew each other VERY well, one could venture to say INTIMATELY, as one knows family members now, perhaps better. There were people who had a vested interest in knowing the people even BETTER than that: the shaman, wise men, witch doctors..etc. They were charged with providing spiritual guidance and leadership to these people and to do that, one must know one's patients( as any priest, physician, psychologist or parent can tell you). So the shaman were people watchers and they passed their observations down as they passed on their responsibilities to their apprentices. At some time, or perhaps over the course of millenia, who knows, patterns began to emerge. Similarities in people who had little in common besides the time around which they were born. As the centuries rolled by, these patterns were identified and associated with those times of the year. In order to make it easier to remember the characteristics, they picked animal symbols to represent a particular time of the year, always choosing a symbol that would help them to remember the characteristics that would be present in people born around those seasons. In fact, Cancer the crab in modern astrology was actually a turtle, I believe, in ancient Sumerian or Babylonian astrology. Still slow, still hard shelled on the outside, soft and tender on the inside. Still capable of inflicting harm if harmed, but preferring not to harm and preferring to run or hide rather than confront if given the choice. (Most Cancer people are like this.) Having developed their symbols, it was now simply a matter of looking into a sky filled with billions upon billions of stars (they didn't have our pollution problems back then, I imagine) and finding a pattern at that particular time of year that looked or could be imagined to look like the symbol for that time of year. Now they had a handy calendar to use no matter where they travelled to, these nomadic (or agricultural) peoples. That is MY theory phil. I rather like it because it doesn't require the introduction of GODS or magic or superstitious crap. No crystal power there, no gris-gris bags or voodoo dolls. No impressive story of creation, just very probable circumstances based on the ONE thing that I AM starting to believe based upon objective research: there IS something out there which we don't understand that affects human physiological (and as a result psychological)development. It's there. Little or no doubt in this born-to-logic raised-a-skeptic mind. The coincidences taken as a whole are just too compelling to be written off by anyone but people who cling to their disbelief like it's a god. No...like it's a superstition. That's what your disbelief is, phil, stork, jecca, and others. It is a superstition. A belief based on nothing but what you've been told, and fueled only by a reluctance to investigate and find out the truth for yourself. A superstition. 021103 ... Dafremen P.S. To you Cancer folk. When I said slow above, I meant slow to change. Conservative. 021103 ... Jeca I propose a trade, Dafremen-- my sources to yours. Foundations of Astronomy, seventh edition, by Michael A. Seeds, a book supported by the astronomers of Northern Arizona University, one of whom has brought us the discovery of the 3rd planet to exist outside our solar system. page 24-25 and I quote: "Ancient astronomers defined a zodiac, a band 18° wide centered on the ecliptic, as the highway the planets follow. They divided this band into 12 segments named for theconstellations along the ecliptic-- the signs of the zodiac. A horoscope shows the location of the sun, moon, and planets among the zodiacal signs with respect to the horizon at the moment of a person's birth as seen from that longitude and latitude. Even if astrology worked, the generalized horoscopes published in newspapers and tabloids can't have been calculated accurately for the readers. Astrology buffs argue that a person's personality, life history, and fate are revealed in this or her horoscope, but the evidence contradicts this belief. Astrology has been tested many times over the centuries, and it just doesn't work. Believers, however, don't give up on it. Thus, astrology is a superstition that depends on blind belief and not a science that depends on evidence. One reason astronomers find astrology irritating is that it has no link to the physical world. For example, precession has moved the constellations so that they no longer match the the zodiacial signs. Whatever sign you were 'born under,' the sun was probably in the previous zodiacial constellation. In fact, if you were born on or between November 30 and December 17, the sun was passing through a corner of the nonzodiacal constellation Ophiphucius, and you have no official zodiacal sign. Furthermore, astronomers like to point out, there is no mechanism by which the planets could influence us. The gravitational influence of a doctor who is delivering a baby is many times more powerful than the gravitational influence of the planets. The arguements in the preceding paragraph actually miss the point. Astrology is not related to the physical world at all. It does not matter what constellation the sun occupies, because astrology divides the zodiac int oequal mathematical sections, sometimes called houses, and it does not matter to the believer in astrology that the constellations don't match. Furthermore, the physical mechanism is beside the point for the true believer. Astrology is not so much an astronomical superstition it is a mathematical superstition." For the sources behind my source, please contact the publishers at http://www.thomson.com/. 021103 ... test test again... seemed to work the first time... 021103 ... flippo Testing... 021103 ... stork daddy look...if you really think the sun is pulling our brains against our skulls and somehow shaping our brains....you've got problems. a pull of that much force might as well pull us clear off the earth. there is no gravitational force which acts as strongly on us as the earth. that's a fact. you haven't at all explained how that factors in. and okay...bush eyebrows...riiiight. everyone born in a certain month has prominent noses and bushy eyebrows. that's not something we'd notice. wow...is that a groucho marx convention? no it's just people born in september. the fact remains...i know people born in the same month who have more in common with me than each other. this isn't an isolated incident. your whole theory about gravity doesn't explain how this gravity is affecting personality because it seems to get vague as to how gravity affects us and what causes personality. so it's not really even an educated guess, just an unprovable hypothesis. and the doctor delivering us still does have more gravitational effect, since if we're both standing near each other, we're both effected in relatively similar ways by a large gravitational pull, and our individual gravitational pulls operate on each other within that system. it doesn't matter that it's eliptical, all that matters is that the speed and not the acceleration is constant. if there was enough acceleration for seperate parts of us to move and not others (our brains againts our skulls) we'd feel it manifested like a car wreck when it happened. even at an elliptical rate, the same motion occurs on all parts of our bodies, there isn't seperation for our brains to push up against any thing or be pulled against anything. not that stretching a brain has been proven to change it. as if all of our neurons are pulled to one side of our head. as if this wouldn't be an observable phenomenon throughout life and not just at the time of birth. (i know you'll say that's the most important developmental time or something along those lines, but i'm saying the phenomenon itself could be observed.) in january is everyone on earth thinking more right brained thoughts? there isn't any evidence or proof for what you're saying, and anyone who lets you believe so is being nicer to you than you've been to others in the past. i've observed cases to the contrary. i don't see any worthwhile statistics. if this could be proven statistically, i'm sure it would at least be attempted. 021103 ... Jeca that was an answer to your first point, that i don't read up on my arguements. as to your first counterpoint, dafremen, i didn't mention the moon and the sun's effects on people-- and you're right-- at least the moon has a certain influence, as any female can tell you. but the only gravitational effects that are significant against the background pull of the relatively small but relatively close objects that move around us (people, planes, etc.) ARE that of the moon and the sun! your second counterpoint rather confuses me. astrologers still hold the same signs that they used thousands of years ago to mean the same things today, although the actual mechanism that is supposed to caused this effect is likely a sign ahead of what it was. tell me again why this doesn't matter? in fewer caps, maybe? yes, the position of the stars that form the constellations on the ecliptic has changed, if that's what you're arguing against. the plane hasn't changed, but the radial positions relative to the horizon (which you use to measure your positions from) HAS. do you want to provide a reputable study that resolves this debate on sign effects peronality? do you want to engineer one? we could conduct it on blather, but the sample size might be too small. and please don't cite the rhetoric about "scientific conspiracy." that gets old. 021103 ... ??????? If the gravitational forces of celestial bodies really affected our brains in a way that could significantly alter them, what makes you think that the corresponding physiological changes would be consistent? In other words, why would the corresponding gravitational effects necessarily change everyone's brain chemistry in the same way EVERY time? Furthermore, if the physiological changes WERE consistent, how could those changes affect such a complex phenomenon as PERSONALITY the SAME way EVERY time? Modern science can't even fully predict the WEATHER due to the complexity of meteorological phenomena. But somehow celestial gravitational forces affect brain chemistry in a way that is consistent for all people and simply observed. Yeah, right. Oh, but you say that the effects ARE that simple and consistent, because you've conducted a hundred-plus "objective" interviews to confirm your beliefs. Well, about your empirical observations, Daffyman: I think you found EXACTLY what you were looking for. So congratulations on confirming your cute theory about the tribes who could discern the human effects of Astrological phenomena because they were more "intimate" with one another, more in touch with nature and such. And nice strategy, invoking the rhetorical power of the convert and all, but your proselytizing is still completely ineffective. 021103 ... Dafremen Once again you present the argument (used by skeptical astronomers) that the constellations have moved. The constellations are not now nor were they EVER the basis of astrology. The constellations were simply indicators used by ancient peoples to tell them when those particular areas of the sky covering the signs were overhead at any given point in time during the year. They have long since become inaccurate and noone has used them, particularly not competent astrologers, for hundreds of years or more. The entire loooong article you quote here is therefore irrelevant. You go on to make assumptions about what the sun and moon are capable of and what they are not. Poppycock. We simply do not UNDERSTAND enough about the mechanics of VERY early brain and personality development to say that. We do NOT. Find a study DISPROVING that and you've convinced me. (Should be hard if not impossible, I've got an extensive psychology library...my father is a psychologist and I got fascinated at an early age.) It's extremely hard if not IMPOSSIBLE to interview a brain until it reaches out (say becomes aware of its eyes or its other connections to the outside world.) For this reason, the actual happenings and influential factors in early brain and physio-level personality development remain a mystery. Assumptions, assumptions and more assumptions. I admit, that I ALSO make limited assmptions. Here is the difference: I present my assumptions as theories and reserve judgement where there is no EVIDENCE to back a position up. I have tried to find logical explanations for phenomenon which I have OBSERVED over the course of two years of investigation and interviews. I have tried switching descriptions out and gotten miserable results when compared with the statistics from matched descriptions. I have done Sun sign based, and chart based investigations, have read nearly everything on the subject that I can get my hands on and have put each of these books to the test, throwing out those pieces of HOGWASH (astrologically favorable or not) which did not hold water. You meanwhile, read books written by people out to DISCREDIT astrology. Your sources are absolutely misinformed about the mechanics and methods of astrology or the probabilities involved. Practically EVERY study done on probabilities in an attempt to debunk astrology has focused SOLEY on Sun signs. This lowers accuracy rates sgnificantly. You, rather than studying for yourself, continue to follow these charlatans of science. These naysayers who claim to be the torch bearers of truth. That in itself is a shame, because your bias is reinforced by nothing but, as I said, misinformation. You will have to do better than a quote which is refuted by ACTUAL knowledge of the science of astrology and an assumption about what is and is not possible during early human physiological development. In fact, EMPIRICAL and LOGICAL conclusion DEMAND that of you. There (do I REALLY need to repeat this again?) IS no correlation between the constellations, the stars and astrology. None (except of course the star called Sol, our Sun). All the zodiacal signs follows the same elliptic as the orbits of the planets around the sun and therefore remain relative to the earth and the Sun in exactly the same way as they did ten thousand years ago. PEriod. PLEASE don't repeat that argument again, I'm (honestly) getting embarrased for you. It pains me to see someone stand up and wave misinformation around because they don't know any better and haven't taken the time to investigate. (P.S. I read that EXACT same piece that you quoted. Further investigation into astrology FROM THE SOURCES showed me the fallacy of that man's conclusion. He, like you now (thanks to him) is ALSO misinformed. Please stop repeating his ridiculous mistake. It's foolish and a waste of an apparently good mind.) I began this research in an attempt to discover the truth. These are my preliminary conclusions thus far and I am content that I have maintained my objectivity, STILL throwing out spiritual mumbo jumbo as it is presented to me in astrological texts, STILL throwing out idiotic assumptions about astrology being based on the stars as presented to me in astronomical and skeptic released texts. You will find your arguments flawed, I know, because they were MY arguments at one time. A very brief investigation into the science of astrology will leave any intelligent mind convinced that there is no clear cut answer to TRUE or FALSE on the astrology question. A more extensive investigation will reveal something even more disturbing: If there is an answer, it almost certainly leans in favor of TRUE on the astrology question. You can continue waving the same LAME tired whacked out assumptions based on piss-poor knowledge of how astrology is practiced, OR you can look into it (there are websites averywhere) and get more facts before you come back at me with what you BELIEVE (mistakenly) is some sort of backhanded shut-me-down. When I say thta you are making fools of yourseves, I don't say that as an insult or as a way of stating my case without backing it up. I've backed it up and refuted everything that you've said...logically and based facts that empirical science cannot disprove. I say that because it's obvious that you are standing whre I was, thinking the things I did and frankly...I was wrong, if not about astrology, at least about the points that you have brought up thus far. Investigate, PLEASE don't continue this until you do. It really DOES embarrass me for you, because...well...I've been in those shoes and the facts do not support your position. They just don't. Check it out and see for yourselves. 021104 ... stork daddy you didn't logically refute any of their or my arguments. you merely logically refuted aspects you thought you could refute. anyways, their being wrong doesn't make you right. astrology still holds the status of religion, neither disprovable or provable. my main problem with astrology is that it's a ridiculous form of personality development. if our personality, the sum of our tendencies and behaviors is based on the position of the planets and not the more immediate envoirment, i'm amazed people survived this long. just on an evolutionary level it's counter intuitive. a person's decisions to survive have to be based on what is most appropriate for a situation, whether that reaction was learned directly through a mind, or "learned" through the survival the person carrying the gene which facillitated proper action. for the moon or sun to effect personality is strange, because then the moon and the sun would've always affected brain development. so the idea that the moon and sun affect personality development statically now that it's already reached a level of stability is misleading because it fails to note how if the affects were ever-present they would've affected initial development. those brains which weren't allowed to develop in the useful way personality deals with the world might not've even survived the sun's pull destabilizing their attempts at development representative of their newfound ways of dealing with the world. if indeed brains developed in the face of such pull, to ensure survival, they would've had to be able to somehow develop along with the effects of the cosmos in a way that still attended most rigorously to the immediate envoirment. so taking the pull for granted, brains which fufilled the purpose of what we safely assume their purpose is (helping us navigate this world of needs succesfully). Now, don't get started on we can't claim to know what brain's purposes are, just because other animals meet their needs in other ways. They're born with more tools so we build more. Arguments like this are a happy side effect. Anyways, that is my main problem with astrology. It denies the effects of the immediate envoirment, which i would say effect our personality development a thousand times more. This is obvious in the fact that there are observable trends in personality. Reguardless of what month you were born in, if you are first born you show statistically proven similarities with other first born, if you come from a single parent household that has its own set of correlations. children of aggressive parents tend to be aggressive. so while the actual infant developing mind may not be understood in the way we understand inertia and newtonian physics, there are strong correlations present in the field of personality development. we understand a lot about the tendencies of personality, and can abstract the commonalities from the correlating factors. if astrology does have an affect, it hasn't been proven to me stronger than these affects. i know nine geminis. none of them are at all alike. i'm aware this sample size isn't huge, but it seems enough to be significant. since if astrology is as prevalent as you say, finding 100% of cases in any sample disagreeing with the pattern would seem quite hard when left to random chance. or it could be that there were other confounding personality factors which hid the influence of astrology. i think there are always confounding personality factors. i also know four kids divorced who live with their father in a middle class home and i see pertinent similarities in all of them. of course they're also vastly different. my point is that astrology if it accounts for any variability in personality doesn't account for any of import that i've seen. the idea is romantic, but it just doesn't seem to have any logic behind it. now you claim to be working philisophically backwards from the world of things to the world of ideas (the proper way as science is concerned), but i wonder about these samples. were they from a book? did you collect them yourself? how random were they really? if the research is tainted, so are the findings. if i gave out a survey that asked are you a republican or a democrat to cancers, are you telling me i'd find a pattern so far beyond 50% that i could claim it accounted for similarities in cancers beyond affects caused by upbringing and immediate envoirment? it's something you can't seperate from those things i'm afraid. if i asked favorite color (something we assume would be fairly variable) are you saying there will be a pattern? perhaps everyone in america likes blue or red more often than not. my point is i think tendencies like that override any tendencies caused by the moon or sun to almost invisibility. it's not like i don't know people, i know people, and i've never once known two people born in the same month and had to say...wow...leos huh? even something more traditionally "astrological" like impulsivity or emotional openess would seem more influenced by culture or heritage than the moon and sun. even weighting for cultural differences, are you telling me there's going to be a similarity in people born in the same month. if these affects were always present, why would cultures even develop? wouldn't people born in the same month manifest their similarities in some measurable way seeing as they all respond to the envoirment in the same moon and sun caused ways? why aren't we broken up into the countries scorpio and taurus and such? simply because personality has its roots in the world immediately around it. stargazers could be crushed if they're looking for a bull in the sky and not the bull running right at them on earth. as you can see my problems with astrology aren't just intuitive. i've thought out the implications behind it. if it could be proven that there were similarites based on "signs" i don't see why it hasn't been decisive enough to be widely accepted. and i don't want to hear widely accepted defined as being in the newspaper. 021104 ... Jeca daf, this arguement's going in circles. how about you use all this research you've done to do what all science should do, predict as well as explain? how about you guess the signs of stork daddy, ???? and I from what you know of us here? to make it fair, we can tell them to silentbob or someone unbiased beforehand and he can tell you if you're right. if you don't know us well enough, choose someone you do, but it needs to be someone you don't know the sign of. that sound good to you guys, stork and ??? ? statistically, the odds that you guess all three right by chance are (1/12)^3, or .057875%... if you guess two of three its (1/12)*(1/12)or .69444444%... and one out of three is (1/12)+(1/12)+(1/12) or 33.333%, according to my stat book. that check out with you guys? get all three and you're my hero, dafremen, two and i'm convinced. 021104 ... to be fair two more points-- a)has to be a blatherite so your source is not debatable (we know they exist) b)you may ask personality questions, as long as you don't ask age or time of birth. 021104 ... phil oh no, there is no point. If someone would ask me, is there a point to what you said earlier? I would say no, there isn't. In fact this has no point either, if you can "bridge". Oh but please read on. You are hopelessly addicted to my writing, you can't stop it from going through your mind and emerging deep within that crusty little soul. By this time you are probably wondering what I am saying, if you've stopped reading before this point you will undoubtedly come back. And wonder why. If you have made it this far on your first try I doubt there is anything that is going to stop you, so keep reading. I can understand how looking at the sun can make you go blind, and how eating your fingernails can make you sick. Oh yes, yes I can, yes I can, oh yes, I can, I can see that, oh yes, oh yes, yes, I can see... that, yes, I can see that. Have you ever wondered what life would be like without a night, I mean what it would be like to never see the stars up in the sky, to be blinded your entire life by the sun. How would we know to look, what would make us look, would we be compelled to explore deep space without first imagining? Have you ever wondered about personalities, about what creates a person's unique insight into life, there approach to problem solving, but more than that a person's conditioning into the world around them. How would you ever know to look at the stars for answers concerning the human life cycle if at first you didn't liven up your curiosity? We must see something in other people, a gap in the coulds through which we can peek. What is it that compells a person to teach someone else the knowledge he has? Is teaching something that will directly get him to his own ends, a necessary tool? Or is he giving you guidance? What sort of a man would compell a person to believe things falsely instead of teaching himself the faults of his ways. THe devil? Silent_Bob? NO! I SAY! Dafremaen. But what is the true source of daf's drive, what compells him, is it curiosity... or hunger? Is he unable to seek further, to grasp at the blind hand of faith, can he not see beyond the graveyard of his faith? Doesn't he believe, can't he feel? It pains me to understand so much yet do so little for the crawling human being nect to me...how long I have waited to see the look in their eyes when they discover the true force within themselves, when they stop backing away from the change, when they get stuck in logic, an unbreakable cavity which holds your mind still, still enough to see beyond your own mute wriggling and stand up for yourself. To have the backbone to say no, even though I cannot change this world for everyone I can change it for myself, someone wants me to change myself someone is giving me the power to dig my way up the muddy banks and see the desert. I want to turn off the noise, to reject the hypothesis, that all things that I have been forced to believe, to want. For that is the truest illusion of all, the illusion of satisfaction, the acceptance of death, and the accomplishments of evil men. Who issue death sentences on the minds of millions of users, breaking their will by giving them a way out of using it. Astrology is way over my head. I jsut think it's bullshit. 021105 ... phil not that i"m a dick or anything, but haven't you done nothing but found out that the internet lowers the level of abuse that works on a person? I mean if you overstate your irradic discontent for another, it seems somehow dissipated. BLundering. But it's a lot easier to make a bunch of reject fluff look important, at least for a little while. I feel floaty... can't go with the flow so I hurt what I know to be good to me I know, it would be good to me but I feel to good to good to feel my feelings, lie lie lie they oughta die die die brain malfunction, carnal dispute words come with reason in a distrustful suit saw once the reason, horrible true reason felt once the pain grasped at a gun can't point at the blame blame blame blam blam blam can't shoot straight can't walk alone can't get off the couch can't not lie can't not feel can't not be not can't be real can't fight it can't fight it can't die brain is fried haywired illsupplied forcefield can't grasp the thought, this way or that can't stop thinking nothing can't stop dancing can't walk straight can't stand to hurt wear my hat straight "Phil, the information is free." Ccan't find a reasonN Ccan't ask you howW Ccan't pull the triggerR Iit's never gonna goO I was gonna ask you a question, but I had to kill you first, gonna see the truth, but I had to die first, gonna see god when I die, gonna ask him why, gonna show him my lucky_scar, gonna ask him why why why, gonna see my brain, the juices slipping apart. IT WOULD JUST BE BETTER NOT TO READ! 021105 ... ??????? Yeah, Daffyman, Astrology has nothing to do with the stars. Whatever. But so what? Saying that the SUN affects one's personality is no less crazy than saying the same is controlled by the other stars. The same questions still remain: How could any gravitational force (terrestrial, celestial, or otherwise) affect brainwaves (or whatever) in a way that consistently produces the same complex set of characteristics that we might call personality? It makes no sense. Is it magic? Special Sun Magic? And it can't be proven. Not objectively. Oh, but "science is closeminded". Again, whatever. I'm sure that's what the crazy fucks behind every form of quackery once said. Science is no more closeminded than you. (And at least science doesn't believe that all Cancers like to have their asses played with, or whatever you said.) And if skeptic rhetoric seems tiresome, then so does yours. Yours is the rhetoric of a religious fanatic. I mean, this page is ostensibly an "answer" but amounts to little more than bluffing enlightenment. So guess our signs. Or something. Because thus far, the only way you've "proven" your beliefs is through subjective interviews where you found what you were looking for. Really, if you want to win any converts to your extraspecial Astrology cult, you're going to have to take a chance. If it's science, you can prove it. But incidentally, I want to be the Blather phrenologist. See--Daffyman is the Blather Astrologer, and I feel like every form of pseudo-science should be represented on this website. So please, everyone, send me detailed measurements of the bumps on yours skulls and I'll tell you all sorts of pertinent personality info based on said measurements. (And don't worry, I'll leave out the creepy stuff about assplay so prevalent in Daffyman's Astrology work.) 021105 ... stork daddy i believe in faith. oh and on a second note...dafreman already knows my sign. admittedly though, it was because i told him it not because he guessed it. although i'm sure ad hoc he'll say he knew. 021105 ... ??????? Well I'm reading your aura and it's.... turquoise! Was I right? 021105 ... ??????? Incidentally, people with turquoise auras like to have their asses played with. Try to use that to your advantage, if possible. 021105 ... Dafremen This is for those of you who sit on your asses and yack about a subject which you know nothing about, not because you COULDN'T know, but because you choose not to investigate. see also: DEAR_CARL_SAGAN 030405 ... Dafremen I would also like to follow this up by mentioning that not ONE of these skeptics had the nerve to let me do their birth charts. Not one. If that doesn't say something about the certainty of their skepticism, it at least says something about their willingness to educate themselves before they speak. The offer is still open. You have my email address. 030405 ... skeptic Astrology, like other forms of pseudoscience, tries to lay claim to the prestige of science without submitting itself to the discipline of the scientific method. The key is falsifiability. Some believers in astrology consult a horoscope published in a newspaper, which claims to make predictions for the coming day. Newspapers often publish horoscope columns with the title "Astrological Forecast," implying that they should be considered on the same footing with weather forecasts. However, astrology has failed carefully designed empirical tests of its predictive claims,[1] (http://home.wxs.nl/~skepsis/astrot.html) unlike meteorology, which, although not always correct, has been proved to be statistically more accurate than random guessing. As is often the case with pseudoscience, the practitioners of astrology respond to such disproof either by changing their claims, or by refusing to accept the scientific method as a valid test of their claims. As an example of changing their claims, some astrologers may say that astrology is only useful when the astrologer can have personal contact with the client, in which case the newspaper astrology columns should be abolished. If, on the other hand, the scientific method is to be rejected entirely, the problem is that astrologers do not agree on any alternative method of determining whether a particular astrological method is any more or less correct than any other. There are also some specific criticisms about methodology that scientists make of astrologers. Almost all modern astrologers eschew direct observation in favour of specially constructed astrological ephemeris. The tropical zodiac system used by most astrologers in the west does not align with the stars they claim to study. When astrologers say a planet is in a particular sign they are not talking about the set of stars which an observer can go out at night and observe, they are talking about a hypothetical position in the sky which once coincided with that constellation 2000 years ago. The precession of the Earth's axis as it rotates means that all stars in the sky have, over 2000 years, apparently moved their positions by 24 degrees when seen by an observer on Earth. While scientists know and understand this astrologers have decided to ignore it. The result is that most of the time when an astrologer says a planet is in one sign, a scientist will know it is in fact in the next one. Astrologers who use the tropical zodiac, as almost all in the west do, take an arbitrary point in the past as the basis for their interpretation of the heavens. The zodiac of 2000 years ago holds no special place in astronomy. If we go back 4000 years we find Taurus was the constellation of the Vernal equinox , go back 6000 and Gemini was. Astronomers understand that the view of the heavens continually changes over long periods of time while astrologers use a fixed and inaccurate version of reality. Astrologers assume that all the constellations on the zodiac are of equal size of 30 degrees when in fact there is considerable variation from 44 degrees across for Virgo to 20 degrees across for Cancer. The constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent holder, was recognised by the ancient Greeks, and lies on the Zodiac. It contains the sun once a year and the planets at various other times. Yet astrologers ignore it. Astronomers dispute the existence of some and claim others are trivial well-understood relationships despite irrelevance to astronomy. Scientific verification of the existence of astrological influences have yielded negative results in most, but not all, cases. Scientists claim the effect of tidal forces is too weak over a small area, such as the human body, to have influence on biological organisms. Astrologers counter that gravity may not be the mechanism of astrological phenomena, whereupon the opponents dispute the existence of correlations. 041123 ... http://skepdic.com/astrolgy.html According to some astrologers, the data support the hypothesis that there is a causal connection between heavenly bodies and human events. Appeals are made to significant correlations between astrological signs and such things as athleticism. However, even a statistically significant correlation between x and y is not a sufficient condition for reasonable belief in a causal connection, much less for the belief that x causes y. Correlation does not prove causality; nevertheless, it is extremely attractive to defenders of astrology. For example: “Among 3,458 soldiers, Jupiter is to be found 703 times, either rising or culminating when they were born. Chance predicts this should be 572. The odds here: one million to one” (Gauquelin 1975). Let’s assume that the statistical data show significant correlations between various planets rising, falling, and culminating, and various character traits. It would be more surprising if of all the billions and billions of celestial motions conceivable, there weren’t a great many that could be significantly correlated with dozens of events or individual personality traits. Defenders of astrology are fond of noting that ‘the length of a woman’s menstrual cycle corresponds to the phases of the moon’ and ‘the gravitational fields of the sun and moon are strong enough to cause the rising and falling of tides on Earth.’ If the moon can affect the tides, then surely the moon can affect a person. But what is the analog to the tides in a person? We are reminded that humans begin life in an amniotic sea and the human body is 70 percent water. If oysters open and close their shells in accordance with the tides, which flow in accordance with the electromagnetic and gravitational forces of the sun and moon, and humans are full of water, then isn’t it obvious that the moon must influence humans as well? It may be obvious to some, but the evidence for these lunar effects is lacking. Astrologers emphasize the importance of the positions of the sun, moon, planets, etc., at the time of birth. However, the birthing process isn’t instantaneous. There is no single moment that a person is born. The fact that some official somewhere writes down a time of birth is irrelevant. Do they pick the moment the water breaks? The moment the first dilation occurs? When the first hair or toenail peeks through? When the last toenail or hair passes the last millimeter of the vagina? When the umbilical cord is cut? When the first breath is taken? Or does birth occur at the moment a physician or nurse looks at a clock to note the time of birth? Why are the initial conditions more important than all subsequent conditions for one’s personality and traits? Why is the moment of birth chosen as the significant moment rather than the moment of conception? Why aren’t other initial conditions such as one’s mother’s health, the delivery place conditions, forceps, bright lights, dim room, back seat of a car, etc., more important than whether Mars is ascending, descending, culminating, or fulminating? Why isn’t the planet Earth—the closest large object to us in our solar system--considered a major influence on who we are and what we become? Other than the sun and the moon and an occasional passing comet or asteroid, most planetary objects are so distant from us that any influences they might have on anything on our planet are likely to be wiped out by the influences of other things here on earth. No one would claim that in order to grasp the effect of the moon on the tides or potatoes one must understand initial conditions of the Singularity before the Big Bang, or the positions of the stars and planets at the time the potato was harvested. If you want to know what tomorrow’s low tide will be you do not need to know where the moon was when the first ocean or river was formed, or whether the ocean came first and then the moon, or vice-versa. Initial conditions are less important than present conditions to understanding current effects on rivers and vegetables. If this is true for the tides and plants, why wouldn’t it be true for people? Finally, there are those who defend astrology by pointing out how accurate professional horoscopes are. Astrology “works,” it is said, but what does that mean? Basically, to say astrology works means that there are a lot of satisfied customers and one can shoehorn any event to fit a chart. It does not mean that astrology is accurate in predicting human behavior or events to a degree significantly greater than mere chance. There are many satisfied customers who believe that their horoscope accurately describes them and that their astrologer has given them good advice. Such evidence does not prove astrology so much as it demonstrates the Forer effect, and confirmation bias. Good astrologers give good advice, but that does not validate astrology. There have been several studies that have shown that people will use selective thinking to make any chart they are given fit their preconceived notions about themselves and their charts. Many of the claims made about signs and personalities are vague and would fit many people under many different signs. Even professional astrologers, most of whom have nothing but disdain for sun sign astrology, can’t pick out a correct horoscope reading at better than a chance rate. Yet, astrology continues to maintain its popularity, despite the fact that there is scarcely a shred of scientific evidence in its favor. 041123 ... Richard Dawkins The shape of a constellation is ephemeral. A million years ago our Homo erectus ancestors gazed out nightly (no light pollution then, unless it came from that species' brilliant innovation, the camp fire) at a set of very different constellations. A million years hence, our descendants will see yet other shapes in the sky, and their astrologer (if our species has not grown up and sent them packing long since) will be fabricating their oracles on the basis of a different zodiac. A far more rapid astronomical shift is the precession of the equinoxes. (Many astrologers are aware of precession but, instead of updating their methods, they prefer the lazy escape of 'tropical astrology' in which one uses zodiacal constellations as labels for the patch of sky where they would have appeared years ago). My birthday (26 March) is listed in the papers as Aries but this is the sun sign which somebody with my birthday would have had when Ptolemy codified all that stuff. Because of the precessional shift of approximately one whole zodiacal sign over the AD era, my sun sign is in fact (if you can call it a fact) Pisces. If astrologers were doing something that had any connection with reality, this presumably ought to make a difference. Since they aren't, it doesn't. Scorpio could go retrograde up Uranus and it wouldn't make any difference. Actually, of course, only planets can "go retrograde", and even then it is an illusion. As they, and we, orbit the sun, planets will on occasion appear to reverse their direction from our point of view. But these occasions have no significance. From a third planet they would be seen to "go retrograde" at different times. Planets do not really "wander", and certainly not remotely near any constellation, which are the distant backdrops of our viewpoint. Even if "going retrograde" or "moving into Aquarius" were real phenomena, some thing that planets actually do, what influence could they possibly have on human events? A planet is so far away that its gravitational pull on a new-born baby would be swamped by the pull of the doctor's paunch.3 No, we can forget planets going retrograde, and we can forget constellations except as a convenient way of finding our way around. What else are we seeing when we gaze up at the night sky? One thing we are seeing is history. When you look at the great galaxy in Andromeda you are seeing it as it was 2.3 million years ago and Australopithecus stalked the African savannah. You are looking back in time. Shift your gaze a few degrees to the nearest bright star in the constellation of Andromeda and you are seeing Mirach, but much more recently, as it was when Wall Street crashed. The sun, when you see it, is only eight minutes ago. But look through a large telescope at the sombrero Galaxy and you are seeing a trillion suns as they were when your tailed ancestors peered shyly through the canopy and India collided with Asia to raise the Himalayas. A collision on a larger scale, between two galaxies in Stephan's Quintet, is shown to us at a time when on Earth dinosaurs were dawning and the trilobites fresh dead. Name any year in history and there will be a star up there whose light gives you a glimpse of something happening that very year. Whatever the year of your birth, somewhere up in the night sky you could find your birth star (or stars, for the number is proportional to the third power of your age). Its light enables you to look back and see a thermonuclear glow that heralds your birth. A pleasing conceit, but that is all. Your birth star will not deign to tell anything about your personality, your future or your sexual compatibilities. The stars have larger agendas, in which the preoccupation's of human pettiness do not figure. Your birth star, of course, is yours for only this year. Next year you must look to another shell of stars, one light year more distant. Think of this expanding bubble as a radius of good news, the news of you birth, broadcast steadily outwards. In the Einsteinian universe in which most physicists now think we live, nothing can in principle travel faster than light. So, if you are 50 years old, you have a personal news sphere of 50 light years radius. Within that sphere it is in principle possible (obviously not in practice) for news of your existence to have permeated. Outside that sphere you might as well not exist - in an Einsteinian sense you do not exist. Older people have larger existence spheres than younger people, but nobody's existence sphere extends to more than a tiny fraction of the universe. The birth of Jesus may seem an ancient and momentous event to us. But the news of it is actually so recent that, even in the most theoretically ideal circumstances, it could in principle have been proclaimed to less than one 200-million-millionth of the stars in the universe. Many, if not most, of the stars out there will be orbited by planets. The numbers are so vast that probably some of them have life forms, some have evolved intelligence and technology. Yet the distance and times that separate us are so great that thousands of life forms could independently evolve and go extinct without it being possible for any to know of the existence of any other. The real universe has mystery enough to need no help from obscurantist hucksters. Scientific truth is too beautiful to be sacrificed for the sake of light entertainment or money. Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles. By existing law neither Beethoven nor nature can sue, but perhaps existing law could be changed. If the methods of Astrologers were really shown to be valid it would be a fact of signal importance for science. Under such circumstances astrology should be taken seriously indeed. But if - as all indications agree - there is not a smidgen of validity in any of the things that astrologers so profitably do, this, too, should be taken seriously and not indulgently trivialised. We should learn to see the debauching of science for profit as a crime. 041123 ... daf So far, the argument that's been presented by the skeptics has been presented again. (This is the fourth time some poor misinformed schmuck has tried to bring up the precession of the constellations.) This is an argument written by astronomers who believe that astrologers locate the signs based upon the constellations. Astrologers do not locate the signs using the stars in the sky. Western astrologers divide the Solar System's circumference into 12 sections of 30 degrees each. These are the signs. In case noone notices, skeptic after skeptic has presented their "case", which is that the constellations have moved. What this proves is that skeptic after skeptic hasn't even taken 5 minutes to read about how astrology works. They've read about how astronomers think astrology works, and most astronomers know nothing about how astrology works. Why? Why wouldn't astronomers investigate? For the same reason that these skeptics didn't. They are convinced by their own skepticism, and their egos find that a perfectly reasonable method of determining the truth. After all, if astrology turned out to have merit, whatever would they say? However could they live down the stupidity of claiming to know the truth of something you've never looked into? Here's a book you can get. It is the best book on Sun sign astrology that there is. It's by a psychologist and astrologer named Phyllis Firak-Mitz and it's called: "You're Every Sign" You'll find the information EXTREMELY insightful and accurate. There is also a program out there called Solarfire. You're welcome to get a copy. With nothing more than a date, time and place of birth, this program will generate a 32 page report with EXTREMELY accurate information. (I would estimate that over 80-90% accuracy in most cases) Solarfire has been purchased by the sales and marketing departments of several Fortune 500 companies. You can find that program here: http://www.alabe.com/sf4&pnr.htm (Version 4 is much cheaper than version 5.) I have a copy of Solarfire, and so again, if anyone would like to see for themselves: Keep your name to yourself and send a Date, Time and Place of Birth to dafremen@hotmail.com Your chart will be sent to you within 3 days at no charge. Again, a dubious pleasure blather. You must know by now, how strongly I feel about fighting this sort of misinformation born of ignorance, particularly since I was willing to return here to do so. (Again thank you "anonymous" email tipster. Glad you enjoyed your chart.) 041123 ... . http://www.skepsis.nl/astrot.html 050823 ... The Heretic I AM A NONBELIEVER NOT A SKEPTIC. 050823 ... dafremen see also: PERCEPTION_IS_NOT_REALITY 050823 ... The Heretic EMPIRICISM. SCIENTIFIC METHOD. CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP. NECESSARY CONNECTION. THESE ARE ALL MISSING IN ASTROLOGY. IT IS NOT A DEMONSTRABLE SCIENCE. 050825 ... daf Bullsh*t. You say that is true because someone told you it is so. Not because you've investigated. I'd be more than happy to blow your mind any day of the week if you'd care to have your chart done. 050826 ... 42 usc 1983 Instead of just saying that his criticism is bullshit, point us to all the credible studies that support your views. 050826 ... unhinged oh_blather oh the early internet 180829 what's it to you? who go blather from