Astrological interior design

It's always interesting when woo-woos meld together different traditions, apparently not recognizing that if you have a ridiculous idea, it's not going to become more accurate if you combine it with several other ridiculous ideas.

And that even holds true if you somehow get your nutty claim into a major media outlet.

Someone should have explained all of this to Suzy Strutner, who wrote an article for Huffington Post called "Your Birthday Could Say a LOT About What Happens In Your Home."  And we're not just talking about timing of birthday parties, here.  Strutner claims that we should all pay close attention to something called "local space astrology," which seems to combine regular old astrology with ley lines and feng shui to come up with an all-new amalgam that may rival the idea that the shape of your ass can predict your future for sheer idiocy.

Apparently, what you're supposed to do is to get a "local space chart" which identifies the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets at the moment of your birth.  You then lay this chart over the floor plan of your house, and see which planets are where.

Or something like that.

Because I don't see how this could work, okay?  Even if you buy the whole astrology thing, which I don't, why would my "local space chart" have anything to do with my current house?  I was born on a military base in Quantico, Virginia, and I now live in upstate New York.  So at the moment of my birth, a completely different set of people lived here, who all were born in different places yet, and so on.

Plus, why should it be my "local space chart" at all?  Why not my wife's?  Or our sons'?  Or our dogs'? Maybe Mars being in Sagittarius is why my one dog woke me up barking like hell at three in the morning today.  You know, all of the business about the God of War and muscly centaur dudes with bows and arrows made him feel like he needed to defend our house.  I'm not sure from whom.  Knowing him, it was probably an unusually vicious chipmunk, or something.

But Strutner, and Kita Marie Williams, the "astrological interior designer" she consulted for this exposé, apparently don't see anything at all illogical about all this.  Strutner writes that there's a way to get around having bunches of different people in the house:

Ideally, you'd center your entire floor plan around the planets.  But that's almost always impossible...  Plus, if many people live in your home, then their ideal room setup is going to be different than yours, since they have a different local space chart.  Instead, learn how the planets make each room for each person.

She gives the example of the "Mars line" being the line of "combative energy," so if your "Mars line" runs through your living room, you should watch exercise videos there, or "meditate there if you need a powerful boost."  So maybe my dog was just doing barking meditation, or something.

But sometimes the lines don't, um, line up so well.  Strutner tells us one example:

Of course, some planet lines may not sync well with the rooms that they intersect.  This might debunk household crises like a broken computer, according to astrology expert Gloria Roca.  Roca once consulted a client whose broken computer sat near her home's Neptune line.  The machine likely broke down because Neptune represents slowness and blur, Roca says.  Once her client added a photo of a serene mountain -- associated with the earthy and wise planet Saturn -- to the room, the computer started to work just fine.

Righty-o.  Someone should tell that to the people on the Geek Squad over at Best Buy.  Don't bother taking the customer's computer apart. Just tape a photograph of a "serene mountain" to it and it'll repair itself.  That should "debunk" the problem, all right.

Roca, Williams, and Strutner tell us that we should head off this sort of problem by decorating according to our "local space chart" right from the get-go.  A room that has a "Mars line" should have bright red walls, they tell us, to "bring forth its best energy."  Which sounds like exactly the décor I'd choose, if I was the interior designer for the Marquis de Sade.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

But the rest of us might choose something a little more subdued, regardless of what planet's lines run through the room.  Bookshelves are "Jupiterian," we're told, and flower bouquets are associated with Venus.  Which raises a problem; what if a room is multi-purpose?  Many of us read, sleep, watch TV, and have sex in our bedrooms.  Do we have to change the décor every time we want to switch gears?  Yeah, that'd work.  "I'm sorry, dear, we can make love as soon as I finish repainting the walls."

So anyway.  The whole thing strikes me as ridiculous on a number of different levels.  The astrologers really should go back to telling their clients that because the Moon is in Scorpio, they're going to meet a tall, handsome stranger some time in the next two weeks, and let the ley lines and feng shui nuts do their own thing as well.  Combining them all just leads to a messy conflict of interests, and nobody wants that.

But I probably only said that because the Mercury line under my office intersects with the fifth house of Capricorn, or something.  And also because I'm a little grumpy about being woken up at three AM.

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The meaning of "Two Dignified Spinsters Sitting in Silence"

I have frequently ranted at length about how silly the practice of astrology is.  The last mention of my general disdain for the practice prompted one of my readers to send me an email, the gist of which was, "You haven't even begun to plumb the depths of the silliness," and attached a link to a page called, "The Degrees and Meanings of the Sabian Symbols."

For those of you who would prefer not to risk valuable brain cells even opening this link, allow me to explain that the Sabian Symbols are mystical images, one for each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac.  Another site, simply called "Sabian Symbols," describes them as follows:

Renowned worldwide as both an uncanny divination system and an insightful tool for astrologers, the Sabian Symbols were channeled in San Diego in 1925 by Marc Edmund Jones, a well reknowned [sic] and respected astrologer, and Elsie Wheeler, a spiritualist medium.  They consist of 360 word images corresponding to the 360 degrees of the zodiac (each zodiac sign comprising of 30 degrees)...  The Sabian Symbols are extraordinary for insight, revelation and guidance.  Miracles, big and small, happen in your life when you tap into their field... (it is) an "ancient mind matrix."

Well.  Alrighty, then.  Let's just take a look, shall we?  Here are a few selected Sabian Symbols from various degrees of the zodiac.  Let me know of any insight, revelation, or guidance you got from them, okay?

• Aries, 7-8 degrees: A large woman's hat with streamers blown by the east wind.
• Taurus, 15-16 degrees: An old teacher fails to interest his pupils in traditional knowledge.
• Leo, 1-2 degrees: An epidemic of mumps.
• Virgo, 15-16 degrees: In the zoo, children are brought face-to-face with an orangutan.
• Sagittarius, 20-21 degrees: A child and a dog wearing borrowed eyeglasses.
• Capricorn, 16-17 degrees: A repressed woman finds psychological release in nudism.
• Aquarius, 22-23 degrees: A big bear sitting down and waving all of its paws.

Okay, so that gives you an idea.  And no, I didn't make any of these up.  Nor did I pick these out because they sound especially weird; they all sound like this.  All I can say is: whatever drugs this guy was on when he came up with these, can I have some?

[Image is in the Public Domain]

Of course, the people who believe in this stuff don't think that it was drugs.  They think that Marc Edmund Jones was really channeling a mystical presence.  Once again, quoting from "Sabian Symbols:"

The Sabian Symbol story is embedded in the ancient cultures of the Middle East.  Marc Edmund Jones felt that there was an "unseen agency" - an external, esoteric mind-set at work in the birthing of the Sabian Symbols.  Connection was made through a 'Brother', a member of the ancient Mesopotamian brotherhood, the Sabian Brotherhood.  He believed that they were the 'voices' that were spiritually behind Elsie Wheeler, delivering the messages that became the Symbols...  As we move out of the Piscean age and into the Aquarian age, we are transmuting in many ways, with the vibration of our spiritual and intellectual minds moving into higher gears as we evolve.  In such hectic times, we hunger for meaning and guidance, but often don't have the time or the patience to pause and reflect deeply on our situation.  The Sabian Oracle opens the doorway between our inner feelings and intentions and our conscious mind.  They do this by helping to put what is within us into words.  Being provided with possibilities enables us to act positively and confidently, and think rationally.

My general response to all of that is that if you were thinking rationally you wouldn't be relying on astrology in the first place.  And, of course, the usual problem with symbolic fortunetelling occurs here, just as it does with the Tarot, the I Ching, runes, and so on; the symbols are so weird and open to interpretation that you can make just about anything out of them that you want.  Suppose that for some reason, the "oracle" told me that my symbol for today was Libra, 29-30 degrees ("Three mounds of knowledge on a philosopher's head.")  My first response would be that I didn't know that knowledge came in mounds.  But after that, what does it mean?  Is it saying that I'm smart?  Or that I'm not smart enough and should go study and try to gain more mounds of knowledge?  Or that today would be good for contemplation?  Or that I should be looking for guidance from three different sources?  Or that I could find answers in books by philosophers?

This is why the "Sabian Symbols" site offers "professional Sabian astrology consultations" -- because slobs like me just aren't qualified to interpret what "A butterfly with a third wing on its left side" (Libra, 23-24 degrees) means.

The take-home lesson here, I suppose, is that there is no realm of woo-woo so goofy that someone can't elaborate on it in such a fashion as to make it way goofier.  Wondering whether there might be anything else I could learn from all the time I spent reading this stuff, I clicked on the link that said "Clear your mind and click on this picture of a galaxy" to get wisdom from the oracle.  I got Scorpio, 16-17 degrees, which is "A woman, fecundated with her own spirit, is the father of her own child."   Which, I think, was a symbolic way for the oracle to tell me to go fuck myself.

Oracles can be so hostile, sometimes.

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Asteroid astrology

I've written more than once about astrology, a slice of woo-woo that has never failed to impress me as the most completely ridiculous model on the market for explaining how the world works.  I mean, really.  Try to state the definition of astrology in one sentence, and you come up with something like the following:

The idea that your personal fate and the course of global events are controlled by the apparent movement of the Sun and planets relative to bunches of stars that are at varying (but extreme) distances from the Earth, patterns which some highly nearsighted ancient Greeks thought looked vaguely like scorpions and rams and lions and weird mythical creatures like "sea-goats."

It definitely falls into the "how could that possibly work?" department, a question that is usually answered with vague verbiage about vibrations and energies and cosmic resonances.

Like I said, all of that is old territory, here at Skeptophilia.  But yesterday, thanks to a loyal reader and frequent contributor, I found out something that I didn't know about astrology; lately, astrologers have been including the asteroids in their chart-drawing and fortune-telling.

Don't believe me?  Listen to this lady, Kim Falconer, who tells us that we should consider the asteroids in our astrological calculations -- but only use the ones we want.  There are too many asteroids, she said, to track them all; "Use the asteroids that have personal meaning to you."

Falconer is right about one thing; there are a great many asteroids out there.  Astronomers currently think there are between 1.1 and 1.9 million asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter alone, and that's not counting the ones in erratic or elliptical orbits.  So it would be a lot to track, but it would have the advantage of keeping the astrologers busy for a long time.

As far as which ones to track, though -- this is where Falconer's recommendations get even funnier, because she says we should pay attention to the names of the asteroids.  Concerned about money?  Check out where the asteroids "Abundantia" and "Fortuna" are.  Would you like to find out what changes you can expect in your sex life?  Look for "Eros" and "Aphrodite."  And I'm thinking; where does she think these names came from?  All of them were named by earthly astronomers, more or less at random.  I mean, it's not like the names have anything to do with the actual objects.  For example, here's a photograph of Eros:

[Image is in the Public Domain courtesy of NASA]

Anything less sexy-looking is hard to imagine, especially given all of the craters and pits and warts on its surface.

But that's missing the point, from Falconer's view, and I realize that.  She and her cohort believe that when Auguste Charlois and Gustav Witt discovered the thing way back in 1898 and gave it its name, they somehow were tapping into a Mystical Reservoir of Connectedness and linked it to Quantum Energies of Love.  Or something like that.

But even so, the "choose the asteroids you like" thing more or less comprises drawing up the astrological chart you want and then acting as if what you got is some sort of profound and surprising revelation.  Because, after all, if there are over a million to choose from, there are bound to be some that have names and positions that are favorable to whatever direction you wish your life was taking.  It's a little like drawing up your Tarot card hand by going through the deck and pulling out the cards you like, and arranging them however you want, and claiming that's your reading and that it has deep implications for your future.

Yes, I know that the actual way Tarot cards are read is equally ridiculous.  It was just an analogy, okay?

Anyhow, that's the latest from the world of horoscopes.  But I better wrap this up, because the asteroid Hygiea is currently crossing into the constellation Horologium the Clock, which probably means it's time for me to take a shower or something.

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Author Michael Pollan became famous for two books in the early 2000s, The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma, which looked at the complex relationships between humans and the various species that we have domesticated over the past few millennia.

More recently, Pollan has become interested in one particular facet of this relationship -- our use of psychotropic substances, most of which come from plants, to alter our moods and perceptions.  In How to Change Your Mind, he considered the promise of psychedelic drugs (such as ketamine and psilocybin) to treat medication-resistant depression; in this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week, This is Your Mind on Plants, he looks at another aspect, which is our strange attitude toward three different plant-produced chemicals: opium, caffeine, and mescaline.

Pollan writes about the long history of our use of these three chemicals, the plants that produce them (poppies, tea and coffee, and the peyote cactus, respectively), and -- most interestingly -- the disparate attitudes of the law toward them.  Why, for example, is a brew containing caffeine available for sale with no restrictions, but a brew containing opium a federal crime?  (I know the physiological effects differ; but the answer is more complex than that, and has a fascinating and convoluted history.)

Pollan's lucid, engaging writing style places a lens on this long relationship, and considers not only its backstory but how our attitudes have little to do with the reality of what the use of the plants do.  It's another chapter in his ongoing study of our relationship to what we put in our bodies -- and how those things change how we think, act, and feel.

[Note:  if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Bad moon rising

It's been a good while since I've written a post about a story that's just plain loony.

Maybe it's because here in the United States, it's not so funny any more because the loonies appear to be in charge of the place, led by a man who spent ten minutes in an interview bragging about how he had successfully passed a test to detect dementia.  ("The doctors were amazed," he said.)

But yesterday I ran into a story that was so completely wacky that I would be remiss in not bringing it to your attention.  As with so many strange things lately, it began on TikTok, the bizarre social media site wherein people upload short videos of themselves doing dances or singing songs or whatnot.  Me, I don't honestly see the point.  It was ages before I was even willing to get on Instagram, and mostly what I do there is upload photographs of my dogs, my garden, and stuff about running.  (If you want to see pics of my dogs etc., you can follow me @skygazer227.)

Be that as it may, TikTok is wildly popular.  It has remained popular despite allegations that the app contains some kind of spyware from China.  TikTok users have been credited with reserving hundreds of seats at Donald Trump's Tulsa rally and then not showing up.  And apparently, it is also the host of a "vibrant witch community," which is called, I shit you not, "WitchTok."

But this is where things start to get a little weird.  Because a rumor started to circulate on "WitchTok" that a group of "baby witches" had put a hex on the Moon.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Luc Viatour, Full Moon Luc Viatour, CC BY-SA 3.0]

It's unclear how the rumor got started, but once it did, it gained a life of its own, spreading to those estimable conduits for bizarre bullshit, Twitter and Reddit.  When the elder witches who were panicking about the thing tried to find out who these alleged "baby witches" were, they were unsuccessful.

For most of us, this would have been sufficient to conclude that there was nothing to the rumor, and to say, "Ha-ha, what a silly thing I almost fell for, right there."  But no.  The apparent absence of the "baby witches" could only mean one thing, they said: the hex on the Moon had backfired and killed all the "baby witches."

Well, with all the "baby witches" dead, surely that would put an end to it, right?  If you believe that, you don't know how social media works.  This made the rumor spread faster, with other witches claiming that they were the ones who'd hexed the Moon, not the "baby witches," and next they'd go after the Sun.  Some said that not only was the Moon hexed by these evildoers, but so were the "fae," the non-human denizens of fairyland, and admittedly this would be a pretty nasty thing to do if the fae actually existed.  One Twitter user, @heartij, cautioned that all this was walking on some pretty thin ice.  "Upsetting deities is the last thing any rational practitioner would want to do," they said, and I can't disagree with that, although none of this seems to have much to do with anything I'd call "rational."

@heartij added rather darkly, "the people behind the hex are more than likely being handled accordingly."

Others said that there was nothing to worry about, that the Moon was perfectly capable of withstanding being hexed, and that everything would settle down once the stars went into a better alignment.  "The Moon is a celestial being which controls us," said Ally Cooke, a trainee priestess.  "We’re currently in a new Moon that takes place in the sign of Cancer, which explains why so many practicing witches report disconnects with the Moon or personal odd feelings, but they’re confusing them with evidence for malpractice.  This new Moon is centered around releasing, and Cancer is a water sign, so emotions are running high at this time."

Makes perfect sense to me.

My first inclination upon reading this was to point out that through all this, the Moon has continued to circle around the Earth completely unchanged, and in fact not even looking a little worried.  But upon reading a bunch of the posts from WitchTok members and commenters on Reddit and Twitter, it became apparent that they're not saying anything physical has happened to the Moon.  It's all just invisible "bad energies" and "negative frequencies" aimed in the Moon's general direction.  But my question is -- forgive me if I'm naïve -- if (1) the hex itself operates by some mechanism that is invisible, and (2) it hasn't had any apparent result, how do you know it happened?

I guess we're back to "personal odd feelings."  For whatever that's worth.

Anyhow, that's today's dip in the deep end of the pool.  Me, I find it a refreshing change of pace from stories about elected officials who studied at the Boss Tweed School of Ethics and a president who thinks you get extra points for successfully saying "person, woman, man, camera, TV" from memory.  Compared with that, witches trying to stop other witches from aiming invisible hexes at distant astronomical objects is honestly a welcome diversion.

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Being in the middle of a pandemic, we're constantly being urged to wash our hands and/or use hand sanitizer.  It's not a bad idea, of course; multiple studies have shown that communicable diseases spread far less readily if people take the simple precaution of a thirty-second hand-washing with soap.

But as a culture, we're pretty obsessed with cleanliness.  Consider how many commercial products -- soaps, shampoos, body washes, and so on -- are dedicated solely to cleaning our skin.  Then there are all the products intended to return back to our skin and hair what the first set of products removed; the whole range of conditioners, softeners, lotions, and oils.

How much of this is necessary, or even beneficial?  That's the topic of the new book Clean: The New Science of Skin by doctor and journalist James Hamblin, who considers all of this and more -- the role of hyper-cleanliness in allergies, asthma, and eczema, and fascinating and recently-discovered information about our skin microbiome, the bacteria that colonize our skin and which are actually beneficial to our overall health.  Along the way, he questions things a lot of us take for granted... such as whether we should be showering daily.

It's a fascinating read, and looks at the question from a data-based, scientific standpoint.  Hamblin has put together the most recent evidence on how we should treat the surfaces of our own bodies -- and asks questions that are sure to generate a wealth of discussion.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Elaborate nonsense

As harsh as I sometimes am about woo-woo beliefs, I understand how fear and lack of knowledge can induce you to accept counterfactual nonsense.  I also get how wishful thinking could draw you in to a set of beliefs, if they line up with the way you would like the universe to work, even though, as my grandma used to say, "Wishin' don't make it so."

This combination of desire for the world to be other than it is, and fear of what the world actually is, probably drives most superstition.  All, as I said, understandable, given human nature.

But what continually baffles me is how byzantine some of those beliefs become.  I can accept that it might be an attractive model for some people that the position of the stars and planets somehow guides your life; but I start really wondering once you start coming up with stuff like the following (from Susan Miller's astrology site, on a page devoted to predictions for this month for my astrological sign, Scorpio):

Sometimes, in about 20 percent of the cases, an eclipse will deliver news a month to the day later plus or minus five days.  More rarely, an eclipse will introduce news one month to the day before it occurs, but only in about 5 percent of the cases.  In most cases, 75 percent of the time, an eclipse will deliver some sort of news that things are about to change almost instantly.

This eclipse will be in Scorpio, 11 degrees, and will come conjunct Saturn.  This alone says that the decision you make now will be a big one, and that you will commit all your energy to this decision.  You will be in a serious mode, and it appears a promise you make now will last a very long time, possibly forever.  Mars and Pluto are your two ruling planets (Scorpio is one of the few signs that have two rulers), and remarkably both will be supportive by tight mathematical angles to this eclipse.  This tells me that the final outcome of this eclipse will be very positive.  Every eclipse has two acts, so see how events unfold in coming weeks.

Yes, it's bullshit; but it's really elaborate bullshit.  You might criticize these people for pushing fiction as reality, but you have to admit that they spend a lot of time crafting their fiction.

I ran across an unusually good example of this a while back on the Skeptic subreddit, which is a wonderful place to go for articles debunking pseudoscience.  The site I found posted there is called "TCM - the 24-hour Organ Qi Cycle," which immediately should raise red flags -- "TCM" is traditional Chinese medicine, much of which has been double-blind tested and found to be worthless; and "qi" is a pattern for "energy flow" through the body that basically is non-existent, making "qi" only useful as an easy way of getting rid of the "Q" tile in a game of Scrabble.

What this site purports to do is to get you to "balance your body" using information about when during the day you feel most ill-at-ease.  This then tells you what organ in your body is "out of balance" and which of the "elements" you should pay attention to.  And no, I'm not talking about anything off the periodic table; we're back to a medieval "Earth," "Fire," "Water," "Metal," "Wood," and "Ministerial Fire" model, although the last-mentioned sounds like what they used back in the Dark Ages to burn people at the stake for heresy.

So, naturally, I had to check out what my own out-of-balance part was.  I'm frequently awake, and restless, at 3 AM - 5 AM, so I rolled the cursor over the "color wheel" and found that this means my lungs are out of balance.  "The emotions connected to the lungs are Grief and Sadness," I was told, which makes sense for the time of day because if I'm awake then it means I won't be able to get back to sleep before my alarm goes off.  It goes on to ask me some questions, to wit: "Have you buried your grief?  Are you sad?  Are you always sighing?  It is most healthy to express your emotions as you feel them.  You may need to express your emotions by crying, writing and/or talking to a friend."

Well, thanks for caring, and everything, but I'm actually doing okay, and don't sigh all that much, except at faculty meetings.

Oh, but I am told that if I can get my lungs in balance, I'll have "lustrous skin."  And who could resist that?

On it goes.  If your small intestine is out of balance, you should eat only "vital foods chock full of enzymes."  If you have diarrhea, you need to "strengthen your spleen qi."  If your "kidneys are deficient," you won't have much in the way of sex drive, but you can bring them back into balance by eating black sesame seeds, celery, duck, grapes, kidney beans, lamb, millet, oysters, plums, sweet potatoes, raspberries, salt, seaweed, strawberries, string beans, tangerines, walnuts, and yams.

The entire time I was looking at this site, I kept shaking my head and saying, "How do you know any of this?"  The stuff on this website seems to fall into two categories -- blatantly obvious (e.g. "crying if you're sad helps you to feel better") and bizarrely abstruse (e.g. "engaging in loving sex keeps your pericardium healthy").

I suppose the elaborateness is understandable from one angle; if you want people to believe what you're saying, you'll probably have better success if you make your sales pitch sound fancy.   Convoluted details convince people, especially people who don't know much in the way of science and logic.  So the intricacy of some pseudoscientific models is explainable from the standpoint that the purveyors of this kind of foolishness will sound like scientists, and therefore be persuasive, only if they couch their message in terms that make it appear they've tapped into a realm of knowledge unavailable to the rest of us slobs.

Or, as my dad used to put it: "If you can't wow 'em with your brilliance, baffle 'em with your bullshit."

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I've been a bit of a geology buff since I was a kid.  My dad was a skilled lapidary artist, and made beautiful jewelry from agates, jaspers, and turquoise, so every summer he and I would go on a two-week trip to southern Arizona to find cool rocks.  It was truly the high point of my year, and ever since I have always given rock outcroppings and road cuts more than just the typical passing glance.

So I absolutely loved John McPhee's four-part look at the geology of the United States -- Basin and Range, Rising From the Plains, In Suspect Terrain, and Assembling California.  Told in his signature lucid style, McPhee doesn't just geek out over the science, but gets to know the people involved -- the scientists, the researchers, the miners, the oil-well drillers -- who are vitally interested in how North America was put together.  In the process, you're taken on a cross-country trip to learn about what's underneath the surface of our country.  And if, like me, you're curious about rocks, it will keep you reading until the last page.

Note: the link below is to the first in the series, Basin and Range.  If you want to purchase it, click on the link, and part of the proceeds will go to support Skeptophilia.  And if you like it, you'll no doubt easily find the others!

Notes from the other side

Dear Readers:

I'm going to take a short break, for the rest of the week -- but I'll be back next Monday, November 26, so keep sending me links and ideas!

cheers,

Gordon

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A friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link that I knew was going to be good even before I opened it, because it was from a site called Daily Vibes.  First, one of my pet peeves is the way people use words like "vibration" and "frequency" to basically mean "any damn thing we want," and I figured the "vibes" part presaged a lot of that sort of thing.  But I was even more excited when I perused their home page and saw a list of recent articles, which include the following:

• "What Does Your Zodiac Sign Reveal About Your Innermost Thoughts?"
• "How You Sit Can Reveal Your Personality"
• "Five Gemstones Traditionally Used to Clear Negative Energies"
• "Five Ways Crying Makes You Stronger"
• "Have You Seen a Feather Tattoo?  Here's What It Can Mean"

So I started reading the various posts, and very quickly ran into a troubling problem: what if your zodiac sign says basically the opposite of what you learn from how you sit?  Because I found that the way I like to sit means I'm outgoing, dynamic, dress well, have high goals and aspirations, and have a difficult time taking criticism.  My zodiac sign, on the other hand, says that I'm mysterious, aloof, and secretive, hard to get to know, and very moody.  So am I both?  Or somewhere in the middle?  Because right now, I'm confused as to whether I should smile and schmooze with people, or wear a black cloak and just give people a meaningful raised eyebrow to make them uncomfortable.

Then I had to give a look at the one about crying, because I'm one of those people who is very easy to launch into a complete tear-o-rama.  My wife was at an art show this past weekend, so Saturday evening I decided to sit on the couch with my dog, drinking wine and watching Dr. Who.  I rewatched one of my favorite episodes, "The Girl in the Fireplace," and ended up hugging my dog and sobbing into my wine glass.

Okay, it's a pretty sad episode, but geez.  I mean, it's not like it's the first time I've seen it, or anything, so you'd think I'd have been somewhat immunized.  But no.  There I sat, blubbering like an idiot.

At least my dog understood.

Anyhow, I was curious about what Daily Vibes had to say about crying, and I was heartened to find out that because I cry a lot, I don't care what other people think about me, and I'm brave.  I also learned that crying "relieves stress and pent-up emotions... [removing] negative emotions and [instilling] positive ones."  In that respect, we're told, "it's almost as effective as sex."

So next time your significant other is feeling amorous, you should turn to them and say, "Not now, honey, I think I'd prefer to have a nice long cry instead."

Oh, and if you have a feather tattoo, you're "strong, independent, courageous, and cherish freedom."

Anyhow, all of this is sort of beside the point, because the article that my friend sent me the link to was none of the above, but was to a post called "Five Signs Your Deceased Love Ones Are Trying to Help You."

Naturally, I was curious about what they thought were signs that Grandma Bertha was still hanging around, and I suspect you are, too, so without further ado:

1.  Animals Acting Strangely.

If this were true, it would mean my house has been continuously haunted for years, because in my experience my pets act strangely all the time.  For example, I went outside this summer because our coonhound, Lena, was having a complete barking fit, dancing around yapping like mad.  I thought she had a possum cornered, but no.  When I came up to her, I found out she was barking at...

... a stick.

To be fair, it was a pretty ferocious-looking stick.  But still.

2.  Poltergeist Activity.

I hear bumps and creaks and knocks in our house all the time, but I think that's mostly because (1) it's an old house, and (2) there's a family of squirrels that we have been unable to evict from our attic.  I haven't seen anything else really suspicious on this front, so this one would have to be in the "no" column for me.

On the other hand...

3.  Electronics Acting Up.

I am halfway convinced that my mere presence makes computers malfunction.  My school computer, for example, frequently and unpredictably decides to draw little gray Xs on all of my document icons, and the only solution is to restart the computer, which takes fifteen minutes because this particular machine is powered by a single hamster running in a wheel.  It's kind of a relief to find out this is caused by ghosts, because I was beginning to think I'm just a techno-idiot.

4.  Vivid Dreams.

This one is also in the "yes" column for me.  Last night I woke up in the middle of the night because I was dreaming that I was defending our back yard from a flock of very threatening owls.  So my dreams tend to not be just "vivid," but "really fucking weird."  And if this is Grandma Bertha's fault, I wish she'd lay off, because I need my sleep.

5.  Extrasensory Perception.

For this one, the site says, "ESP is a pretty wide umbrella in terms of definition. It can mean a bunch of different things.  But in this case, it’s as if the spirits in our lives put ideas in our heads before we can have them."

Well, I'm always coming up with strange ideas, which is why I'm an author, because I can write out bizarre ideas that pop into my head and people pay me to read about them.  But I don't think that's ESP.  It may be, as one of my friends once speculated, because I was dropped on my head as a baby.

So the checklist for whether my house is haunted generates mixed results, which I suppose is to be expected.  Myself, I think it's not haunted, although my younger son swears that he's seen a shadowy figure out of the corner of his eye, moving about in our basement.  Maybe that's Grandma Bertha, I dunno.  If it is, I wish she'd stop simply oozing about the place and do something useful, like telling me her chocolate fudge recipe, which I've tried unsuccessfully for years to reproduce.

But I need to wrap this up, because I have to go see what Lena's barking at.  Maybe it's another stick that is attempting to launch a vicious attack on her.  You know how it goes.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a fun one -- Mary Roach's Spook.  Roach is combines humor with serious scientific investigation, and has looked into such subjects as sex (Bonk), death (Stiff), war (Grunt), and food (Gulp).  (She's also fond of hilarious one-word titles.)

In Spook, Roach looks at claims of the afterlife, and her investigation takes her from a reincarnation research facility in India to a University of Virginia study on near-death experiences to a British school for mediums.  Along the way she considers the evidence for and against -- and her ponderings make for absolutely delightful reading.

A slice of pi

Note to my loyal readers: This will be my last post before a two-week break so I can go to my publisher's annual writers' retreat in the Ozarks.  Please keep sending links & ideas -- I'll be right back in the saddle when I return.  Look for the next Skeptophilia post on Monday, August 6!

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Sometimes you have to admire the woo-woos' dogged determination to fashion the universe into their own bizarre version of reality.

Most of us, I'd like to think, just see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe, and don't make such a big deal out of it.  If we want to believe in a Higher Power That Guides Everything, we do, and don't spend endless hours crafting abstruse proofs of the conjecture.  We're content to have a beer, watch a hockey game, and let god have some much-needed quiet time.

There are a few people, however, who just aren't content if they're not actively beating the matter into submission.  Such a person is Marty Leeds, Wisconsin-born writer, mystic, philosopher, and the origin of dozens of highly entertaining YouTube videos.

Just yesterday, I was sent a link to one of Leeds' creations, entitled, "Number Magic: Gematria."  The link was accompanied by a message stating, and I quote: "Words cannot describe the level of derp in this video."  So of course I had to watch it.  And I wasn't disappointed.

Turns out he has an obsession with the number pi.  Okay, it's a pretty cool number,  being transcendental and all, but he thinks there's... more than that.  Way more, as it turns out.

What you get when you divide the circumference of an apple by its diameter.  [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Matman from Lublin, Apple pie Pi Day 2011, CC BY-SA 3.0]

If you're unwilling to sacrifice an hour and a half of your precious time (and to be honest, I made it through about twenty minutes, and just skimmed the rest), and countless innocent cells in your prefrontal cortex that will die in agony, allow me to present to you the main points of Leeds' argument.

1. There's this thing called gematria that was made up a while back by some Hebrew mystics who had overactive imaginations and way too much free time.   The idea behind gematria is that each letter in the alphabet (whether Hebrew, English, or other) is assigned a number, and when you add up the numbers for a word or name, you get a number that "means something."
2. You get to decide what the numbers mean.
3. If two words add up to the same thing, they are mystically linked.  Leeds uses a form of gematria which takes the English alphabet, splits it into two lists of thirteen letters each (A-M, and N-Z), and numbers each list from 1 through 7 and then back down to 1.  So my first name, Gordon, would be 7+2+5+4+2+1 = 21.  "Sharp" is 6+6+1+5+3, which also adds up to 21.  So you can see that thus far, we have a pretty persuasive theory here.
4. Leeds then does a gematria addition for four words or phrases.  We have "man" = 3, "woman" = 9, "Christian" = 39, and "The Holy Spirit" = 61.  Note that he had to add a "the" to the last one to make it work out the way he wanted.
5. So, let's look at the first thirteen digits of pi.  He picked thirteen because we had split the alphabet into two groups of thirteen letters each, which seems like impeccable logic to me, given the obvious connection between pi and the English alphabet.  Anyhow, we have 3.141592653589. It starts with 3 and ends with 9 -- giving you "39."  So right away, we can see that there's something wonderfully Christian about pi, not to mention having a man on one end and a woman on the other.  Also, 3+9 = 12, and 3x9 = 27, and 12+27 = 39. So you get your 3 and 9 back, so "man + woman" + "man x woman" = "Christian."  Or something like that.
6. Take the middle number in the sequence (2) and the two on either side (9 and 6).  Why?   Because tridents, that's why.  Stop asking questions.
7. If you multiply 9x2x6, you get 108, which is a very holy and important number.  Myself, I just thought it was the most convenient way of getting from 107 to 109, but what do I know?  But the Hindus liked the number 108, and plus, it's the number of stitches on a baseball, so there you are.
8. Now, take the remaining digits of pi, and basically draw a menorah under them.  You then put them together in pairs, flip 'em around, and add 'em together.  I really don't want to go into all of how he does that, because my cortical neurons are already whimpering for mercy, so you'll just have to either watch the video or else just accept on faith that somehow all of the numbers and flipped numbers and all add up to 352.  Then, you add that to the 2 and 6 from the trident bit, and you get 360, which is the number of degrees in a circle.  Get it?  Circle?  Pi?  Are you blown away?  (Okay, he left out the 9. But still.)
9. If you multiply the first through eighth digits of pi, you get 6,480.  If you multiply the eighth through the thirteenth digits, you get 32,400. Subtract them, and you get 25,920, which he says is the number of years for the precession of the Earth's axis to complete one rotation.  Except that according to the Cornell University Astronomy Department's webpage on the precession of the Earth's axis, the length of the precession of the Earth is said to be "about 26,000 years" -- the imprecision being because a motion that slow is almost impossible to measure accurately.   But I think we call all agree that since we're using gematria as our jumping-off point, being off by eighty years or so is plenty accurate enough.
10. Of course, like any good performer, he saves his most amazing bit for the end, wherein we find out that the first thirteen digits of pi add up to 61, which you will recall is the number of "The Holy Spirit."  So pi "encodes" (his word) The Holy Spirit and the precession of the equinoxes.
11. Therefore god.  Q.E.D.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed our little ramble through woo-woo arithmetic. Me, I'm planning on watching some of Leeds' other videos when I have the time.  (Two especially fascinating-sounding ones are "Pizzagate, Symbolism, and Secret Societies" and "Flat Earth Implications, NASA Lies, and Gematria."  Of course he's a Flat Earther.  You're surprised by this?)  However, I think next time I won't launch into this without something to insulate my poor brain against further damage.  I'm thinking that a double scotch might do the trick.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a must-read for anyone concerned about the current state of the world's environment.  The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert, is a retrospective of the five great extinction events the Earth has experienced -- the largest of which, the Permian-Triassic extinction of 252 million years ago, wiped out 95% of the species on Earth.  Kolbert makes a persuasive, if devastating, argument; that we are currently in the middle of a sixth mass extinction -- this one caused exclusively by the activities of humans.  It's a fascinating, alarming, and absolutely essential read.  [If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Astrohomeopathy

Because there's no idiotic idea that can't be made even more ridiculous by blending it with another idiotic idea, today we consider "astro-homeopathy."

If you're thinking, "Wait... that can't mean what it seems to...", unfortunately, yes, it does.  There actually are people who are prescribing homeopathic "remedies" based on your astrological sign.

As we're told over at the the site Ashwini Homeopathy Holistic Healing:

Each planet and its sign have certain characteristics, which may be weak or strong, depending on their placement in the horoscope.  By matching these characteristics of the planets and their signs with the symptoms of Homoeopathic [sic] remedies, it is possible to connect them in order to select the right medicine.

It's explained even more fully over at the site Mystic Scripts:

Astro homeopathy is based on a very unique idea of relating homeopathy with astrology.  Many people follow the astrohomeopathy principles and lead a healthy life.  You can also try astro homeopathy healing methods so that you can lead a life free from health hazards and fitness problems.

Astrology and homeopathy are bridged in astro homeopathy.  An astrohomeopathy reading for you finds out your sun sign and the body parts related to your sign of the zodiac, and tells you the health problems you have the possibility to suffer from (if, of course, there is [sic] any).  In addition, you also come to know the homeopathic remedies for the health problems.

On this site there is a link where you can get your own free astrohomeopathy reading, so of course, I had to do it.  So I entered my birthdate, and this is what I got:

You are intense and ong [sic] willed people who have a very determined nature.  You are powerful and full of energy.  You may seem very calm on the surface but inside, you have a lot of latent aggression. You are very thoughtful and good company, but you are more than that meets the eye.  You seem to be detached from events but actually keep a careful track of what is happening.  You are very sensitive, which leads you to being short tempered.  You have great will power and will achieve your goals if focused.  You are highly motivated individuals who are very resourceful and passionate in your dealings.  You have ong [sic] powers of reasoning and if put to the right use, you will reach the top in no time.

Man, if being short-tempered and having latent aggression are my "positive traits," I can barely wait to see what my negative ones are.  At least I'm a very "ong" person.  That's good, right?

L'homme zodiacal from Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry (ca. 1410) [Image is in the Public Domain]

Now, for the bad news -- my "negative traits:"

Your bluntness may hurt a lot of people.  You may get too involved and probe into issues, which doesn't concern them.  You may be temperamental, making them very difficult to get along with.  You believe you can achieve a lot in life, but just talk and don't do anything as you may have become over confident.  You may be arrogant and jealous of others' achievements.  You do no [sic] trust people and are always suspicious.  Your secretive nature may create problems.  Also you may turn violent at the blink of an eye.

If wanting to flip a table when I'm reading paragraph after paragraph of horseshit constitutes being "temperamental and violent," then guilty as charged.

Then there's the homeopathy part.  Apparently, given my birth sign, what I need is a "remedy" made from plaster of Paris.  I shit you not.  And wait till you read why:

CALCAREA SULPHUREA (Sulphate of Lime, Plaster of Paris) -- Scorpio exerts influence over the sexual organs and as such the pure Scorpions are prone to suffer form infections and problems in their sex organs.  They are susceptible to skin eruptions on the genitals, cystitis and diseases of the urinary tract along with venereal infections.

I don't know about you, but that's enough to make me walk around in a protective crouch for the rest of the day.  The remedy, by the way, "has no side effects," which is a relief, although a more accurate way to put it is "has no effects whatsoever."

Oh, and my lucky numbers are 2 and 4, my lucky colors are burgundy and black, and my lucky day is Tuesday (which is today!  Yay!).

I'm also told that famous persons I'm supposedly similar to include John Keats, Julia Roberts, Bill Gates, and Pablo Picasso.  And I'm sure you can see immediately how alike those four are.

Anyhow, I'm off to take my plaster of Paris pills so my sexual organs don't erupt, and so my arrogant and overconfident nature doesn't cloud my powers of reasoning and bring to the surface my latent aggression.  I hate it when that happens.

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This week's featured book on Skeptophilia is Flim-Flam!, by the grand old man of skepticism and critical thinking, James Randi.  Randi was a stage magician before he devoted his career to unmasking charlatans, so he of all people knows how easy it is to fool the unwary.  His book is a highly entertaining exercise in learning not to believe what you see -- especially when someone is trying to sell you something.

Avoidance of things past

Can we establish something right at the get-go?

Just because something is old doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Okay, ancient Greek sculpture is pretty awesome.  Ditto Roman architecture.  More recently, but still a while back, I find that music by Heinrich Ignaz von Biber (1644-1704) beats hollow any music from Justin Bieber (1994-present), and in fact I am inclined to think that music's pretty much been in decline since Johann Sebastian Bach died in 1750.

But in general?  There are a lot of things from the past that we really should leave in the past.  Consider the Four Humors Theory of Medicine, in which all disease was thought to be due to an imbalance in the four "humors" of the body -- blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.  It's what gave rise to the lovely idea of bloodletting to treat disease (not to mention the words sanguine, phlegmatic, bilious, and melancholy).

And that's hardly the only example.  There's trial by ordeal, sacrificing virgins in volcanoes, reading the future by looking at the entrails of chickens, and belief in witchcraft.  So while it's natural enough to venerate our ancestors, it bears remembering that they came up with some truly awful ideas.

Which is why I started rolling my eyes at the title of an article in Quartz, and pretty much didn't stop till the last line.

The article in question, "Horoscopes 2018: Astrology Isn’t Fake—It’s Just Been Ruined by Modern Psychology" by Ida C. Benedetto, claims that reading portents in the skies isn't wrong; the problem lies with the damn researchers trying to elucidate what's actually happening in the brain.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Benedetto spends a good bit of her article slamming the whole "Sun Signs" thing, which is what gives us the horoscope columns in the daily newspaper, wherein you can find out that if you're an Aquarius, while you're walking to work today you will trip over a curb and drop your cup of coffee down a storm sewer.  (Okay, I honestly don't have any clue what is going to happen to you if you're an Aquarius.  For one thing, I'm a Scorpio.  For another, it's a lot of bollocks in any case, so it doesn't really matter.)

Benedetto writes:

Don’t relate to your sign?  That might be because sun-signs astrology is a recent creation designed to appeal to mass audiences...

The sun-sign approach to astrology continued to grow in popularity through newspaper columns in the first half of the 20th century and boomed when New Age went mainstream in the 1960s.  Historian Nick Campion notes that “sun-sign astrology domesticated the universe” at a time when astronomy discovered that our galaxy was one small dot among billions in a perpetually expanding universe.  When modern science was making humanity look smaller and more insignificant than ever, people found it reassuring to think of their personalities as being reflected in the stars.

In which, so far, I find nothing to disagree with.  But then she tells us that we need to jettison modern sun sign astrology, and replace it with the astrology from the ancient Greeks.

Now, I don't mean to run down the ancient Greeks, who did some amazing stuff.  But their knowledge of the stars -- i.e., astroNOMY, not astroLOGY -- was pretty rudimentary.  After all, they're the ones who, presumably after drinking way too much ouzo, looked up at random assemblages of stars and had the following conversation, only in ancient Greek:

Ancient Greek Guy #1:  Dude.  Don't you think that bunch of stars over there looks just like a "sea goat?" 

Ancient Greek Guy #2:  What the fuck is a "sea goat?" 

Ancient Greek Guy #1:  It's a goat with the tail of a fish.  Here, have another shot of ouzo. 

Ancient Greek Guy #2:  Yeah, now I see the resemblance.  Let's call it "Capricorn." 

Ancient Greek Guy #1:  Isn't that name Latin?  We're ancient Greeks.

Ancient Greek Guy #2:  Hey, bro, you were just talking about "sea goats."  Don't come after me about accuracy. 

Ancient Greek Guy #1:  Oh, okay, fair enough.  [takes another slug of ouzo]  And hey, look at those stars!  That bunch looks like a virgin, don't you think? 

Ancient Greek Guy #2:  A virgin?  How can you tell at this distance? 

Ancient Greek Guy #1:  Why else would she be up there in the sky? 

Ancient Greek Guy #2:  Okay, that makes sense.

So it's not like I'm that inclined to take their knowledge of what was actually happening in the heavens all that seriously.  Benedetto, however, says that both the current astronomers and astrologers have missed the point entirely.  So what, exactly, does she believe?  It takes her a while to get to the point -- she seems much clearer on what she doesn't believe -- but she finally has this to say:

One of the greatest sticking points where traditional and modern astrology diverge is destiny.  Hellenistic astrology describes a causal relationship between the movement of planets and stars and the material world on earth.  The ancients also believed in the notion of fate.  Fatedness runs counter to our modern notion of free will, and therefore many find traditional astrology unpalatable.  However, we do not need to believe in a fatalistic view of planetary movements to revive some insights in the work of the ancient astrologers who espoused them.

Which sounds pretty mushy, but that's honestly the most solid thing she has to say about it.  She then quotes an astrologer whose name is (I'm not making this up) "Wonder Bright," who says that you can reconcile the old and new astrology if you look at it just right.

"Modern counseling methods," Bright says, "are a boon to the astrologer and probably account for the large percentage of women studying and practicing astrology nowadays, which would have been unthinkable in previous centuries."

And as far as that goes, I can easily reconcile old and new astrology:

They're both bullshit.  The end.

What strikes me about all of this is that both flavors of astrologer, old and new, don't ever ask what are really the only relevant questions here:

1. Is there scientifically admissible evidence for any of this?
2. Is there any plausible mechanism by which the motion of distant planets against even more distant stars could affect events here on Earth?

Of course, since the answer to both of them is "No," it's unsurprising she didn't address the issue.

She ends with a rather amusing statement: "Traditional astrology, with its wealth of ancient texts, deserves the same respectful suspension of disbelief as other old-world scientific fields."  Righty-o.  I'll start first.  You "respectfully suspend your disbelief" with respect to reading the future from patterns of sticks dropped on the floor, and I'll do the same with respect to what happens when Neptune is in Sagittarius.  (Once again, I have no idea either if Neptune is currently in Sagittarius, or if so what it means, and moreover, I don't give a damn about either one.)

So the whole argument is rather ridiculous.  It brings up the quote from Cicero, who wondered how "two augurs could pass on the street and look one another in the face without laughing."

As for me, however, I think I'm going to go listen to some music by Bach.  Whatever else you can say about those folks back in the past, they sure did know how to write a cool prelude and fugue.

Astrological philosobabble

I really get annoyed when apparently intelligent people do something that lends credence to nonsense.

I know it's probably a waste of perfectly good ire.  Confirmation bias and the believe-what-you-want-to-believe tendency of the human brain make fighting this sort of thing a largely fruitless pursuit.

But man, my job would be so much easier if smart people didn't go to such lengths to defend pseudoscience.

The latest attempt to legitimize bullshit comes from British philosopher Martin Cohen, who in his recent book Paradigm Shift: How Expert Opinions Keep Changing on Life, the Universe and Everything describes why we scientific types should give another look to astrology.  (And honorable mention goes to The Irish Times for writing an apparently serious article praising his stance.)

The Twelve Astrological Signs, from Opus Medico-Chymicum by Johann Daniel Mylius (1618) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Cohen is basing his claim on a slightly more sophisticated version of the naïve question I hear from high schoolers; "If science changes all the time, this could all be proven wrong tomorrow, so why are we learning this stuff?"  "Expert opinions" -- including not only opinions about what is right, but what is wrong -- fluctuate.  So we shouldn't dismiss astrology, even though Cohen admits it "is easy – laughably easy – to debunk using conventional methods and ideas."

After this glimmer of sense, he goes on to say:

On the other hand – and this is really the subtext of the entire social science debate over Paradigm Shift – convention is a poor guide to anything. 

Mainstream science regularly rules definitively on things about which, in fact, the state of knowledge really only allows tentative opinions.  In science, the measure is usefulness; we should give astrology the same chance.

No, sorry.  In science, the measure is consonance with the evidence -- usefulness be damned.  Any utility to scientific discoveries comes after they have been supported by hard data.

What about the fact that astrology traffics in broad-brush predictions that can be interpreted any way you like, leading believers to overestimate its accuracy?  This, Cohen says, is a strength, not a weakness:

By presenting ambiguous, vague answers, astrology pushes the seeker to extract information that is really not so much there in the answer but in their own subconscious. It unblocks our minds and frees them to see things in a new way...  Actually, I’m not sure that I do want to give the nod to the description of astrology as a poor predictor, as that reinforces the stereotype image of the subject as given in newspaper columns.  My suggestion is to see it as a tool for interpreting the world, and in particular each individual’s relationship to it – I mean, in psychological terms.  This way, I think, astrology is full of rich and subtle insights.  How it arrives at them is of little importance.

In other words, as long as you feel the answer is right for you, it's right.  To hell with whether there's any mechanism by which it could work.

He then goes on to tell us about the "spooky coincidence" that the "Four Horsemen" of atheism -- Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens -- are all Aries.  The chance of any four randomly chosen people all being the same sign is (1/12) raised to the fourth power, or about one in 20,000.  Which seems like slim odds, until you realize that given the current human population, there are 350,000 such "spooky coincidences" in the world.  Look for long enough, and you'll find more than one cluster of superficially similar people with the same signs -- it's just the law of large numbers at work.

Of course, the claim also ignores a huge study done in England twelve years ago of "time twins" -- people born within minutes of each other who, if any of the claims of astrology are correct, should have similar personalities, tendencies, and fates.  Unsurprisingly, the study found no support whatsoever for any of it.

No matter, Cohen said.  This isn't about physical mechanisms or hard data, it's about "mystical correspondences."

"Why should [the predictions of astrology be accurate], though?" Cohen goes on to say.  "The world changes in innumerable ways at every instant. So what might have been going to happen in one possible world no longer needs to happen in the next....  If astrological predictions really were true, then they would be useless.  The conceit is that we can both benefit from a prediction and still be free to change the future."

Which should win some kind of award for Mushy Philosobabble, and also is awfully convenient.  It doesn't matter if your model accurately predicts anything, or has a basis in reality.  If you find it useful in guiding your life, then whether it lines up with what we know about the real world is irrelevant.

Being a rationalist materialist type, it's no wonder that I read this entire piece while making frustrated little growling noises.  I'm sorry, Mr. Cohen; the truth does matter, and I'm not defining "truth" as being "whatever you decide sounds appealing."  Science gives us an algorithm by which to determine if a claim has validity.  It may well be the only such algorithm that actually works.

So my general sense is that what Martin Cohen is urging us to do is to abandon evidence as the sine qua non of understanding, and look for "mystical knowledge" in whatever bit of pseudoscientific horseshit happens to suit our fancy.  Which is about as opposite to my standard for approaching the world as it could be.

But I probably only say that because I'm a Scorpio.