Here's a summary of today's horoscope, from a San Francisco daily: ARIES: Your suspicions are getting in the way of hearing people clearly. TAURUS: Stand by a loved one, but do it for the right reasons. GEMINI: Your mother gets under your skin, but you can't continue to act childishly. CANCER: A formulaic approach isn't working. Cast about for new ideas. LEO: You've experienced control freaks before but the current one outdoes them all. But do as you're told because resistance is futile. VIRGO: Your efforts are ignored while a rival receives high praise. LIBRA: An old idea proves relevant. Present it to your boss as if it were new. SCORPIO: A problematic loved one promises to make big changes. SAGITTARIUS: You may think that all of your hard work has been for nothing, but it will soon produce a very big something. CAPRICORN: You didn't believe that someone was serious about wanting to help out. Today you discover how serious. AQUARIUS: Asking loved ones to divulge their troubles is more than you can bear right now. PISCES: Pushing for what you want is hard. Doing it without alienating anyone is practically impossible. Yet if anyone can accomplish this delicate balance - it's you. There are 6,800,000,000 people on the planet. Are we to seriously believe that these trifling 12 issues are the principal issues of importance today? Leaving aside all the other absurdities of astrology, that alone should consign the fraud to the trashbin of colossal inadequacy. The most cursory glance at the teeming mass of humanity would show us confronting quite a bit more than 12 concerns each day. 12,000,000 might be closer - but I suppose it would take more than one newspaper to fit it all in. (It's also rather amazing that having trouble with mom, or problems with co-workers, so neatly affect people born in a designated portion of the year without any overlap. Surely it must be possible that whatever issue is on Sagittarian's radar today must also be the most urgent problem for some Leos, Librans and every other sign. For those piddling few whose issues of concern just happen to be one of the 12, that is. Most of us will just have to cope with our 11,999,902 other problems without the help of horoscopes).
That horoscope was not meant for all those 6.8 billion people. It was meant only for the people who read that particular newspaper on that particular day and actually bothered to read the astrology column as well. The astrologer knew who they would be, through astrology. There were 15 people who read the column that day, including you. Three pairs of two shared a concern that day. But you missed the real problem: Due to the precession of the equinoxes, and the fact that our calendar is continually adjusted to keep the equinoxes on the same calendar dates, the astrological signs have shifted by 30 degrees since the signs were named, or one complete sign. What this means is that astrological forecasts based on dates of birth are off by one complete sign! People are going around thinking that today they should "be on the lookout for a great financial opportunity" when in fact they ought to "seriously reconsider their relationship with a distant loved one."
P.S. When people ask me what my sign is, I tell them that my sine is zero because I have no degrees. It works better spoken than written.
When someone asks me what sign I was born under, I say: "Obstetrics". Your point about the signs shifting is valid - however, those who divine our future from the stars know that and have adjusted our future accordingly to prevent, say, a Taurus from blindly following guidance for a Gemini.
Actually, I think they are blissfully unaware of the fact that their bogus predictions are shifted by one sign, adding an element of randomness to the original bogosity.
My favorite and most entertaining fortune cookies are the ones that contain a condom and the message "You will get lucky." Tom
Ummmm... for more than one reason Bra... I will say I wouldn't even open a fortune cookie that could have a jimmiehat and some wish for luck... I'm just saying...
If you see a Ford Taurus blindly following an Isuzu Gemini, I would move over and get out of that lane, pronto !
Are they putting condoms in fortune cookies nowadays? I didn't realize it had been so long since I ate at a Chinese restaurant.
I don't know. They never have anything I can eat. But airport food has gotten better, if you pick the right places.
If Astrologers and Psychics were anything more than entertainment wouldn't you think they'd be more well off than they are? Just like "other" more well known writings, they only appear to work for those that want to believe in them. I'm STILL waiting for my call from publisher's clearing house though...
Astrologers claim to predict only general influences, not specific events, and in the case of personality, they claim the stars exert only general influences, not deterministic constraints. In this they are smart. Since astrology is pure and utter bullshit, and the commercially successful astrologers understand this, they hedge their bets, and then rely on well-known techniques of cold reading to bamboozle the gullible. They can make a modest living this way. But psychics claim to foresee actual events before they happen, and thus leave themselves open to the challenge: If you can actually foresee the future, why have you not made a fabulous fortune on the stock market, the race track, or the roulette table?
