Hi.

I'm an Aquarius and today is my birthday!

My age is 20.

Get it? Age of Aquarius? *ROFL*

Happy birthday Bri!

Oh sh*t, here at Nitcentral you can see people age.

Happy Birthday!

Shouldn't that be Sch*esse, Herr Electron?

No, I don't get it. What is an Aquarius?

Happy birthday anyway.

Peter.

Peter, I can settle this without insults.

Part 1 of the Joke. Aqaurius is an astrological sign. You ever hear of Horoscopes? I know you probably think it's evil or something, but lot's of people beleive in it, and I do fit the personality type of a "typical Aqaurius."

Part 2 of the Joke. There was a song that was a hit in the 1970s (I forgot the band's name) called Age of Aquarius.

Part 3 of the Joke. In the joke I told my age.

Thusly it follows, it is the Age of Aquarius.

Get it?

Now I get it.

Astrology is not evil unless taken far too far, just ••••••. The Bible teaches that each person is responsible for his own actions and behaviour. Astrology teaches that we are slave to the movements of celestial bodies. It would be awfully convenient if every time I did something wrong, I could blame some star, but in fact it's down to me.

Of course you fit the personality type for an "Aquarius". They are written in such a way as to appeal to the reader and also to include terms that apply to everyone. Logic dictates that the description was written so that a lot of people would think it fits themselves. Superstition dictates that you are that way because the stars made you so.

Peter.

Shouldn't that be Sch*esse, Herr Electron?

Not really. "Schiesse" is of course part of the old German proverb "Halt! Stehenbleiben oder ich schiesse!" But if you replace the "ie" with an "ei" it starts to smell.

Brian,

Happy Birthday.

My 2 cents on astrology. There are 12 signs and 6 billion people. Half a billion people are just like me? I thought I was more of an individual. Maybe I'm not being fair using newspaper horoscopes. Let's assume the day of your birth is the deciding factor. I don't have a calculator handy but 6 billion divided by 365 is still a very large number. Care to go to hours. Multiply 365 by 24 and divide it into 6 billion. Still to large, Let's try minutes. Multiply 365 by 24 and again by 60. Divide 6 billion by the number of hours in the year. Still too high, lets try seconds. 6 Billion divided by (365 * 24 * 60 * 60). Still to high? Maybe we are going in the wrong direction. Repeating after a year seems a bit arbitrary. Let's bring in the Chinese Zodiac since we are not biased. 6 billion divided by (365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 12). Still higher than one (or two for the episode where my exact duplicate causes zany misunderstandings.)

I ask anyone who believes in that to do the math before I ask them if Jupiter in ascension means I'm going to hit them now?

Of course my not beleiving in astrology is written in the stars.

Oh, BTW, Happy birthday again and sorry to any "true believers" of astrology I may have offended in my rant.

The song was from the musical, "Hair".

Peter, it didn't look vauge to me. the exact wording escapes but it describes Aquariuns (people born between January 20-something and February 14th I think) as p[eople with off-color sense of humor, can be a little stubborn and are fun loving. This fis me to a "T." Besides, as strange a place as the universe is, it wouldn't surprise if alignments and all that •••• really DID have SOME kind of impact on everyday life.

Brian,

That also describes me! But I'm a scorpio and a better lover.

Exactly. It describes me too! And I am not an Aquarian. Brian, I want you to think critically a moment.

1) "off-colour sense of humour" Who exactly would admit that their sense of humour is dead-on-standard? Who thinks that they really laugh only at the exact same things as everyone else? Who really believes that they have not an ounce of originality in their entire sense of humour? I'll bet virtually no one.

2) "can be a little stubborn" Now the key thing here is the very clever wording. People who see "can be a little stubborn" who are normally stubborn or very stubborn will instantly think `Wow, I am like that`. And even people who are surprisingly submissive will see the "a little" and think the same. Again, who really thinks of themselves as being entirely slave to others' wills (apart from every nagging mother in the world *sigh*)?

3) "fun loving" This one I love. Who doesn't see themselves as fun loving? Everyone. What I call fun is reading 18th century novels, modern biology and biographies of Margaret Thatcher. What you call fun may be partying and dancing. What a gardener would find fun is raking weeds all day and planting seeds carefully. The point is `fun loving` applies to everyone in the sense that we like to do things we like to do!

See now why all those things look like a description of you, but are actually written in such a way as to incorporate the maximum number? And even if there are people who read it and think "But I don't have any originality in my humour" or "I hate to have fun", they will look at the other two parts of the description and think that they still match their personality. It is human nature to hear the bits we want to hear and leave out the inconvenient bits.

Here are some genuinely spur of the moment examples of my own that bear no relation to any stars:

Excitable, secretive and funny when he wants to be.

Thoughtful, caring and capable of working very hard when he wants to.

A little cynical, moody and passionate.

Now those were just made up on the spot, and I'll bet if you read those in an Aquarian horoscope you'd think "Wow! That sounds lot like me". And if you wouldn't, it is only because I am not a professional who is paid to generate these sorts of descriptions. People who write horoscopes are clever at what they do. They prey on people's desire to know more about themselves the easy way, get easy guidance and have something to blame. Don't get me wrong: I'd like horoscopes to be true. What a wonderful thing it would be to get such great advice each morning and have such a great excuse for every wrong thing I did. THAT is what astrologers feed on. Then they use a talent for making generalisations that look specific to people who are using wishful thinking rather than critical thinking and bingo, they have a believer of sorts.

While the universe is wonderous and amazing in many ways, I don't see any reason to think it is illogical and bizarre. That is the difference. Weird and wonderful, maybe, but cause and effect, reason and so on apply throughout. Astrology doesn't fit the bill.

Peter.

Well, Peter, I was going off of memory. If my statement was a verbatim quote I could see your argument. My point is sometimes (not always) the horoscopes are erily(sp?) accurate, and other times it is so far off as to be hillarious. It's really a dice roll when you get down to it. And I never said I was a strong beleiver in astrology. I just understand why others do. I'm fairly open-minded.

Well, Peter, I was going off of memory. If my statement was a verbatim quote I could see your argument.

But don't you see that all horoscopes are like that? It doesn't actually matter for the purposes of my argument whether the quote is accurate or not. The point is that horoscopes are written in such a way as to apply to huge numbers of people whatever time of the year they were born. And to quote Richard Dawkins, there is a difference between being open-minded and empty-headed. If you are genuinely open-minded, why not look at the character descriptions for the other star signs with the same attitude? I'll bet that some of them apply just as well as the Aquarius one, and some better. And even if you are able not only to look at all twelve objectively and also assess correctly your relation to the personality description, they so what? The odds were one in twelve that any particular star sign description would suit you best. With odds like that it is hardly reason alone to believe in astrology.

Peter.

Peter,

Can you do a reading for me at twelve? I'll give you lots of money.

Seriously, Peter, you're right, but dripping with attitude. I'm sure Brian is getting more and more "miffed" as this line goes on. I know, I started it. I shouldn't have.

Brian,

Get out the wet noodle for me, please. And check out your horoscope on onion.com .

Happy belated birthday, Bri. And the group was The 5th Dimension.

Berry, I recognise that your post was positive, but didn't understand it. =/

"Seriously, Peter, you're right, but dripping with attitude."

How do you mean "attitude"?

"I'm sure Brian is getting more and more "miffed" as this line goes on."

Miffed? Line?

"Get out the wet noodle for me, please."

Wet Noodle?

Peter.

That also describes me! But I'm a scorpio and a better lover.

So my wife tells me (I'm also a scorpio)

And yes, Peter is write. Most "dime store"/newspaper horoscopes are written to be completely generic. I wouldn't know about personalized horoscopes, as I wouldn't waste my cash on it.

In this case, I also agree with Peter. Astrology is bunk.

Oh, re: Wet Noodle. It's an American saying... "Fifty lashes with a wet noodle..." Indicating that a person believes he deserves a very un-serious punishment...

I ask anyone who believes in that to do the math before I ask them if Jupiter in ascension .... Berry

First, let me say that I agree with your sentiment. Unfortunately I can't agree with your math. In my callow youth, I seriously looked at astrology, and not only do they use the location of the Sun at your birth, but also the Moon and the other planets (In astrology the Sun and Moon are lumped in as planets originally through incorrect cosmology, but now out of habit and convenience.) and the Eastern horizon (the "rising sign" or "ascendant") They also use the exact angles between the planets to dtermine how they might relate (how they are "aspected"). This allows a tremendous amount of leeway for differences. Considering only the ascendant and the seven traditional planets* and the signs that they are in results in a number of different horoscopes equal to 12 raised to the 8th power or 429,981,696† Working out the aspects between the planets raises the possibilities to nearly limitless numbers.

BTW Jupiter's cycle through the signs takes just about twelve years, and descriptions of Jupiter's influence match up nicely with Oriental "year of the ..." horoscopes. And one particularly bad Jupiter-Saturn aspect was occurring every twenty years and was considered the source of the curse on the US presidency (Every president elected in a year divisible by twenty from William H Harrison [1820] to John F Kennedy [1960] died in office -- and Ronald Reagan [1980]survived a serious bullet wound).

*The seven traditional planets are the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

†Actually I was a little generous in that figure, since the possible signs for Mercury and Venus are limited by their proximity to the Sun, so there are really only 44,789,760 different horoscopes based only on the signs of the planets

Yup. Astrology is bunk.

I used to get a kick out of reading my horoscope at the end of the day, to see if I could fit anything that happened that day into what it said would happen. Sometimes I could, sometimes I couldn't. Funny thing is, I'm a Capricorn (Dec 23), but the Sagittarius horoscope more often fit what I did that day than the Capricorn one!
I don't read the horoscope anymore-just got bored doing it.

Happy Birthday, Brian.

Happy Birthday, too (and since I'm late reading this, I wish you a Happy Birthday for next year, too - now I'm very early... :-)

The funniest about horoscopes I read from Douglas Adams: in the 5th book of the hitchiker trilogy, Mostly harmless, aliens kidnapp an astrophysiscst to calculate their horoscope for them, because a new planet, named rupert :-), throwing everything off-course.

Also, in one of the Dirk Gently's books, they discuss bad horoscopes ... Read it sometime, its funny.

copied from the Onion:

Aquarius: (Jan. 20—Feb. 18)
The Académie Française will rule that your name is never to be spoken within France's borders.