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The Academics Thread


Pariah

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3 minutes ago, Cancer said:

Signs of our times, from one of the items on an astronomy education mailing list:

 

 

 

Well, barring giant meteors  you can't blame the Astronomers for not seeing trouble coming... now the ASTROLOGERS on the other hand....

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Once in my Solar System astronomy class I described doing horoscopes, which I learned back when I was 13 or so.  Doing all the math for setting up the chart is pretty cool, actually, depending on what sort of ephemerides you had to work with for the positions of Sun, Moon, & planets, as well as converting the civil time and location of birth to the sidereal time so you could work out what the ascendant was.  (At this point the classroom full of mathophobes had become thoroughly disenchanted and were no longer hopeful that I'd teach them how to do this.)  Then, as I put it, the rest is all hooey, using the vague guidelines for going from geometry to fortune (etc.).

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"Astrology developed into a strange discipline: A mixture of careful observations, mathematics, and record-keeping with fuzzy thinking and pious fraud."

 

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Ep. 3: "Harmony of the Worlds"

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Pretty much. I was trying to get information on the Jupiter-Venus conjunction this month, and the search engine included the entry "Are Jupiter and Venus Enemies?" The brief explanation had me impersonating the 10th Doctor's "What?! What?!" line for a few minutes.

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11 minutes ago, Bazza said:

No wonder Sagan didn't understand astrology, it is a qualitative science not a quantitative science -- it deals with wholeness, something science lost (if it ever had in the first place).  


addendum: you would need to read Plato to have basic knowledge that reality is vertical as well as horizontal. 

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6 hours ago, Old Man said:

Which reminds me, I've been meaning to ask--Mars and Jupiter are in conjunction in a couple of weeks, what does that mean for Scorpios?  Let me know, thanks.

 

6 hours ago, Bazza said:

From what I hear, bad news. Best be in the lookout for giant scorpions. And if a black one should cross your path…eek! 

 

Pariah -> :slap: <- you two yahoos 

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6 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Which reminds me, I've been meaning to ask--Mars and Jupiter are in conjunction in a couple of weeks, what does that mean for Scorpios?  Let me know, thanks.

 

Depends on where you are.  In the third house?  Or a red state?   You are in such big trouble.

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