Astrology

[Blue Bubble]

Oh FFS: from http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/tm_objectid=17000093%26method=full%26siteid=94762-name_page.html

EXPERTS: 'NO TRUTH IN STARS'

BEFORE you get carried away about your stars today, consider this... scientists reckon astrology is nonsense.

Teams from Germany and Denmark studied 15,000 people and said the position of planets on your birth date has no influence on your character.

They wrote: "The study provides no evidence of relationships between date of birth and individual personality.

"The survey found no independent effects of sun signs and yields no support for the claims of astrology."

But Mirror astrologist Debbie Frank branded the report "ridiculous".

She said: "If astrology works for the person whose chart is being read, if they derive benefit from it and they believe it works, then it works."

[Blue Bubble]

Doh! It just gets woise and woise ...

ROT'S IN THE STARS
Scientists say horoscopes are all nonsense
By Laurie Hanna

BEFORE you get carried away about what your stars have in store for you today, consider this. Scientists reckon astrology is nonsense.

No surprises there, you may think, but now researchers claim to have proof predictions in sun signs such as Aries and Gemini are worthless.

Teams from Germany and Denmark studied 15,000 people and came to the conclusion that the position of Jupiter or Uranus on the day of your birth has no influence on your character whatsoever.

The scientists wrote: "The study provides no evidence for the existence of relationships between birth date and personality.

"If there is some truth to astrology then some general effects of prominent astrological factors like sun signs should be detectable.

"The survey found no independent effects of sun signs and yields no support for the claims of astrology."

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But Mirror astrologist Debbie Frank branded the report "ridiculous" and said astrology should not be treated as a science.

She added: "The tyranny of science says that nothing exists unless it is provable. That means love and beauty don't exist.

"If astrology works for the person whose chart is being read, if they derive benefit from it and they believe it works, then it works."

TV star gazer Russell Grant insisted "proper" astrology was valid.

He said: "Astrology is based on where all the planets are at the exact time of someone's birth, and that has been used for thousands of years."

l.hanna@mirror.co.uk

[tkingdoll]

Well if they're desperate enough to wheel Russel Grant out, I feel rather sorry for them.

Hubby said an astrologer on Radio 5 today was trying to say the study was flawed because many of the subjects were soldiers and soldiers are trained to supress their personalities.

Not at all insulting, not at all.

Edited to add: you can listen to the show again on the Radio 5 website, it's the Morning Phone In, 27th April.

I haven't had chance to listen yet but hubby informs me the astrologer's 'prediction' of the professor's personality is just hilarious.

[Mojo]

I like this one: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/gasp-star-signs-are-nonsense/2006/04/27/1145861490053.html

Ms Ayers was unable undertake a reading for the Herald yesterday due to an unforeseen problem with her hot water, but she said: "There was a lot of planetary activity in my fourth house so I did see something of that nature, a domestic upheaval. But it can manifest itself in many different ways. I'm trying to ring a plumber now."
;D

And she's dissing tarot and palmistry. Whatever happened to woo solidarity?

[vbloke]

Oh boy.

I emailed Laurie Hanna (I'm not going to cut and paste the email because it's huge) about the article, going into detail about why astrology is bunk.

I wonder if I'll get a reply?

[Muse]

"The tyranny of science says that nothing exists unless it is provable. That means love and beauty don't exist.



And that folks in a nutshell explains what's wrong with this country :(

Ms Frank isn't a creationist too by any chance??

[Mojo]

On the plus side, the new study about astrology is getting a lot of attention which is great. The Mirror got their astrology chick to comment, she said that the study is nonsense, because if people think astrology works, then it works.

The Independent, of course, also feels obliged to defend astrology in a piece just as bad as their recent one about sCAM (http://www.skeptics.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=71.0).

For Pete's sake, they've even put it under "Science and Technology"! >:(

Mystery of the planets: It's in the stars. Really (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article360644.ece)

A study of 15,000 people claims there is no scientific basis for astrology. The faith of horoscope fans, though, is unshakeable. Terry Kirby explains why they may just be right, after all

There is one very simple answer that those who accept the principles of astrology give to sceptics who condemn it as a load of mumbo-jumbo: don't look at the stars for an explanation, go to the coast and look at the sea.

The massive power of waves and the tides that cause them are, it is universally accepted, a direct consequence of the gravitational influences of the Moon and the Sun upon Earth. We also know that the Moon sometimes determines animal behaviour and has long been linked with aspects of our lives as diverse as a women's menstrual cycle and mental disturbance, hence the word lunatic.

Is it, astrologists argue, therefore completely impossible that the other planets also exert influences on our lives and personalities, to greater or lesser degrees and in varying combinations? And that, having been around in various forms since the ancient Babylonians first began to describe celestial omens 4,000 years ago, astrology deserves more respect than the derision commonly accorded it by the rational scientists and the established churches.

Is it worth writing to them pointing some of the errors in this?

That, for example, because of the inverse square law and the distance to the planets, the midwife (and, I suspect, the father if he happens to be present at the birth) exerts more of a gravitational force on the newborn than the planets do;

that there is nothing to suggest that anything special that could be influenced by the position of the planets happens at the time of birth, as far as the formation of character is concerned, and nothing to suggest how the particular positions of the planets at the time of birth could have any more influence on future events than their positions at any other randomly chosen time;

that waves (apart from surge waves such as the Severn Bore) are caused by the action of wind on the water surface, not tides;

that while the menstrual cycle in humans is roughly the same as the period of the moon's orbit this is a coincidence (menstrual cycles for other mammals are not the same, e.g. mouse: 5 days, cow: 21 days, elephant: 16 weeks, dog: 6 months);

and, of course, the fact that something has been believed for a long time does not mean that it is actually true... ::)

[Muse]

Yet more signs that there's a general trend moving away from science. It seems to me that science is gaining a negative image while all this hocus pocus stuff is being widely promoted even by the 'big guns' who really should know better. I'm convinced that we're heading into some sort of Dark Age! :(

Nice to see Bad Astronomer Phil Plait giving astrology a good going over at

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html#harm

[vbloke]

I'm thinking of sending the email I sent to the Mirror reporter to Terry Kirby as well.

[Jocky]

Really interesting discussion about astrology guys, but I fear this thread should be retitled "It’s time to take UK Skeptics off-topic" :(

Any newbie dropping into this site won't be able to see any of the excellent links, quotes and comments above, and having so few posts in the public areas makes the forum look 'dead' from their point of view. We need to encourage people and make ourselves look alive 8)

John, can you move this bit of the discussion into a more appropriate and public place?

[Jocky]

Astrology sucks!!!!!

It was a detestation of Russell Grant (along with dear old Eric von Daniken) that got me into skepticism in the first place.

Another good skeptical examination of Astrology is at http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/03/the_astrology_c.html.

[Nettles]

My sisters are fraternal triplets, all born within an hour. Identical astrological charts, of course, since few natal horological astrologers pretend anything more than an hour's granularity. Amazingly enough, they have completely different lives -- indeed, they're completely different people.

How can this be?!

You've got to be impressed by the birdcage liners' eagerness to support the concept, though. (And the Independent ... so pompous, so self-righteous, yet they still lend aid and comfort to astrologers AND Robert Fisk.)

[tkingdoll]

What tickles me is that astrology sort of assumes there are only 12 types of people in the world.

Sometimes I go between finding that funny because everyone is so damn different, and finding it funny because everyone is so damn similar.

[Lord Muck oGentry]

What tickles me is that astrology sort of assumes there are only 12 types of people in the world.

Sometimes I go between finding that funny because everyone is so damn different, and finding it funny because everyone is so damn similar.


So, when they insist that they don't just work on 12 signs, but want to know to the minute when you were born, you can just sort of innocently ask whether that means there are as many types as there are minutes in the year. Makes their eyebrows twitch :)

[Mongrel]

My sisters are fraternal triplets, all born within an hour. Identical astrological charts, of course, since few natal horological astrologers pretend anything more than an hour's granularity. Amazingly enough, they have completely different lives -- indeed, they're completely different people.

How can this be?!


I understand this, I'm a twin and I have 7 minutes on my brother.

At the moment he's got the spare bedroom in mine and my girlfriends house, his boss is looking at making him redundant and re-employing him part time, because the business insurance will cover that, and he's divorced.

I on the other hand am buying the house with my girlfriend, we've lived together for eight years and I have a reasonably paid (but boring) job that's steady...

Could an astrologer choose between us reliably?

[Mojo]

What tickles me is that astrology sort of assumes there are only 12 types of people in the world. An astrologer, whan confronted with this, will say that the sort of astrology you see in newspapers is not real astrology. for example, here's Russell Grant (http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,18950876-5001022,00.html) commenting on the study: TV astrologer Russell Grant said the survey needed to distinguish between the "pop" astrology and "proper" astrology.

"We all know that the sun signs are used in newspapers and magazines as a form of entertainment because we cannot sum up all people in terms of 12 signs," he said.

"But proper astrology is based on where all the planets are at the exact time of someone's birth, and that has been used for thousands of years." Oh look: a "no true Scotsman" and an appeal to antiquity.

So the newspaper atrology is worthless, and if you want an "accurate" reading you have to have a proper chart done. Oh, by the way, you have to pay for that...

Not that this stops astrologers from making big money out of newspaper astrology (and the associated phone lines), of course. For example, there was a story about Jonathan Cainer in the "Street of Shame" section of the last but one issue of Private Eye (No. 1156, p. 6). Apparently on one day in early April his horoscope for Aries read: What does April have in store? There's excellent news in your new long-range, in-depth forecast. to hear it call...Then on to Taurus: What does April have in store? There's excellent news in your new long-range, in-depth forecast. to hear it call...Anyone see a pattern emerging yet?

On another day the same week, according to the Eye, each sign was told: "There is a powerful, inspiring and inportant prediction in your latest in-depth forecast. to hear it..."

As the Eye says: Surely all Mail readers weren't going to receive "excellent news" or an "important predicition" at the same time?

A shame the Eye can't apply the same sort of critical thinking to its MMR coverage.

[vbloke]

Apologies for the length of this, but this is my take on the planets in astrology.
Feel free to use as much (or as little) as you like.

Western (Zodiacal) astrology relies on the position of the Sun, Moon and planets at the time of your birth to determine your personality. Each planet has a particular "personality" and affects different aspects of your personality.

How this happens is never really explained, why it kicks in at the time of your birth instead of the time of conception is also never really explained either. Is there something in the womb that shields you from the astrological effects?

If it is a "force" that emanates from the astronomical bodies that effects you, then it is an entirely new force unknown to science. We only have four forces to work with - gravity, electromagnetic , the strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force. The last two only work at atomic levels (they keep atoms held together and can only be felt if you're about the size of an atom), so they can't be any use.

Gravity obeys what is called the "inverse square law" - that is, it drops off rapidly the further you get, imagine standing next to a hot radiator - the heat is intense, but you feel it less the further you move away from it. True, the gravity of the planets reaches out for millions of miles, but in the case of Earth, the Sun and Moon overpower the combined gravity of every other planet in the solar system. Even the building you are standing in overpowers the gravity of Jupiter.

The electromagnetic force relies on the planets having an electric charge. Whilst the larger planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune) do, they are too far away for their relatively weak electric fields to affect us. The Sun's electric charge dwarfs the entire electric output of all the planets. It's like comparing a 1.5 volt battery to a power station.

So, this force must be something else. Something that does not diminish by distance and that helps tiny Pluto have the same effect as giant Jupiter.

Astrologers have sometimes said that there is a "quantum force" at work, neatly using Quantum Physics, something that is, let's face it, very complicated and not easily understood unless you have a lot of PhD's.

Here's a quick note though. You might want to note this down for future reference. If something has "quantum" effects, it operates at the sub-atomic scale. Like the strong and weak nuclear force, quantum effects don't work if you're bigger than an atom. A lot of people claim "quantum effects" for all sorts of alternative therapies and products. Quantum effects operate on things so small, even the most powerful electron microscopes in the world cannot see them. Once you get to the size of a thousand thousandth of a millimetre, quantum effects no longer work. Write that down.

So, a "quantum force" would only work if Jupiter was an atomic nucleus and you were an electron.

When the zodiac was originally drawn up in around 600BC, astrologers knew about 6 planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. These were given arbitrary names and characters, as mankind likes to anthropomorphise things. Each planet was known to move around in the sky (the word "planet" actually means "wanderer" in ancient Greek) and appeared to follow the same line across the sky as the Sun and Moon - a line we call the Ecliptic. It is the constellations that lie on this line that we call the zodiac. Every planet passes through the constellations on their journey around the Sun.

So, so far we have six planets, the Moon and Sun and an unknown force. These were considered to affect your personality at the time of your birth.

Hang on, aren't there nine planets?

All the planets past Jupiter are too far away to be seen properly without telescopes, so the ancients couldn't have known about them. The telescope was invented around 1608 (not by Galileo, as often claimed, but by a Dutch spectacle maker that we don't know the name of), this means that, whilst these planets obviously must be having an effect on your horoscope, they weren't known about, so they couldn't include them in their calculations.

For a start, this raises an interesting question - these planets had an effect, but couldn't be included in horoscope calculations - why didn't ancient astrologers notice this "extra" influence coming from somewhere? If, as they claim, astrology is a science, this effect should be measurable and quantifiable and the positions and sizes of these planets should be calculable by extrapolating from this extra influence. This never happened.

Uranus was discovered in 1781 by Sir William Herschel. Astrologers never saw it coming. Instead, Uranus was quietly included in their calculations. Suddenly, your horoscope changed to include this massive new planet that had always existed. Does the force that controls astrology only work when it's seen? If we don't know about something, does it have no effect? If so, you could cross a motorway safely, just by closing your eyes and wearing earplugs.

Neptune was discovered in 1846 by collaboration between Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams and Johann Gottfried Galle. See above.

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh. Pluto is a bit of an anomaly though, it's tiny. Also, it's orbit is what astronomers call "eccentric"; it orbits at an angle to the sun - the other eight planets all lie roughly within the same plane, but Pluto sits at an angle of 17°. It's also the only planet whose orbit takes it inside the orbit of another planet - for a part of it's year, Pluto is closer to the Sun than Neptune, the rest of the time, it's further away. Why does Pluto have the same effect as it's giant neighbour? To put it another way, Neptune is nearly 58 times the volume of Earth, whereas Pluto is smaller than Earth's Moon.

What about Sedna? 2002UB313, the recently discovered planet candidate? The asteroid belt? The Kuiper Belt? Comets? Do these have an effect? Some of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter are larger than Mercury and Pluto! Do they have an effect? Why not? Things are looking a bit dodgy for astrology.

So, that's it for planets - isn't it?

No.

You see, every dot of light in the sky (apart from the planets) is a star. Our sun is a star as well, it just so happens that we're very close to it. Do other stars have planets?

Yes.

Since 1989, planets have been found around other stars. In total so far, astronomers have discovered 188 "extrasolar" planets. 188! That's a lot of planets.

Most of these are huge. In our solar system, Jupiter is the king of planets. It is huge - 1321 times the volume of Earth! Most of these extrasolar planets are what are called "Hot Jupiter's" - planets that make Jupiter seem small. Some of them are truly gigantic - measured at up to 11 times the mass of Jupiter. 11 times! That's one big planet.

Astronomers recently discovered a "cold Earth" - a rocky planet around 5 times the mass of Earth orbiting a distant star in our own galaxy. Surely this should affect your horoscope?

If, as astrologers would have us believe, their force does not diminish by distance, then these planets should have a measurable effect on your horoscope. We can't see them directly, so why should they have an effect? Well, we can't see Pluto, Sedna or 2002UB313 without very powerful telescopes, but these have been included in horoscopes as having effects, so why not these massive extrasolar planets? You see, these planets haven't been given "traditional" names like our solar system planets, they're called things like 16 Cyg B b, HD 216435 b and 55 Cnc d. What does that tell you about their characteristics?

Astronomers have theorised that most of the stars we can see might have planets. We can only detect them by inferring them from how they effect their parent star, so the process is slow and laborious. There are definitely more than 188 out there.

One day, your horoscope will have to include all these planets, but where will the line be drawn? Theoretically, there could be billions of planets in the observable universe. Your horoscope will be very cluttered and probably the size of the Encyclopaedia Britannica every day to include the effects of all these other planets. Phew.

Is that it?

No.

What happens when a star "dies"? Well, some stars explode violently in a supernova, some expand into red giants and then shrink, slowly cooling over billions of years. What could happen is, if one of these stars had a planetary system, some of these planets could be thrown out of their orbits and sent flying through the universe. A planet without a star. These would be almost impossible to see, but it is almost certain that there are some out there. Would these "wanderers" have an effect as well?

Astrologers want to claim their profession is a science. If so, then they have to play by the rules of science. Their force should have a measurable and predictable effect. We should be able to infer and predict things based on this force. No astrologer ever predicted Uranus, Neptune or Pluto based on their calculations, even though they must have been having an effect by their force acting on us. No astrologer predicted extra solar planets or recently discovered comets based on their calculations of the zodiac. No astrologer will tell you that the planets were named arbitrarily by the ancients, these names are used by astrologers to personify them and give them characteristics. Mars was the god of war - hence it controls aggression. This is because it has a reddish colour in the sky and red is the colour of aggression. What would your horoscope be like if it had been called Diana, the Roman goddess of hunting, or Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of Love?

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto's names were decided by a vote. There was no consideration of their "characters" when they were named. What does this say about their effect on your horoscope?

[Mojo]

Astrologers want to claim their profession is a science. If so, then they have to play by the rules of science. Their force should have a measurable and predictable effect. We should be able to infer and predict things based on this force. No astrologer ever predicted Uranus, Neptune or Pluto based on their calculations, even though they must have been having an effect by their force acting on us. No astrologer predicted extra solar planets or recently discovered comets based on their calculations of the zodiac. No astrologer will tell you that the planets were named arbitrarily by the ancients, these names are used by astrologers to personify them and give them characteristics. Mars was the god of war - hence it controls aggression. This is because it has a reddish colour in the sky and red is the colour of aggression. What would your horoscope be like if it had been called Diana, the Roman goddess of hunting, or Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of Love?

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto's names were decided by a vote. There was no consideration of their "characters" when they were named. What does this say about their effect on your horoscope?


Because Sedna was named after an Inuit sea goddess astrologers have tried to link (http://www.astrology.co.uk/news/tsunami.htm) it with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (they've added hurricane Katrina as well since I last looked at that page ::) ). So following the myth, the planet Sedna should manifest as stormy and vengeful seas or stormy divisions within families and cultures among other possibilities. [their emphasis]

I like the "among other possibilities" bit. That should keep them pretty well covered.

But why couldn't the planet have been named after Ninkasi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninkasi)?

[vbloke]

I should really have said that Pluto was named by an 11 year old girl and voted on to become the official name.

[John Jackson]

Mark.

That could be used as an article on the main site. ;)

[vbloke]

Feel free.

I also intend to do a full write-up after my course has finished that you can use.

[John Jackson]

Should I credit it to "vbloke" or "Mark"? ???

Or something else?

[vbloke]

Mark is fine.

[wollery]

Beautifully written vbloke.

A few more points you might want to add;

Astrologers are very good at glossing over the fact that the dates of the signs they use bear little or no resemblance to the position of the Sun in the thirteen constellations the Sun passes through (Ophiucus is the 13th). This is due to the fact that the precession of the equinoxes - the Earth's wobble around its axis - which causes the position of the Sun relative to the zodiac changes by 1 degree every 72 years. Shouldn't astrology change with it?

Even stars aren't fixed in position, one of the nearest stars, Barnard's Star is moving across the sky at a rate of 10.3 arcseconds per year. Since its discovery 90 years ago it has moved over a quarter of a degree across the sky! When the babylonians first started noting the positions of the constellations some of them looked a little different than they do today due to similar, if slower, motions.

What qualifies as a planet is a hot issue of debate at the moment. Should Pluto and Sedna qualify as planets, or are they just Kuiper belt objects, big icy remnants of the formation of the solar system? Do the larger asteroids count, after all, they're called planetesimals, and they were formed in the same way and at the same time as the planets. What about a hot young object with a mass just under 16 Jupiter masses (the minimum limit for any stable core fusion reaction) that's orbiting a main sequence star - is it a planet or a sub-brown dwarf companion? What if that same object is floating through space on it's own - is it a free-floating planet with no sun? Would such distinctions alter how these objects affect our horoscope?

[vbloke]

I wanted to try and keep it restricted to planets.

I wrote something about precession in the "private" section.
Let's assume for a minute that astrology actually works. No questions, it just does.

Now, when the astrological signs were drawn up originally, it was done around 600BC. Each sign (e.g.: Scorpio) are exactly 30° wide - they are measured eastward along the ecliptic from the vernal equinox, which is the intersection of the elliptic and the celestial equator and is the zero point.
When the system was originally set up, the zero pint was in Aries and was called the "first point of Aries".

Aries encompassed the first 30° of the ecliptic, next came Taurus (30° to 60°), Gemini (60° to 90°) and so on...

This scheme ignored the actual stars themselves, but uniformity was more important than fussing about star positions.

Since then, precession has caused the celestial equator to wobble so as to cause the intersection point between it ad the ecliptic to move westward along the ecliptic by 36° or a tenth of the way around.

Your birth sign ignores the effect of precession. What a horoscope calls "Aries" is the 30° segment along the ecliptic that is east of the current location of the vernal equinox - but today, most of it is in Pisces. The next 30° segment (called Taurus in the horoscope) is mostly in Aries.
The astrological signs are directions in space that no longer correspond to the constellations that bear their names.

Precession causes the position of the sun on the vernal equinox to move as the earth wobbles on its axis - then again, the position of the sun varies on every date (analemma). This means that it is not only the names of the zodiac signs that are now wrong, the names of the tropics are also inaccurate!

This all dates to when the sun is within the constellation of your birth sign. According to astrology (corrected for precession - although these dates will vary slightly from year to year), you may find that you're actually a different birth sign.

If you were born between November 30th and December 17th, you're actually an Ophiuchus.

What happens in astrology is that the sun travels through the traditional 12 signs of the zodiac over the course of the year. Whatever sign the sun is in when you're born is the sign you "are". However, over the past 2,600 years (since the charts were drawn up), the precession of the earth has shifted the ecliptic westwards and now the sun visits the constellation of Ophiuchus during November/December. I very much doubt you'll find a horoscope that takes this into account.

Capricorn: January 20th to February 16th
Aquarius: February 17th to March 11th
Pisces: March 12th to April 18th
Aries: April 19th to May 13th
Taurus: May 14th to June 21st
Gemini: June 22nd to July 20th
Cancer: July 21st to August 10th
Leo: August 11th to September 16th
Virgo: September 17th to October 30th
Libra: October 31st to November 23rd
Scorpio: November 24th to November 29th
Ophiuchus: November 30th to December 17th
Sagittarius: December 18th to January 19th

Since I'm no longer Cancer and am now Gemini "all of a sudden", does this mean I'll have to change my character and I can sue astrologers for giving me wrong information?

Good idea to include proper motion of the stars as well. People don't realise that the stars are moving.

[John Jackson]

I can use that one as well. :D

Perhaps they should be credited to "the Bad Homeopath" with links?

I'll get them up later today.

[vbloke]

Perhaps they should be credited to "the Bad Homeopath" with links?

that would be lovely, thanks.

[John Jackson]

I thought you'd say that.

You're a Taurus aren't you? ;D

[wollery]

I wanted to try and keep it restricted to planets.Fair enough.

I wrote something about precession in the "private" section.Again, beautifully written. Now why can't I write like that? :(

Good idea to include proper motion of the stars as well. People don't realise that the stars are moving.Yeah, don't I know it. Makes it a real bugger trying to explain what I do for a living! ::)

[tkingdoll]

Great articles but you might want to consider rewording your opening sentence:

"Let's assume for a minute that astrology actually works. No questions, it just does."

Cause it's screaming to be misquoted.

Hey, UK Skeptics said this! Even they admit it works!

[vbloke]

True.

I was wrote it on the JREF forum in response to someone asking questions about why it works. I started it off from the position of "let's assume it's real" and investigate it's claims.

[John Jackson]

They say that general astrology doesn't work and they accept that people cannot be separated into 12 personality types. A 'true' astrological reading is personalised and based on a person's time and place of birth.

That's fair enough but isn't everyone born at a (slightly with twins) different time and place? This means that we will all have different astrology charts and we're all different and individual. That actually removes its use as a personality indicator. It only states that we are all different - something we already know.

Now...

Conjoined twins born via C section will be born at the same time and in the same place. Is there any evidence to show that they have exactly the same personality? :ponder:

I think those two American women who are conjoined at the head state that they have quite different personalities. ;)

[Nettles]

Whenever I'm asked what my star sign is, I say "Casseiopeia".

I find I learn a lot from people based on their responses to that.

[John Jackson]

I've just put Mark's articles up here: http://www.skeptics.org.uk/paranormal.php

I've just realised that I'm an Ophiuchus! :D

I think I'll use that the next time asks me what my star sign is.