Oh, my stars!

Apparently they're just balls of gas.
In today's Sydney Morning Herald, I was most entertained by the article, Gasp, star signs are nonsense. I always find it amusing when a newspaper publishes the results of a scientific study that state something obvious to the average schmo with half a brain. The scary thing is that some people need a newspaper to tell them that astrology is a load of rubbish. And even then they still act like there's been some terrible misunderstanding.

My favourite quote from Gillian Ayers, the head of the Astrology Association of NSW was this:

"It's very different from tarot readers and palmistry - it's a very
calculated thing."

This suggests to me that astrology has some worth, just because it involves some sort of calculation. I could come up with a very complicated formula that calculates the Pantone code for someone's eye colour, multiplied by their height at 18 years old minus their height at 6 (in millimetres), divided by the number of times they've been on a boat to the power of the number of odd socks they have. I'd still get a number. Whether or not I could accurately use that number to describe someone's personality, or their likelihood of baldness, or to recommend a career path, is completely irrelevant to the method by which I arrived at that number.

The idea of measuring or somehow quantifying someone's personality has never sat right with me, especially after studying personality testing at university. You may as well try to measure happiness or irony.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't read my stars when I came across them in a newspaper or magazine. I read the comics, too. But I don't live my life by them. I think everyone should just admit that astrology is a heap of fun, that it's entirely arbitrary, and be done with it.