Ra‘ananah, Ra‘ananah, hey hey hey, goodbye

Greetings.

Jewish date:  3 ’Adhar Ri’shon (evening) (Parashath Teṣawweh).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Black History Month, Chinese New Year, Lame Duck Day, National Frozen Yogurt Day, International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation (UN).

This is my first post on this blog in about two months.  During this time I have moved out of the absorption center in Ra‘ananah to an apartment in Giv‘ath Shemu’el.  (Hence the silly title of this post.)  This took a lot of time and effort, as I had to not only find the apartment, but also get everything properly set up.  Also taking up time is that Tron Legacy came out, and besides seeing it twice in theaters, I spent a lot of time working on a review which is somewhat different from any I've done before.

Image via Wikipedia

Today’s weird thing is the latest astrological “scandal”.  The badly-named article “Sign of the times: Astrology story soars like a comet” details the shock and denial many people who believe in astrology have felt when an astronomer correctly noted that the signs of the zodiac are not where astrologers claim they are, nor have they been there for centuries.  The astrologers have also been forgetting to mention that the zodiac passes through 13 constellations, not 12.  (See a diagram of the when the Sun is really in the zodiac and when here.)  What the article completely fails to note, to the point of being funny, is that astrology does not work at all; rather than try to make the argument myself, I point you to “Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions: Astrology” and let an astronomer do it for me.

As an added bonus, I also present “Horoscoped”, which analyzes the vague and useless verbiage of horoscope columns.  Note the visualized version and the meta-prediction.

Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron