Astrology Vs Science II: Linda Goodman debunked

In the previous topic, I lingered upon astrology a bit [I also talked about Vaastu Shastra here]. In this episode, I have taken Linda Goodman’s book SUN SIGNS to ridicule some of her propositions. I took Libra for example. She says about Librans:

Librans hate to be rude, yet they’ll straighten the crooked picture on your wall and snap off your blaring TV set.

I took Librans for discussion because I happen to be one of them (according to my birthday and sun signs) and many of my family members and my close friends are also Librans. I am married to a Libran too. I have a sample of 12 people from this group whom I know very well. Nothing about the above statement makes sense. All of them tend to be rude once in a while and most of them don’t seem to straighten a crooked picture- especially not my wife.

Like gentle doves of peace, they go around mediating and patching up quarrel between others; still they enjoy a good argument themselves.

I ask you, who on this planet would not like to be seen as above? Many of us want to enjoy a good argument, and be seen as gentle doves of peace.

They’re good natured and pleasant, but they can also be sulky, and they balk at taking orders.

The way she puts it, almost everyone on the planet qualifies for the above. Everyone likes to be seen as good natured and pleasant. Is that true that Librans balk at taking orders? If so, should we make sure no Libran enters the Army?

Libras are restless people. But they seldom rush or hurry.

Now, I am beginning to doubt her expertise on this subject. She doesn’t take a stand on what Librans are. For each assertion, she puts a rider, negates it, or tones it down. By doing this she is making sure nobody will accuse her for being patently wrong. She can then always say, but I always said BUT. In the above four sentences, she uses words like, ‘yet’, ‘still’, ‘but’, ‘but’. Then she goes onto say:

Just because the sign is symbolized by the golden scales of justice, don’t ever think that Librans are always perfectly balanced… However, did you ever watch the balancing process on a pair of old-fashioned pharmaceutical scales?... First one side is low, then the other. Up and down, and they dip until there’s perfect balance.

This is when you really start doubting her theories. Is she telling me that I am supposed to correlate myself with a sign that is laid out on the stars and constellations which some primitive man out of boredom called it a ‘balance’ in the night sky? Actually, there is no limit to the number of constellations. There is no reason why it can’t be 1024 constellations instead of just 12. With an ordinary telescope one can conjure up many signs in the night sky- starting from a computer, a train, a bus, an airplane and even a floppy disk. The more bored you are, the more weird the object in the sky. The constellations are a pattern of stars as conjured up my man’s imagination. They constellations are not even closely held entities. In the same constellation, some stars are very close to us while some are extremely far away. It’s almost like one star being about feet away while another one is next to the moon. Just because our ancestors saw an object that resembles a balance we Librans cannot be correlated or uncorrelated with a balance in any of the wildest theories. I could look at the same pattern and can conjure up a sexy lady and will that have a damn effect on how every Libran is made? Then she goes onto say:

Librans features are almost always even and well-balanced… (About dimples) There will usually be a couple in the cheeks or one in the chin.

Man O Man! I am not sure how people have read this book. According to the cover page, more than 4 million have been sold. None of my Libran friends or relatives that I know has any dimples on the cheeks or on the chin. On the other hand, other sign people seem to have these. Is she telling us that one in 12 people on this planet will have a dimple on the cheek or chin? Then she goes onto say:

(About dimples)… If they’re not in the face, you might check to see if the knees are dimpled. Many Libran knees are.

:) This is an extremely clever statement. No wonder she sold 4 million copies. If I don’t find a dimple on the cheek, I should look at the chin, and if I don’t find one there, I guess I should look for the knees. Can someone tell me how should a dimple look like on a knee? You know what, take this from me- all knees on the planet, including that of animals have dimples. Go check! (It all depends on how you want to defined those knee-dimples) But she is not even sure of that, so she adds:

But be careful. Very few girls will believe you when you tell them you were staring at their knees “because I want to see if you were born in October”. Be discreet, but check. With the men, of course, the trousers rule out that clue…

Hmm! Clever woman, huh! She should have said, “Look under the armpits for dimples!” That would have made her theories irrefutable.

Don’t get discouraged if you find dimples, then discover the person was not born in October. Those fetching dimples have a right to be there, because he or she will have a Libra ascendant, so your guess is still correct.

Now, this gets interesting. As I said earlier, everyone would have dimples on their knees- it all depends on how you want to define a dimple on a knee. She wants to protect herself now. She adds in another factor- Libra ascendant. So, you end up with so many factors, that now it has become a loop of ‘if, but also if, or else, and if not, but, yet, and not so often,’ and so on.
What does this whole argument about dimples prove? Or what should I conclude? Do Librans have dimples or not? Do the people having dimples Librans or not? No conclusion! So much for her theories!

That’s when I tossed the book into the nearest garbage can!