New sign of the times

The world’s headlines seem to be full of gloom and doom at the moment but a new sign of good times has appeared — Ophiuchus, the snake bearer. Like most people with any education in the science I consider Astrology to be in the same category as snake oil salespeople and it appears I was right, snakes do have an influence over our lives.

The only real concern is the mention of NASA in an article about star signs as many believers will seize on that and not read the rest of the article.

The basic information from NASA is that the constellations have slowly moved relative to the earth and are now not where they should be in terms of the calendar. Astrology has not included the 13th constellation, perhaps because thirteen is considered an unlucky number. NASA should probably have just laughed and not tried to convince the unscientific of the truth of science.

Like most people, I have glanced at the Stars and considered what the day holds for me and it is generally positive, none specific and sometimes full of mumbo-jumbo.

 As a science teacher I used a simple approach to show students the falsehood of these predictions by giving them a set of predictions without the star sign name, the apparent characteristics of the star sings and asked them to identify which was which — the students failed to do this correctly.

For interest, mine, Aries, says in the local paper that I seem to be in a castle under attack, but there is a rescue party on the way. I’m not sure what to make of this but I think staying at home while the COVID pandemic is happening and waiting for a vaccine to be developed might be the only scientific reading of it and I didn’t really need to be told this again.

We’ll see if tomorrow is more positive.

Dennis Fitzgerald — Melbourne, Australia