Drat - I completely forgot about the Moon in conjunction with Mars. And Uranus rising in Venus. Or something.
I agree. Many an evening, at Chez Trombones, Ms Trombones and I whisk away the cold winter evenings with The Tarot. She takes great delights in "predicting" my future. Which starts off with painting the spare bedroom, quickly followed by the purchase of some new and expensive appliance for the kitchen . She is fiendishly accurate. You don't want to know what happen the night she produced the Hanging Man followed by Death...
On a more serious note, astrology does appear to be part of a set of high revenue industries that function as a law unto themselves. The claims they make are wholly unproven. Which isn't so bad, if it's only a bit of fun.
Take for example the
case of Simon Singh, MBE over
this article
Due to the peculiarities of English Libel Law, he found himself in the dock, a remarkable occurance given all he'd done was present a scientific case against quackery. Oddly, the British Chiropractic Association did not have to prove their claims about the effectivemess of their therapy, merely that Simon Singh was "defaming" them.
The British Chiropractic Association eventually withdrew its case, which had been extremely costly, both to itself and to the unfortunate Mr Singh. But then again, the BCA could afford to undertake such an expensive legal venture, given the multi-million pound nature of its business.
The main point to make with alternative medicine, astrology, et al, is their insistance that someone else should prove them wrong; that claims can be made, willy-nilly, and are correct until someone proves them wrong. They seem to assume, as with astrology, that "correct" is the default term rather than "unproven", which it manifestly is.
Again and again, skeptics go through the relentless procedure of dissassembling this hokey-cokey, as if it's a game worth playing and again and again the hokey-cokey merchants glibly respond that their "theories" are still valid for the same old non-valid reasons and they "haven't been disproven", it's been used for "thousands of years", etc.
It get's to the point where it's difficult not to consider the possibility that some people are simply chumps that want to throw away their money, and will get duped by whatever silver-tongued charlatan crosses their path. Whatever process of logical deconstruction is used, they will happily ignore it and continue to subscribe to beliefs that are, to the casual observer, no better that a lame confidence trick.
Cue, Victor...
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