Politics
pahl-uh-tiks : from Latin; “poly” meaning many, and “tics” meaning blood-sucking parasites.
I don’t know why I have politics on the brain so much lately. One of the surest ways to lose reader interest would be to blog about politics. The only way to help stave off reader abandonment would be to A) make something about the post unique, B) create controversy, and C) point out ahead of time that you risk losing readers due to the topic and that you have a plan to avoid it.
The cool thing about controversy is you not only get interest from people who agree (heck YEAH! Man, youtellitbruthah!), you also get the dissenters and people who vehemently disagree (you pusillanimous piece of putrid pediddledom how could you think that?!?!). I call that a win-win.
Now onto the predictions. You’ve probably heard of certain ‘facts’ about presidential elections. “As goes Ohio, so goes the nation” is one of them, in that no President has ever been elected that didn’t first secure a nomination from Ohio. Another is a common rule that the taller candidate wins, although Bush/Gore in 2004 was a notable (and somewhat emotional) exception. Another indicator is approval ratings, which also took a hit in the last election, but still has a strong track record.
So are we really deciding? Or are fates decided beforehand, based on other factors?
These kinds of ‘fact figures’ are extremely common in sports, and millions of people not only trust them inherently, they also strive to memorize as many as possible. People go monkey-bonkers over seemingly over-the-top stats such as ‘this running back ran for over 100 yards in any home game on a pre-season sunday that also had an odd number date and when it rained the previous two Saturdays’. Just listening to the commentators rattle off these things is mind-blowing when you think about the computational power and database it must take to keep track of the stuff. And what gets me is — people care about them!
Some stats are definitely worthwhile. After enough time, a stat gains strength and starts to become a trend. A trend, if it is nurtured and weathers the hard times, can grow up and become worthy of prediction.
The trick is to identify which stats and trends are an actual sign of probabilty and not just errant data points.
I invite you to read the extended entry (below) for more interesting facts that might help us predict the next president based on astrological data. Hint: Romney loses.
Let’s mix it up a bit. Let’s see what an arguably abritrarily assignment of celestial locations at the time of one’s birth has to do with it. In other words, let’s see if there are stats worthy of prediction in a candidate’s astrology facts.
Follow with me on the math. There have been 42 individuals who served as president so far. There are 12 zodiac signs, and therefore 12 possible sun signs - Aries, Taurus, Gemini, etc. Assuming that the population in general is somewhat evenly spread between the 12 signs, and also assuming that there are no major generational anomalies, we could assume that the 42 Presidents should at least have some sort of average disbursement between sun signs, or other astrological data.
Five (5) of the presidents were Scorpio and Five (5) were Aquarius. Three signs (Gemini, Virgo and Aires) had two each. While it’s not the exact even distribution of 3 or 4 each, it’s not any big whoop.
Interesting to me was the disbursement of the ~20 major declared candidates, where 6 were Gemini (split evenly, oddly enough between 3 democrat and 3 republican). Gemini is the “twin” sign, and the two parties share the sign. There are 4 Leo’s, mostly Republican, and all 3 of the Scorpio’s are Democrats and all 3 of the Virgo’s are Republican.
Possibly the MOST intriguing piece is where the President’s Mars is located. In Astrology, Mars typifies the energy, drive, courage, determination and aggression and other factors. Given the same assumption that there aren’t any other reasons for anomalies, it seems weird that we would have this distribution:
Whoa! This shows us zero Presidents with Mars in Pisces but ten Presidents with Mars in Leo. Seems to be an advantage, statistically speaking, to have your Mars in Leo and NOT in Pisces. Any astrologer would tell you that Mars (fire) in Leo (fire) is a controlled fire, organized, and extremely energetic, strong and long lasting. In contrast, Mars (fire) in Pisces (water), it gets put out. It creates steam. Mars can’t operate in Pisces. They literally are on opposite ends of the spectrum, astrologically speaking. There’s a loss of power.
Hmm, this makes me wonder… how are the candidates’ Mars are placed? In the chart above, we see Leo as the #1 most common, Scorpio as #2, and Leo as #3.
Interestingly enough, both Clinton and McCain have Mars in Leo. Are you surprised? Doesn’t it seem a bit out of the statistical norm to have these front runners in the same position as the past Presidents? What if I told you Huckabee and Guliani’s Mars were also in Leo? This is kinda weird, right? I’ve mentioned four of the absolute top current candidates for President and they take up only 2 out of 12 zodiac signs, AND they happen to be the #1 most common (above). I wonder if some of the ones who dropped out don’t also have Mars in these two signs, or Scorpio, the #2 top sign for past Presidents. Hmm, did you know that Fred Thompson’s Mars is in Scorpio? Update: Oh, and Ron Paul’s?
Obama’s Mars and Ron Paul’s Mars are is in Virgo. This doesn’t seem to be a particular advantage or disadvantage, except for the above-mentioned fact that two of their opponents have that much-envied Mars in Leo.
Uh-oh. Romney’s Mars is in Pisces. Well, I guess we know now that he won’t be our next President.
I’ll do some more astrological digging and see if anything interesting pops up.
References:
http://www.neptunecafe.com/USPresidents.html
http://celebrity.astrology.com/presidential2008_section.html
http://astrofuturetrends.blogspot.com/2007/06/astrology-websites-for-2008-election.html
http://www.astrologysoftware.com/community/sessions/getarticle.asp?ID=216&orig=
And the quote is...
