Sharks Bank Left at the Kuiper Belt Saturday, Jun 24 2006

Update: Jerome Armstrong quotes J.P. Morgan (millionaires don’t use astrology, billionaires do), confesses his faith in our primate ancestors and invites the wingnuts out for a little vipassana meditation! (though Redstate.com is having way too much fun with this to let it go . . . )

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In his biography of the astrologer and mathematician Girolamo Cardano, historian Anthony Grafton likens the role of a modern economist to that of a Rennaissance astrologer.

How about the modern economist as astrologer aka political pundit?

I don’t even know how I stumbled over this — but a pack of rightwingnut bloggers have launched a witch hunt — and are celebrating the the revelation that blogger and author Jerome Armstrong (how many people do you know who have even heard of Jerome Armstrong?) was/is an astrologer as well as a day trader — hmmm, did he study with Ray? — before he became a political consultant.

I am not going to try to recount the particulars as how this came to light, as I am not sure I understand it myself, but one thing is clear — there are no secrets in the lands of the internets. None.

The gist is that apparently an email (alluding to some legal difficulties with the SEC a few years ago in connection to the daytrading dimension of life) circulating on a private list of lefty bloggers fell into the paws of a bigshot wingnut blogger (love to know how much he paid for it!). And somehow, that leaked email inspired/enabled computer wizards on the right to start combing the internet looking for more dirt, and well, to make a long story short, it turns out that Jerome Armstrong of mydd.com is none other than the completely unknown astrologer, Jerome Armstrong (I am serious, who ever heard of an astrologer named Jerome Armstrong?)

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An Old World View: Rehashed (Part 1) Saturday, Jun 24 2006

Richard Tarnas is a Swiss-born, Harvard Educated, Esalen Alumni and professor of philosophy and psychology at the California Institute for Integral Studies, and is also the founding director of its graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He is also the author of the best-selling Passion of the Western Mind.

But for 30 years, Tarnas has kept a [sort of] secret. He dabbles in astrology. Now Tarnas has written a new book about astrology; Cosmos and Psyche, published earlier this year. Apparently, it took Tarnas over 10 years to write this enormous (569 pages inc. notes) book, following a fair amount of anticipation for it in the “astro-world” (where his secret wasn’t such a big secret) prior to its publication, which included a lengthy pre-publication interview in the Mountain Astrologer Magazine in late 2005.

So when I stumbled over it this past February on the Barnes and Noble new non-fiction display shelf, I immediately bought it, and began to read it with a great deal of excitement. Subtitled, Intimations of a New World View and based, Tarnas claims, upon 30 years* of research, it strives to address what he calls “the profound metaphysical disorientation and groundlessness that pervades contemporary human experience” by suggesting a “new metanarrative that transcends separate cultures and subcultures, an encompassing pattern of meaning that could give to collective human existence a nourishing coherence and intelligibility.”

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Do You Believe in Astrology? Saturday, Jun 24 2006

Usually a question to spice up a boring social gathering, but here it is used to introduce an anti-astrology editorial in a Yemeni (Yemeni?) Newspaper.

Another point worth noting: It is obvious that the writer knows astrology and is NOT conflating sun-sign astrology and “real” astrology.

They are told how mysterious forces in the universe around them, work to shape their intimate destinies. They are told relatively flattering things about their characters and life, and in the end they are naturally pleased that someone cares about them. In the hectic and generally disconnected modern society, they feel connected – both to another human being and to the world around them. Astrology shares this with many other beliefs, for example the idea that nothing in life is truly coincidental. On this view of life, everything which happens to us, even the smallest or seemingly most insignificant event, happens for some particular reason.

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A person who continually tries to live his life by a horoscope can become very depressed as he begins to see life as fatalistic, predetermined since his birth, with no opportunity to break free. “To believe in astrology, you must support the philosophy that you are either a ‘born loser’ or a ‘born winner.’’ A Psychologist said In spite that astrology is an attempt to find some sort of “meaning” or “influence” in the planetary positions. Oddly enough, considering that astrology has to do with planetary movements, astrologers no longer look at the sky, and haven’t for hundreds of years.

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