Friday five

We are going to Santa Cruz this weekend, so if we leave tonight I will not be posting again until Monday. Otherwise I might post some stuff tonight. Meanwhile, this is a pretty dumb Friday Five:

1. Are you superstitious?

No.

2. What extremes have you heard of someone going to in the name of superstition?

I have encountered some pretty dumb bunnies who do all sorts of little things to avoid some silly fear. I suppose the most extreme is to refrain from calling the 13th floor the 13th floor.

3. Believer or not, what's your favorite superstition?

Evil Eye. Of course.

4. Do you believe in luck? If yes, do you have a lucky number/article of clothing/ritual?

Luck, sure. I don't think of God as that much of a micromanager that He tinkers with card games and the like. That's why we have the science of statistics.

5. Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not?

No, because it is foolish, has no basis in any science and is not even a particularly interesting vice. I mentioned to some idiot once that astrology is an accurate indicator of personality about 1/12th of the time, and she said, "well, that is better than nothing." Astrology is for those who think the Da Vinci Code is history. In the Keilholtz dictatorship horoscopes will be banned from the newspapers. I generally assume that people who ask, "what is your sign" are idiots. I like to tell them a different one. It is really funny when they say, "I knew it!"

My mother believes in "women's intuition," some sort of intuition about things which she would have no possible way of knowing. I noticed that what she was doing was selectively remembering when her intuition was correct. When it was totally off the mark, it was forgotten. Now, she could have been correct in 1 out of 50 times, and she would forget 49 of those examples. Most people who believe in irrationalities use this sort of experimentation, and that is how it is with astrology. When the myth hits the reality once, it is remembered more than the 11 times it is wrong (although many of those things are written as to be vague and open enough that they have weasel room).