1512: Horoscopes

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Horoscopes

Title text: If you live in the Northern hemisphere, anyway. In the southern hemisphere, due to the coriolis effect, babies are born nine months BEFORE they're conceived.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Page is a stub If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Horoscopes are supposed to predict someone personality, or future, depending on the position of planets and stars at the time of their birth and now. Today, horoscopes are admitted to be pseudoscience.

However, because the 12 category (zodiac signs) in horoscopes are based on birthday dates, Randall can do some informed guess about the context of someone's conception (i.e., what was happening nine months before they were born), depending on the sign. For example, Virgos are born mostly in September, so they were conceived shortly after Christmas, leading to the guess "You may have been conceived while a Christmas song played". So Randall's "predictions" are possible, if not useful. Contrary to popular horoscope, there is an actual reason horoscope for Virgo is true only for Virgo and so on.

The title text, the Coriolis effect refers to movement deflect to the right in the northern hemisphere and left in the southern hemisphere due to the rotation of the Earth. As the human body can't adjust for subtle changes, it often gives the illusion of motion and can cause motion sickness. The effect is often the premise for toilets rotating one direction in the northern hemisphere and the opposite in the southern hemisphere. In reality, the effect has nothing to do with the draining direction. An analogy is made for babies being born nine months after in the northern hemisphere (clockwise) and babies being born nine months before in the southern hemisphere (counterclockwise).

Transcript

[Above the frame:]

Horoscopes

With an actual basis in fact

[A type of table with the name of each astrological sign written in light gray as are the bullet after the name. The text after the bullet is written in normal font and in two lines above and below the bullet.]

Aries • You may have been conceived after a 4th of July fireworks show

Taurus • You may have been conceived on a hot August day

Gemini • You may have been conceived as the leaves began to change

Cancer • You may have been conceived by people trying on constumes

Leo • You may have been conceived during thanksgiving

Virgo • You may have been conceived while a Christmas song played

Libra • You may have been conceived after a new year's eve party

Scorpio • You may have been conceived by people stuck inside after a long winter

Sagittarius • You may have been conceived during March maddness

Capricorn • You may have been conceived during a sexy Easter Egg hunt

Aquarius • You may have been conceived on Mother's day

Pisces • You may have been conceived at someone's wedding

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Discussion

So funny - especially the title text made me laugh :-) --Kynde (talk) 07:05, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Nine months later, it would certainly eliminate the stress of wondering if you were gonna "get lucky" that night. - Equinox 199.27.128.120 16:13, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

The "coriolis effect" in the title text refers to the spin direction of vortices (rotating currents such as cyclones, whirlpools, and water draining from a basin), which is counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. The title text is a joke extending the reversal to the flow of time.

The spin direction of whirlpools and basins is 'not' determined by the coriolis effect, on this scale its impact is way too small to make a difference. The title text refers to how the coriolis effect is often used to explain phenomena (especially with relation to the hemispheres), even when its wrong. --198.41.242.5 08:23, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

If the baby is born 9 months BEFORE they're conceived, would that account for the shift in seasons for the southern hemisphere? Born in March: Northern hemisphere -> conceived in June; Southern hemisphere -> conceived in December. June and December being summer respectively. If that's right, could someone add that to the wiki? User:none

The events described during which the conception of a person with a given birth month occurred assumes that the parents were in the United States at that time. The seasons would be shifted by six months in the southern hemisphere, and the holidays of the 4th of July (Independence Day -- Aries), Halloween (Cancer, conception in October), Thanksgiving (Leo, conception in November), Mother's Day (Aquarius, conception in May), and the NCAA (college) basketball playoffs ("March Madness" -- Sagittarius) , might either not be celebrated or celebrated on a different day. The Dining Logician (talk) 08:11, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Halloween is starting to become common in Brazil, including the "Trick or Treat" stuff. Mother's Day is also celebrated at the same date. And I wouldn't be surprised if Thanksgiving became common here too, if not only for the sales... 188.114.97.151 19:47, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

"Today, horoscopes are admitted to be pseudoscience." Citation needed. But what rubbish. Horoscopes are not even pseudoscience, so who is it "admitting" they are? 108.162.250.187 08:36, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Agree, I would like the citation for "today", as there were experiments disproving horoscopes in ancient Rome already (involving two babies born in same time, one rich, one slave). -- Hkmaly (talk) 12:48, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

The general trick to horoscopes is make them vague enough that anyone can think they're true, regardless of their sign. --PsyMar (talk) 10:34, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

"You will have an opportunity today, meet someone new and should take care of your finances. Family matters will continue as per the last few days." 141.101.98.192 13:41, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

It's the Forer effect. 108.162.249.134 21:55, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I propose an addition to the "conceived during someone's wedding" -- it's more common that the conception is actually after the wedding, during the (somewhat expected) consummation by the actual married couple. Thus, "honeymoon babies"! --BigMal // 108.162.221.181 12:53, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I read this as being conceived at someone else's wedding - attending weddings often being a trigger for romantic thoughts. 108.162.249.162 03:25, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Wait, I though Superman goes back in time not by "going against earths rotation, but simply by going faster than light?141.101.88.209 19:53, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

The expected conception column is off, therefore the explanations may be off. Length of a human pregnancy is 38 weeks after conception, or 9 1/2 months, not the 9 months that is commonly portrayed. I'm not sure if Randall took this into account or not. 199.27.133.121 20:40, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

This is true, except you must have meant 8½ month not 9½ since 38 weeks is less than 9 month. Actually it is very close to 8,75 month. But anyway you are correct, that all the dates should be fixed to go 38 weeks back, not 9 months!--Kynde (talk) 20:54, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Yep, that is what I meant, sorry 199.27.133.121 05:26, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Updated with the correct dates, but the explanations haven't been proofread to conform with the dates 199.27.133.121 05:34, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Fixed explanations, then realized you went for 40 weeks, not 38, so changed them to 38 weeks and fixed explanations again ;) Nealmcb (talk) 17:58, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Even 38 weeks is idealised - I have a niece and nephew who were born 22 weeks after conception (4 years old now and doing well!) And term isn't until 41 weeks (from last menstruation) in France. 38 weeks happens to be a useful average in many parts of the world, but even healthy term pregnancies in USA/UK/Australia(/others?) covers the range of 35-40 weeks from conception. Also, with the rise of babies conceived by IVF, it's no longer quite so obvious what was happening 38-ish weeks before birth! 108.162.249.162 03:30, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

I've added to this conversation, but I put my addition below since it's so long after the fact. EebstertheGreat (talk) 23:08, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

No reference to the fact that November babies might be conceived on V day? Vkapadia (talk) 21:10, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

V-E day is not celebrated in the U.S. It has far less historical significance to us, since to us it was just an important date in the middle of a war. So the holidays that were included (like July 4 and October 31) make more sense in the U.S. for conception dates, even if they mean nothing internationally. EebstertheGreat (talk) 23:08, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

The real secret behind horoscopes and Nostradamus, is "vague shift"The Goyim speaks (talk) 01:36, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

In the second paragraph of the explanation, can we use either "i.e." or "for example," but not both? I don't have a particular preference for one or another; anyone who does is encouraged to make the correction. 173.245.50.125 06:32, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

I feel like there was a missed opportunity for Scorpio. Could have mentioned Valentines Day. 108.162.219.102 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Aquarius could also, perhaps sadly/strangely, be prom babies. 108.162.215.7 22:29, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Regarding about Gemini, which coincidentally I am one, doesn't apply to South-East Asian countries like Singapore(where I am born in), where the leaves doesn't change colors the whole year round. Same goes to the rest of the horoscopes as well. Boeing-787lover 13:56, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

The entire comic appears to be exclusively geared toward Americans. EebstertheGreat (talk) 23:08, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Aries and to a lesser extent Cancer: kids went back to school, leaving house empty, or if your parents are in education (incl. college) they'd just started a new semester and met a bunch of new people. Singlelinelabyrinth (talk) 19:21, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Gestation period

The accepted length of a pregnancy in the U.S. is 38 weeks, but this is not true everywhere. In France, for instance, the term is 41 weeks. Both of these are just traditional and not based on precise data. A good study to look to here is Jukic, Baird, Weinberg, McConnaughey, and Wilcox "Length of human pregnancy and contributors to its natural variation." This study is a very belated 2010 follow-up on a 1985 study on the rate of early pregnancy loss by Wilcox et al. They recruited women who had just ceased birth control because they intended to become pregnant. Although the study doesn't specify, they presumably had sex almost ever night, and according to the follow-up, urine samples were collected EVERY MORNING. These samples were tested for the presence of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), and if it was present above the threshold, the women were determined to be pregnant. Not much analysis was done on the question of how long after implantation it takes for hCG levels to rise above that threshold, but my tiny modicum of biological understanding suggests it should be hardly any time at all. The original study used this early-pregnancy data to measure the rate of loss of the fetus very early in pregnancy, controversially finding it to be around 30%.

The follow-up had a different goal. It re-contacted those same women and managed to recruit most (though not all) into a new survey. The goal was to determine which of these women had artificially shortened their pregnancies through cesarean sections or other methods in order to exclude them from the analysis (with measures taken to account for the biases this introduces). The women who were not excluded numbered 120 and had a (corrected) median gestational time (from ovulation to birth) of 38 weeks 2 days. But what is more interesting is that even after excluding premature outliers, this sample of 120 women had a range of 37 days. That means the earliest non-excluded birth was 37 days before the latest birth.

I think this explains why there is so much variation in how different countries treat births and why we never get a precise figure. Even within a single population of women (I think from around North Carolina? They don't say), the range of outcomes is enormous. Still, I think this is strong evidence that the average gestational period is closer to 38 weeks than to 40 weeks (or 41, as the French would have it). But at any rate, I imagine the magic number Randall had in mind was 9 months, figured as 3/4 of a year (i.e. about 274 days, or 39 weeks 1 day). EebstertheGreat (talk) 23:08, 12 October 2022 (UTC)