{"id":670,"date":"2011-01-24T06:00:02","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T06:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html"},"modified":"2011-01-24T06:00:02","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T06:00:02","slug":"the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html","title":{"rendered":"The Only Horoscope You&#8217;ll Ever Need"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>A couple of weeks ago, <\/b>the Internet blew up when Parke Kunkle, an astronomy instructor in Minneapolis, noted for the <i>Star-Tribune<\/i> that due to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/lifestyle\/style\/113100139.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU\">the Earth&#8217;s axis wobble and something called precession<\/a>, astrologers are currently one month off in their Zodiac signs. <\/p>\n<p>Which means EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT WHO YOU ARE (based, of course, on when you were born) is apparently wrong. <\/p>\n<p>To make matters even more confusing, Kunkle suggested that astrologers were neglecting a 13th Zodiac sign, &#8220;Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer,&#8221; which ought to be added to the original twelve. And suddenly Ophiuchus became the new sign for people born between Nov. 30 and Dec. 17.<\/p>\n<p><b>Which includes me.<\/b> Forsooth! Now I am no longer a Sagittarius but some kind of parselmouthed &#8220;Serpent-Bearer.&#8221; (Here&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/blog-post\/2011\/01\/the_great_zodiac_revolution_of.html\">good overview of the whole kerfuffle<\/a>.) <\/p>\n<p>But I didn&#8217;t really pay much attention to the story because this whole astrology\/Zodiac thing is absolute nonsense (or to be more accurate, the constellation-alignment part isn&#8217;t nonsense, but using it to predict your life and define your character is). <\/p>\n<p>What DID get my attention were a few of the zeitgeist-capturing posts that began to explain exactly <i>why<\/i> astrology was nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>The absolute best one was this post by David McCandless and the geniuses at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationisbeautiful.net\/visualizations\/horoscoped\/\">Information Is Beautiful<\/a>. They analyzed the content of 22,000 daily horoscopes at <a href=\"http:\/\/shine.yahoo.com\/astrology\/\">Yahoo<\/a> and graphed the most common words appearing in star sign predictions. Lo and behold, at least 90% of the words in all the different horoscopes were the same. Regardless of your sign, they were all saying pretty much the same thing.<\/p>\n<p><b>Here&#8217;s the chart they built<\/b> based on the word frequency.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"horoscoped.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/99\/import\/horoscoped.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-none\" height=\"419\" width=\"600\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Then, based on the common words, they developed a generic, meta-horoscope for everyone, every day of the year. <\/p>\n<p><b>Instead of checking yours daily,<\/b> just read this once and you should be set:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Ready? Sure? Whatever the situation or secret moment, enjoy everything a lot. Feel able to absolutely care. Expect nothing else. Keep making love. Family and friends matter. The world is life, fun and energy. Maybe hard. Or easy. Taking exactly enough is best. Help and talk to others. Change your mind and a better mood comes along&#8230;<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><b>That&#8217;s good advice, friends<\/b>. I urge you to take it, regardless of your sign.<\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of weeks ago, the Internet blew up when Parke Kunkle, an astronomy instructor in Minneapolis, noted for the Star-Tribune that due to the Earth&#8217;s axis wobble and something called precession, astrologers are currently one month off in their Zodiac signs. Which means EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT WHO YOU ARE (based, of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,21,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-awesome","category-science"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Only Horoscope You&#039;ll Ever Need - O Me of Little Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Only Horoscope You&#039;ll Ever Need - O Me of Little Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A couple of weeks ago, the Internet blew up when Parke Kunkle, an astronomy instructor in Minneapolis, noted for the Star-Tribune that due to the Earth&#8217;s axis wobble and something called precession, astrologers are currently one month off in their Zodiac signs. Which means EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT WHO YOU ARE (based, of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"O Me of Little Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-24T06:00:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/files\/import\/horoscoped.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jason Boyett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Only Horoscope You'll Ever Need - O Me of Little Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Only Horoscope You'll Ever Need - O Me of Little Faith","og_description":"A couple of weeks ago, the Internet blew up when Parke Kunkle, an astronomy instructor in Minneapolis, noted for the Star-Tribune that due to the Earth&#8217;s axis wobble and something called precession, astrologers are currently one month off in their Zodiac signs. Which means EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT WHO YOU ARE (based, of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html","og_site_name":"O Me of Little Faith","article_published_time":"2011-01-24T06:00:02+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/files\/import\/horoscoped.jpg"}],"author":"Jason Boyett","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html","name":"The Only Horoscope You'll Ever Need - O Me of Little Faith","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/files\/import\/horoscoped.jpg","datePublished":"2011-01-24T06:00:02+00:00","dateModified":"2011-01-24T06:00:02+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/f69eb4f788db541ff47d2f5d01cad5e7"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/files\/import\/horoscoped.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/files\/import\/horoscoped.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/01\/the-only-horoscope-youll-ever-need.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Only Horoscope You&#8217;ll Ever Need"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/","name":"O Me of Little Faith","description":"A blog by Jason Boyett about Doubt, Christianity, Culture &amp; Writing","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/f69eb4f788db541ff47d2f5d01cad5e7","name":"Jason Boyett","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a5a\/a5a647d97bed4014325bf9a1fb0b6900x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a5a\/a5a647d97bed4014325bf9a1fb0b6900x96.jpg","caption":"Jason Boyett"},"description":"Jason Boyett is a writer, speaker, and the author of several books, including O Me of Little Faith (Zondervan), and the Pocket Guide series (Jossey-Bass). His work has appeared in Salon, Paste, The Daily Beast, Relevant, and a variety of other publications. He has also appeared on the History Channel and National Geographic Channel. Jason lives in Texas with his wife and two kids. Follow him at twitter and jasonboyett.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/author\/jboyett"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}