The Last Status Update

I've deactivated my Facebook account, and intend never to reactivate it. If reasons must be given to the (candid or otherwise) world, I offer only this, from Thoreau:

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

How Astrology Works

I was having a conversation with an astrologer of my acquaintance when I began to formulate a hypothesis about how astrology works. That is to say, I began to sense how astrologers and their clients could come to believe firmly that the relative positions of stars and planets on particular dates can serve a predictive and explanatory function, shedding real light on character and motivation, in spite of the fact that the whole idea is (demonstrably) errant nonsense in the universe of Galileo and Hubble.