2004 - 'The Future Near & Far'
by Janice Brown, CAP
Uranus moves into Pisces for 7 years. The genius of always surprising Aquarius in dream-inspiring Pisces, will make people exclaim 'Now, I never would have thought of that!" As in 1781 when Herschel's telescope gave us the first glimpse of the planet Uranus, our society will be forever changed by technology.
Neptune moves through the zodiac sign of Aquarius for the next few years. This astrological connection of Uranus in Pisces and Neptune in Aquarius is a mutual reception: each planet in the sign of the other planet's ruler. Either of these placements open exciting doors to exploration by themselves; acting in concert, these enlightened inventors promise a science fiction world outstripping the novelist's fantasies.
Neptune rules things subjective like dreams, utopian ideals, our saints, gurus, and yes, our nightmares. Objectively it rules the sea, oil, perfume. Uranus/Pisces and Neptune/Aquarius blends two strong culture shaping energies; Aquarian revolutionary attitudes, aviation, television, technology that speed-links most of our planet, and Neptune's film, fantasy, medical discoveries, drugs, fishing and alternative healing. They are seductive spinners of the vision of youth so we need our powers of choice as never before.
Both Neptune and the sign Pisces blur the edges of reality; we see what we would like to see. Uranus and the sign Aquarius represent equality; the popularization of the people's wants and wishes. A chicken in every pot. Eating all the burgers flashed before our eyes will kill us wholesale, but we demand the freedom to do so. Following fashion in clothing, eco-travel, plastic surgery, technological toys will have us bleeding-out from debt. Ah! But it's our right to do so.
Danger lies in believing all we hear, or blindly following the next political or spiritual leader without common sense. Believing the nerve-jumping "if it bleeds - it leads" newscasts are the reality of what happens between races of people is a distortion. Walk through your local grocery store to see what really happens. Nothing much.
We have the option to be told and sold what we need to fulfill our lives or be truly unique, creative, and decide for ourselves. Young people will have an especially hard time resisting the wild-shot craze for change at almost any cost. It's not their fault - just their time.
Astrology points out what will be coming and the science news fills in the details, as the following items illustrate. With a change of dose or belief, or advancing technology, life is altered like the wave of a magician's hand.
Science Meets Depression: Psychiatrist Yvette Sheline at Washington
University found that patients who spent the most days depressed without medication
had the smallest hippocampus, the region of the brain controlling emotions
and memories. Recall of people, pets and tool names dims, unless there is
a strong positive or negative emotional impact, or only old information is
remembered. This may be caused by a decrease in the connective branching between
the neurons, a decrease that could be suppressed by anti-depressants. "The
more untreated depression you have, the more it's harming your hippocampus,"
Sheline says.
Illusions with Bullets: A company founded by a former Israeli commando
has developed one-way bulletproof glass by sandwiching poly-carbonate, acrylic,
and glass held together by resin. Officers can shoot out through it, but shots
cannot come in. Outgoing bullets zip through the poly-carbonate and shatter
an opening in the acrylic. "You get less than 10 percent loss of velocity,
and friction from the bullet passing out creates enough heat to reseal the
window." Says Fred Williams, Labock Technologies vice president.
I Wanna' Be a Spaceman: Understanding the human body's limitations
has helped the design of airplanes with "hypersonic flight that gets
you anywhere on the planet in less than four hours". Burt Rutan, the
aviation visionary who designed Voyager, the first aircraft to fly around
the world without refuelling in 1986, says, "We look to the future. Hopefully,
within 10 years ordinary people can experience a rocket flight above the atmosphere,
enjoy a few minutes of weightless excitement, then feel the thunderous deceleration
of aerodynamic drag on reentry."
Are religion and science incompatible? The first space mission
sponsored by a public organization, the 100,000 member Planetary Society,
cofounded by the late Carl Sagan, and media outlet, Cosmos Studios, a science-based
entertainment company run by Ann Druyan, Sagan's widow and collaborator. It
is launching the world's first solar sail spacecraft into Earth's orbit. Ann
Druyan was asked: Do you view religion and science as incompatible? D: I think
that superstition and science are incompatible. Unquestioning faith and science
are antithetical. I am convinced that our failure to accept the Enlightenment
itself as a primarily spiritual awakening is a major source of our dysfunction.
Q: Why are people afraid of science? D: The Western religious tradition
is based on a fear of knowledge. It goes right back to Prometheus and to the
Garden of Eden, to God's threat that if we partake of the tree of knowledge,
we will know only misery and death. So we think, yes, our cell phones work,
our TVs work because of science, but we keep an infantile, geocentric view
of the universe locked within our hearts.
Q: How do you combat that? D: Do not lie to your children. Invest
in education. If only an elite minority understands science and technology
there is no hope of democracy because people cannot make informed decisions.
We will always be manipulated. One TV channel out of hundred is devoted to
comprehending how nature is put together and the others are devoted to its
mystification. That worries me.
When Being 120 Years Old is Normal:When Being 120 Years Old is
Normal James Vaupel of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in
Rostock, Germany says the number of centenarians in many industrialized nations
is doubling every decade. The Maximum life expectancy has risen steadily by
more than two years each decade since 1840. If that pace continues the average
life span in industrialized countries in 2150 will be 122.5. That's a 25-year
gain every century." Japanese women, the longest-lived people ever known,
now have a life expectancy of 85 at birth. Sadly, the fattening of the western
world could push those figures backwards, for the first time in 100 years,
unless medicine/science discovers a solution for fat-laden junk food within
the next few years. Or…we could stop eating it.
Smile to be Happy: In 1884 Psychologist William James proposed
that physical expressions dictate how we feel, not the other way around: Smile
and you'll be happy. The idea slaps common sense in the face, yet new research
suggest it is true: Our actions seem to influence not only our emotions but
also our beliefs and attitudes. Studies and statistics back up the claims.
Are you nodding? Science says you'll feel better.
New Life For Old: In a small town in Italy, it has been discovered
that members of a small clan of families do not have clogged arteries, even
while eating a typical Italian diet. In fact, testing has revealed that the
family members carry the gene for a protein that prevents, and can actually
regress decades of cholesterol buildup when added to the arteries of others.
Directly using this blood or synthesizing this additional protein, could erase
the fear of heart disease.
Too Busy to Get Stoned? Too Busy to Get Stoned? According to Richard
Metzger, the Los Angeles-based editor of the Book of Lies (Disinformation),
you can have a psychedelic experience for 3 - 20 minutes with no 'coming down'
time. The magic potions include dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and Salvia Divinorum
which has apparently been chewed from time immemorial and some of its relatives
may be in your garden. Reported trips: being in a forest, talking with badgers;
meeting nine-foot-tall alien beings; being surrounded by benign, bouncing,
chirping balls. One person reported, "I felt calm and secluded. It was
sort of like the most intense, mind-blowing, Earth-shattering feeling of calm,
if that makes any sense." And your boss won't even know.
To
Be Continued:
Copyright Janice Brown 2003
