Don't mention combine harvesters to me!  Last time I went riding, I was going up a country lane - just the two of us, Dobbin and me - and a great combine harvester came round a bend.  Horsey started dancing sideways in panic and I, not being a wonderful rider was getting more than a bit nervous.  I managed to turn him round and there was a row of cottages in view, one of which had the garden gate open.  I made him go in there so he had his back to the thing when it went past.  If anyone had looked out of the windows and seen us I don't quite know what I'd have said!

Anyway, us true Aquarians always manage to find our way out of tight spots and peculiar situations.  

For me, the beauty of the words is very important, and I find the Latin mass very beautiful. I only know it through singing numerous settings - the Requiem Mass as well. I think it's worth making an effort to learn it. If it's in Latin it's also universal.

I feel the same about English. Like most people of my generation, I was brought up on the Authorised Version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, both of which are in archaic but incredibly poetic English. When I hear the modern versions I cringe - they are so bad! - and usually have to translate them back into the version I like before I'm sure which bit they are! If everything is simplified, it impoverishes the language and vocabulary. But I freely admit that I'm more interested in the literary value than I am in the religious aspect.

I once went to a church service in St Petersburg - absolutely wonderful theatre, marvellous singing from an invisible choir. I didn't know what was going on, but I loved every minute.

As a deprived, depths of winter January baby, I was thinking more of trying to rationalise my occasional strong hankering for a nice plate of lush grass and fat caterpillars. But perhaps that's just me  

Yes, I'm a fairly typical

I haven't checked through 13 pages to find out if it's already been mentioned, but is this Dawkins programme The Enemies of Reason (Channel 4, Monday) a new one? I'm sure Milly will be glued to it, anyway . I'd like to watch it, but it clashes with University Challenge, which I have to watch. I may tape one of them. I would only be watching the Dawkins to see how he handles it.

As a typical Aquarian too..... ooops! No, no, mustn't say that, I know it's genes, inherited characteristics, etc. However, it's a bit of fun to wonder whether  there might be some sort of scientific explanation involving waves travelling through space. I think I am right in saying that there are waves of different lengths, varying from the microscopic to the gigantic,continuously travelling through space, us and the earth, so perhaps, just perhaps, certain combinations of waves at certain times of the year might, just might affect the growing baby.

(Tony Watson: Thank you for your 'can't believe I'm writing this' post!)

Hmm ... such statements need to be seen in the light of the Forer Effect, which is about the tendency of people to give credence to vague statements that appear to be aimed personally at them - see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect

Essentially, Forer, an American psychologist, gave personality tests to his students and then gave them all the same response allegedly based on the test - and asked the students to rate it for accuracy, many of them believing that it was an accurate description of their own personality.  It's interesting to look at the wording of Forer's response (reproduced in the Wikipedia article), containing a series of contrasting statements inviting the reader to believe one or the other - it's quite a cleverly maniputlative piece of writing.

Well, a search for such a thing is at the heart of post-Enlightenment critiques (such as, er, that of Adorno and Horkheimer) but also informs some post-modernist thought. In particular, such varieties of thought try to get away from determinist models of human beings and human behaviour, I believe, wishing to allow for aspects of both such things exceeding any predictive scientific models that might be placed upon them. One could so these entail a new emphasis upon an Aristotelian model of humans rather than a Platonic one, but I feel a bit out of my depth attempting to draw too many parallels in that respect. But many post-Kantian philosophical trends go beyond the epistemological possibilities of empirical science, and in that sense could be considered 'post-scientific'. Various political philosophies (including Marxism) could be said to fall into such a category. And surely some of the wilder varieties of science (from quantum theory onwards) exceed the boundaries of what can be ascertained simply be repeated experiments and falsifiability?