{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/21",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 21,
    "subject": "Zodiac 101",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-04-23T01:19:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-04-23T01:19:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0001-0027@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-04-23T01:19:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Zodiac 101",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #3438330 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#\n\nNutria,\n\nIf your Urth is \"flipped\" in such a way as to include Cygnus in its\nzodiac, then we are no longer talking about the more mundane polarity\nshift I thought we were talking about.  Cygnus is not currently\nanywhere near the ecliptic (the band which the sun and all the\nplanets \"appear to move along during the year\"--just the sort of\n\"primitive\" thinking astronomy still relies on, and what Wolfe was\npointing out by never using \"sunrise\" and \"sunset,\" for example) . . .\nto force it onto the ecliptic (and thereby a zodiac candidate) would\nappear to involve stripping a few gears of the solar system machine.\n(Cygnus is currently what we might call the anti-Gemini or\nanti-Cancer; but that sounds too permissive.  !Even precession of\nequinox does not change the twelve zodiac signs--it only alters the\nseasons that the signs appear in!)\n\nAt that point, having fixed Swan into a new zodiac, would it also be\npossible to still have Polaris as the North Star?  I'm not sure,\noffhand--I'll let you work it out! <g>\n\nIf the constellation names have changed then it is unfortunate that\nthey didn't change into entirely new names, since I was able to find\nnearly all of them--under their present day names and positions, of\ncourse. <g> (Add another challenge--not only does Polaris have to be\nthe North Star, but it also has to be called \"the Octans,\" aka, the\nsorta South Star!)\n\nAstronomy is a pretty wild science, and for my money it is nowhere so\nhead-spinning as where it relates to Earth . . . seasons . . . years.\nI've invested (or paid out) a lot of time looking into just this\nangle re: Urth/Swan, and my conclusion was--not on Urth.  But I'm always\nwilling to look at the work of others.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}