The Moon is up

Right then,

Couple of nights ago I simply couldnt sleep. Drank more beer than usual and was generally on edge.

Today Son Two was totally hyper and crying loads. Then I looked out and realised we have Full Moon!

Must admit Daughter One was perfect today though.

I believe it has an effect upon us. Me certainly.

Now does it affect others too?

My mother was a nursing asst in a mental hospital in North Wales for 28 years. She would always say when the patients were hyperactive "the moon is up" and it often was. Indeed the word "Lunatic" comes from the word for moon, I believe.

Und?

AAAAAAHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW

Is it a full moon tonight? My ex-girlfriend said that the full moon had an effect on her libido so I usually think of her when i see a full moon. I think the moon does have some effect on us and it is certainly a time when i am much more emotionally charged as my earlier post will testify.

Does it? No.

I believe it has an effect upon us.
You believe incorrectly.

She would always say when the patients were hyperactive "the moon is up" and it often was.
There's the catch: "often". It also often wasnj't up. We tend to remember things that meet our predictions and hopes an foget those which don't. This is why people play the lottery, slot machines, roulette, etc.

the word "Lunatic" comes from the word for moon
From the Latni by a people who not only believed that the Moon could affect people but also that the Sun was the wheel of a god's chariot which is no less absurd than believing that you're "affected" by the Moon.

woof.

whenever its a full moon i also have a problem sleeping.

Haggis junior was born 17 days before due date at full moon. The clininc had no less than 10 births that day, almost all of them off term. Blame it on the moon or on the heat.
I blame last night's lack of sleep on the fact that I sent her off to Prague today and was afraid I wouldn't hear either of the two alarms I had set, not on the full moon.

Isn't there a full moon once a month, like... ?

And a few years ago everyone was talking about how fighter pilots generally had daughters and few sons. This was also based on incorrectly applied statistics and imperfect human perception.

Our monkey brains are really good at protecting us from immediate threats but this whole logic thing is, in evolutionary time, relatively new to us. One thing that works pretty well in our brains is pattern-matching, but we tend to overdo it and see patterns where none actually exist. We see causation in random flukes and as a result everyone's thought "If only I'd done X, Y wouldn't have happened" at some time about something they never could have actually influenced.

Go back through the hospital records and look for bunchings of off-term births. They happen. You only notice it when there's something else "uncommon" and associate the two. Cops say it all the time because when they're expecting more trouble because there's a full moon, they notice each case more since it's fulfilling a prediction.

woof.

I personally think that we don't really understand the moon and the effects it has on us and the earth . the high and low tides of the sea caused by the moon for example . i know a lot of people who can not sleep when its a full moon.

There's nothing magical and mystical about the tides and if lack of sleep is indeed a real and not imagined problem it will be due to the fact that it's lighter outside.

If you had quoted my whole remark you would have got what I said. "Blame it on the moon or on the heat."

Hey that's cool, I didn't realise that studies on the moon effecting human behaviour were showing it's more myth than science. I never really looked into it but thought it had something to do with slight changes in gravitational pull.
Learn something new every day.

Try this beer Jeremy!

http://www.zoetler.de/index.php?plink=voll...ier&l=1&fs=&fs=

People love to go on about the Moon causing ocean tides and remembering that humans are mostly water and coming to the incorrect conclusion that the Moon must necessarily affect people vial gravity/tidal forces.

You have to first understand how tides work. Most people get the absolute basics backwards, thinking the Moon is pulling the water when in actuality, it's pulling the planet; the water flows where the planet isn't.

Tides arise because of differences in the lunar gravitational pull at different points on the Earth. Gravitational force decreases with distance: a rock on the side of Earth closest to the Moon feels slightly stronger gravitational pull than an identical rock at the Earth's center does, while yet another identical rock on the side of the Earth that faces away from the Moon feels slightly lesser gravitational pull than does the one at the Earth's center. These tiny differences in gravitational pull of the Moon are called tidal forces. The tides occur because of the massive scale of things -- Earth's a pretty big rock.

The Sun also generates tidal forces, pulling a bit harder on a side of the Earth closest to it and weaker on the side of Earth away from it, in comparison with the Sun's pull on the center of the Earth. Here's where it gets a bit tricky: although the Sun's pull at the center of the Earth is about 180 times stronger than the Moon's pull, the Sun is so far away from the Earth the differences in Sun's powerful pull on different parts of the Earth are incredibly small. The Moon is responsible for about 70% of the magnitude of tides, the Sun the remaining 30%, and the other planets 0.

There are no tides in your stomach, your body, a swimming pool or a small lake because the water at different locations within each of these reservoirs is still at the same distance from Moon, so no difference in gravitational pull exists. The Moon's gravitational infuence on you is likewise effectively nada. You're only 6500km from the center of the Earth; you're 400,000km from the Moon. While water is the same difference, it's considerably more massive than you.

Ivan Kelly, James Rotton and Roger Culver (1996) examined over 100 studies on lunar effects and concluded that the studies have failed to show a reliable or significant correlation (i.e., one not likely due to chance) between the full moon, or any other phase of the moon, and everything from homicide rates to births to epilepsy. The belief that it does is caused by communal reinforcement. You see it in film. You hear it from others. You reinforce the belief when you happen to notice it's a full moon when X happens. You don't, however, check the moon's phase every time X happens, so you don't notice the lack of correlation.

woof.

Thanks Lupo! That would lead me to the Homer Simpson quote I love:

"Beer" The solution to all life's problems!"

BD: You almost made it on my shit list thinking "he is winding me up!" ! But now you have instead got me intrigued.

Does a rock weigh in micro -weight terms different at different moon phases? The science of metrology is a very interesting one. I used to work in a Saudi Research Institute which had a dept for this subject.

As a capital A Amateur astronomer (i.e. crap at it but enthusiastic) I am intrigued at your comments. Can you cite some papers I can skim thriugh on the web?

Weight depends on gravitational pull. The difference in a human's weight due to the Sun or Moon's influence is so infinitesimally small it can't be measured accurately since you also sweat and breathe out water.

I don't know of any papers about tidal forces since it's established physics. The cite for the meta-study I mentioned is The Moon Was Full and Nothing Happened: A Review of Studies on the Moon and Human Behavior, Ivan Kelly, James Rotton, and Roger Culver (1986, 1996), published at the Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 1985-86, pp 129-43.

Arnold Lieber's report which did find a correlation between crime rates and Moon phase was fully discredited. There's a clear statistical link between crime and day of the week as well as weather, but not with the phases of the Moon. You can find a good article here.

woof.

Wondered why i was having to shave more often the last few days

Dude, you have clearly never eaten at Wok Man.

Wok Man aside, that was a reference to Marilyn vos Savant's idiotic answer to some reader that if you stood still long enough it would be possible for tidal forces to affect even that. The woman is a poor Cecil Adams copycat who only stopped being wrong every week once she got on the Net.

You already know there's no good Chinese food to be had in Germany. What the hell were you doing eating at Wok Man? You some kind of lunatic?

woof.