While shamelessly Technorati-ing myself, I found this post by a fellow named — ahem — “Moorlock.”

Commenting on the Washington Post’s bizarre habit of breaking down Congressional votes by astrological sign, my new, swampy, Wellsian friend writes:

[T]here are only 24 Tauroids in Congress but 55 Cancers. Is this statistically plausible if you start from the assumption that astrological signs are distributed randomly and have no effect on a person’s career path or success?

Good question. If this chart looks anything like it did when your typical congresscritter was born, it appears that while there are generally more June-July births than April-May births in the general population, it’s only by a small margin. Nowhere near the 2-1 ratio in Congress. Any stats all-stars want to weigh in on how likely it is such a distribution can be attributed solely to chance?

And if it’s not attributable to chance, what is it? Do more people watch C-SPAN during sex in the fall?

Also, this information has caused me to rethink a few of my libertarian principles. Specifically, I think I’d now be okay if the federal government wanted to hand out free condoms to anyone who wanted one from about September 24 to about October 23. For that matter, any birth control. And ban alcohol. The fewer politicians we’re conceiving, the better!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 5:34 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.