Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

Weather By The Moon
on the day of Full moon, as did the invasion of Iraq by US
forces. Sir Peter Blake, international yachtsman and environmentalist,
met his death on the perigee. Perhaps the effects
are due to gravitational pull of bodily fluids, or perhaps
there is, as Dr Leonard J. Ravitz suggests, a link between
lunar phase and changes in the electrical field that
surrounds the human body.
Returning to the menstrual enigma, in the 1920s a
Swedish chemist, Svante Arrhenius kept records of 11,807
menstrual periods, compared them with the phases of the
Moon and found they were more likely to start when the
Moon was waxing than at other times. This places ovulation
14 days earlier, around or just after New Moon, which
supports a scenario of primitive Homo Sapiens mating during
the dark moon time.
But unfortunately for the case, there must be many
thousands of women who could produce contradictory results.
However, the premenstrual syndrome is by now established.
63% of women surveyed in Britain’s Holloway
Prison committed crimes during their premenstrual or
menstrual period. In girls schools a similar pattern emerges
for menstrating pupils, of absenteeism, clumsiness, rebellion
and low exam performance.
Even wind directions seem to affect humans. The Sirocco
is an oppressive hot dry southerly wind on the north
coast of Africa blowing in from the Sahara. By the time it
crosses the Mediterranean to Europe it has become cooler
and moist. It is renowned for causing sluggishness and
mental debility. The Southerly Buster is a sudden cold south-
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