Every day, after getting a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast, Erika Forshtay religiously opens the Iowa State Daily and reads her horoscope.

“I like to read them; they’re fun,” said Forshtay, a sophomore in business. “I don’t believe in all of it, but some of it is true. Like the ones that talk about your relationships with friends. I find a lot of those to be true. But I don’t believe the ones about your love life, even though I want to.”

Now is the era of “Pop Astrology,” wrote Gabriel Weimann in a noted sociology journal. “More than 1,200 of America’s 1,750 daily newspapers have horoscope columns. There are 10,000 full-time and 175,000 part-time astrologers in the United States alone today.”

This interest in astrology is not just an American fad. In France, 53 percent of the population regularly reads horoscopes. And in Japan, more than 8 million copies of the famous horoscope book, “Koyoni,” were recently sold.

College students are hooked, too. In a 1992 study by the Journal of Parapsychology, 74 percent of college students in New Jersey reported they regularly read horoscopes.

At Iowa State, editors at the Iowa State Daily and The Campus Reader said their horoscope columns are extremely popular.

The Daily’s Chris Miller said, “It’s hard to tell exact numbers for our horoscope readership, but I have received some positive feedback. I think the numbers are definitely significant.”

The Daily is in its second semester of publishing horoscopes. “Basically, I sat down and looked at what students want and what students are interested in,” Miller said.

The Daily was without horoscopes for many years because it was “an expense that we could live without,” Miller said. “Now, it’s just that the Daily is progressively in a better financial situation than it was in the past. The cost of the horoscopes is around $300 for an academic year.”

The creative director for The Campus Reader, Scott Andresen, said his horoscope column is also a fairly recent addition. He said the horoscope “is very popular.”

“We feel it adds some fun to the paper,” Andresen said.

But is the horoscope accurate?

ISU astronomy Professor Steven Kawaler said horoscopes are only “clever writings” with no basis in fact or science.

Astronomers study physical and scientific aspects of outer space, he said, while astrologers predict the future by studying the physical bodies of outer space.

“I think they are amusing,” Kawaler said. “You have to be clever to write a good horoscope. You have to write something that is so general that almost anybody will say, ‘Hey, that’s me.’ But at the same time, you have to make it sound specific.”

Kawaler said astrologers can mislead the public and themselves. He said some astrologers today aren’t even working with the correct information in their horoscope writing.

“Newspaper astrologers are using the signs of the zodiac that were correct for birthdays 2,000 years ago,” he said.

For example, someone born on Nov. 8, 1976 is considered to be born a Scorpio. In order to really be a Scorpio, under zodiacal rules, Kawaler said the sun would had to have crossed through the constellation of Scorpio on that day of birth.

Kawaler pointed out, with the aid of computer technology, that the sun did not cross through Scorpio’s constellation on Nov. 8, 1976, but instead crossed through the constellation of Sagittarius.

Astrology writer Christopher McIntosh disagreed. He wrote, “In astrology, the signs of the zodiac have always been fixed on the equinoxes and are unrelated to the constellations they once represented.”

McIntosh said the constellations used to be directly correlated with the equinoxes 2,000 years ago. But because the sky is not fixed in rotation with the Earth, the sun no longer crosses the constellations of the signs of the zodiac.

Nationally syndicated astrologer Linda Black, whose column appears in the Iowa State Daily, said in a letter that she “forecasts with the assistance from the latest in computer technology to ensure accuracy.”

Allison Baumbach, a sophomore in journalism and mass communication, said she believes in the Daily’s horoscopes. “Especially lately, things they say are easily correlated into my life. Like the other day there was this one that said a certain professor will be nit-picky. And one was,” she said.

Kawaler said horoscopes are not scientifically proven, but he said arguing that point with an astrologer is pointless. He said most astrologers really do believe that they are predicting the future.

“It is really hard to convince an astrologer that what he is doing is meaningless. Just as it is silly to argue with people who are religious. These people have different persuasions and deep beliefs. It is worthless to argue with them because there will be no agreement.”

A trusted role

Black said she feels a great responsibility to the public.

“I make suggestions that help people win at the game of life. The position of the planets may affect us, but it’s up to the individual to decide how to react,” Black said. “I’ll point out the days that are good for making serious decisions and the ones that should be spent cleaning up old messes instead.”

Kawaler disagrees. “I can safely say that the stars and planets don’t affect people and predictions can’t be made by them,” he said. “About the only time any cosmic event has influenced anything is when the asteroid crashed into the Earth 70 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs.”

Still, Black insisted that horoscopes are great coping tools. “It can help you understand the unique combination of characteristics that make up your own personality. It not only helps us get through the day, but also get along better with ourselves.”

And every once in a while, even an astronomer will read his or her horoscope. “I sometimes read them — just for fun,” Kawaler said. “I like to see what these goof balls are up to.”