Full Moons

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The Full Moon seems to affect me every month. I start to go crazy and I start to do impressions of Movie Characters. Last Month, it got to the point where I bought a box of four Chocolate Drumsticks, ate the whole thing and was signing Christmas Songs for the rest of the day. When people said things to me that I dissagreed with, I clawed my hands and made animal noises in private. I also challenged myself to see how many bottles of Water I could drink in a day. I can only imagine what excitement Thursday's Full Moon will bring to my existance.

heh, it's astonishingly bright this coming moon, even at 3/4 it was casting heavy shadows.

Last edited by Postperson on 20 Jul 2005, 12:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

The moon was huge tonight. It was so cool.

It is strange that the full moon affects you like that, CockneyRebel. You might be a werewolf. (I'm only joking.)

/me goes into lecturer mode...

well-known fact that people DO behave differently around the full moon. teachers can vouch for that, especially (like me) those involve in working with kids with EBD. while i was working in a school for kids with EBD, i actually did a little survey(ish), to see how behaviours were or were not different around the times of the full, and dark, moons. (if anyone's interested, i'll tell you my theories).

by the way, CR - does your menstrual cycle follow the moon phases? cos that would explain it (especially the chocolate... )

Share your theories, vetivert. They sound fascinating.

While there is evidence that many people behave strangely during a full moon, is there any evidence that they do when they do not know what phase the moon is in? It seems that it is most likely a purely physcological effect, people know it is a full moon, and they believe they behave oddly during full moons so subconciously they do.

absolutely - and this is my point exactly.

seeing as how i have been encouraged (so you can blame Bec for this next load of rambling ), here goes on my results/theories...

i was working with kids who really didn't/couldn't behave according to societal norms, and so were far less inhibited than most people (they were all NT, by the way). because of the obvious bias in this, i continued my observations when i moved to a different, mainstream school, where i was i/c of EBD throughout the school. the behaviours were by mainstream kids between 11 and 16, of both genders.

at full moon, the incidence of negative behaviours rose across the board, with no particular slew towards any particular TYPE of behaviour. this happened for about 2-3 days, and then fell to "normal" (for that school) levels. there was no significant gender bias, either. (sorry - i never actually recorded these results, apart from general tendencies, and then only in my head, so i can't give you figures).

more fascinating, though, was what happened at moon dark (new moon - i.e., no moon at all). there were far more instances of aggressive and violent behaviours, as opposed to general negative (or inappropriate) behaviours. examples are fighting, destruction of property, threatening or bullying, anger, etc., all of which are generally considered "masculine" behaviours, as opposed to "feminine" (yes, yes, i know, but these are generic terms - don't get your knickers in a twist). even more interesting was the fact that there was a significant gender bias - the boys and young men presented with these behaviours to a far greater degree than the girls and young women.

now, traditionally, moon dark is the time in the female cycle for menstruation to occur (i ain't going into how cycles have changed due to us living less communally, etc, cos that's another thread altogether), and, traditionally, THIS is the time when women are supposed to be at the height of their power (consider the moon lodges of the native americans/first nation, where women are separated from rituals and ceremonies when they are menstruating, cos they are considered too powerful to join in). because of all this, i wondered if the increase in "male" behaviours was in order to redress the balance of power. now, obviously, the little oiks at the school didn't know what phase of the moon was when, and DEFINITELY had no idea at all about menstrual cycles and power, or moon lodges, or anything else like that. so that answers your question, Tim_p, i think.

it might all be supposition and twaddle, but i find it interesting. i really would like to see a nationwide study of similar, just to see what the results are. i'm not saying that my hypothesis as to cause is anything but just a hypothesis, but it's worth a quick muse or two, eh? if there are significant differences - and my results are from a very small population - then seeing if there is a general trend in the SORTS of crimes committed at different times of the moon's cycle, for example, could make more effective "law and order" stuff possible (ever the optimist...). there are probably statistics for crimes and dates, which someone could look at. now, there's a thought...

I've noticed that everyone drives like a ret*d and the cops have alot more calls during a full moon.

I feel funny during a full moon.

maybe because the sun is pulling us aprt one way, and the moon in the other?

...And now for the next installment of creepy trivia...

Before too many ladies start posting about the lunar cycle, keep in mind that the US Naval Observatory's Lunar charts and other software to predict the phases of the Moon could easily be used to predict much more personal cycles theoretically up to December 31, 3999.

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html

http://users.ameritech.net/paulcarlisle/MoonCalendar.html

No HB, this has nothing to do with you personally.

If there is an as yet unverified correlation betwen phases of the moon and driving behaviour, then it seems that there must be a full moon all the time over South East London, given the way most of them drive.

My cycle does follow the Moon Phases.

I have personally noticed that people act more strangely in response to moon phases, but it has been my experience that it is worse during the new moon instead of the full moon. If it's gravitational maybe it is because at that time the sun and moon are both pulling in the same direction. (I have a degree in astrophysics, so I know that this little amount of gravitation attraction isn't going to do anything. It's a lot like conspiracy theories for me -- I don't believe them, but they sure are a lot of fun)

My cycle never followed the moon phases, although I knew some women whose cycles were so strongly moon related that they INSISTED that all women menstruated with the full moon. They believed that any unusual behavior and increase in police incidents could be explained by the fact that "all the women are having their periods" and were grouchy, lashing out at others, not watching their children... I don't buy this one. I think something else is going on.

My aunt has worked in hospitals and nursing homes, and she says that the workers at these places are always busier during the full mooon, and that patients seem more restless. I worked in a social services office where we would mark the full moon on the calendar, because we could count on getting a lot of weird calls during that time.

I have heard that the police attribute their increased number of calls during the full moon to the simple fact that during a full moon, there is more light at night, and more people go out into the night to do things. Criminals and their victims alike, more people are simply out and about because it's not as dark as usual.

you're obviously not in the UK, then, cos the clouds tend to obscure the moon. well, cos of global warming, it's different now, but when i were a lad...

LOL! And over Chicago, too...