If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget about it. This is real astrology for the real world. If it's real astrology for yourself that you want, you can get it by phone or in print. And if you need help deciphering the astrological glyphs in the graphics accompanying this article, see Astroglyphs: Astrological Symbols Guide. Please note: this forecast is expressed in terms of Universal Time (UT).

The intersolar Mercury cycle that began last month (January 22) continued throughout February, and in fact doesn't end until March 3. ) Per my forecast, it was accompanied by the usual . . .

strikes and other disruptions affecting transportation and communication (e.g. postal, phone, mass transit, trucking, airline, shipping, dock and warehouse workers, teachers and all manner of media). Weather both terrestrial and solar (including geomagnetic storms) can play a part in the kind of breakdowns described here, but human effort (and sometimes malicious action) is a part of the mix as well. Power failures due to infrastructure breakdown and computer network disruptions caused by hacker attacks, software vulnerabilities and the like are also just a crossed wire or a keystroke away from a major mess at these times.

For example, there was the total infrastructure freeze-up that afflicted much of China from late January into February, brought on by the worst snowstorms there in half a century. More than 160 counties and cities in central China suffered blackouts and water shortages, including Chenzhou, in Hunan province; a city of four million that had no power or water for more than a week. And then there was the major outage that hit BlackBerry users in North America on Monday the 11th, cutting off wireless e-mail for everyone from busy executives to political campaign staff on the eve of three U.S. presidential primaries.