Merc (and Mars) rx tech news: Google threatens to leave China

Apparently, the decision came after hackers tried to get into the gmail accounts of human rights activists. The actual response from Google is to stop censoring searches from China, as it has done in exchange for being allowed to operate there, but in so doing, may have to withdraw altogether.

Read the Huffpost article here, and Google’s own blog post about the subject here.

Oh, wow, is all I can say. Capricorn rules governments; let’s see what unfolds from this. What a retrograde this is turning out to be.

 

Merc (and Mars) rx news: Ex-Guantanamo guard Facebooks ex-inmates

The BBC sets up a meeting between an ex-prison guard who served at Guantanamo Bay with two of the Tipton Three, who were released without charge in 2004,* after he contacts them on Facebook.

Extraordinary.

*Their story is dramatized in Michael Winterbottom’s Road to Guantanamo (2006).

 

Merc (and Mars) rx news: Explosives brought onto plane unwittingly

The failed attack by the Underwear Bomber on Christmas Day has once again made governments jittery about airport security.

At the same time, the news has thrown up some bizarre stories, such as the security lapses which brought Newark to a standstill recently, and the drunken bravado of three passengers on a plane at Heathrow.

But the strangest of all has to be the one about the Slovakian man who had unwittingly carried explosives onto a plane headed for Dublin as part of a security exercise!!

Image: Baggage carts. Source: stock.xchng

 

Quirky Merc rx: Obama billboard

I’m going to try a one-event-a-post format rather than accumulate them all in one long post. None of these are likely to be accompanied by long analyses — with Mercury retrograde, I’m usually swimming upstream or stuck in quicksand — but I might make a comment or two.

While all sorts of communications glitches may occur during a retrograde, my favourite are the quirky ones — what one reporter calls ‘holy mackerel stories’.* I think the unexpected punchline characterises Mercury’s tricksiness best. Like when I was switching SIM cards in my mobile phone last week while travelling, and double-checking that the other one was safely stored in my pocketbook, only the act of checking caused it to fall out, and I lost it anyway… Anyhow, that is not the subject of today’s post.

I just read this piece about the White House’s objection to a clothing company’s use of Obama’s image on their billboard in Times Square.

The Merc rx moment is: the company agrees to take it down, but only two weeks later… ‘after figuring out a new ad campaign’.

That puts it at 22 January, on the day Jupiter (expansion) ingresses Pisces (illusions) — good for advertising, I reckon.

*Thanks to Chris Brennan of The Horoscopic Astrology Blog for the report and the mention.

 

Mercury retrograde news, December 2009

I’m blogging on the road, so I’m just going to list a few interesting events that appear during this retrograde period and invite thoughts or comments.

Mercury is now in the shadow period in Capricorn (which rules tradition, authority, and institutions), and we seem to be seeing some institutional or official backtracking and secrets coming to light, reminding us of the long and painful process of adjustment we’re facing as Pluto moves through Capricorn. (See earlier post on Mercury rx in Capricorn here).

The list will be updated as and when:

• 10 December: Swine flu pandemic ‘less lethal than expected’ (see Lynn Hayes’ scepticism about the crisis from November 2009)
• 14 December: News emerges that over 20 million emails from the Bush administration were missing and are to be restored
• 14 December: British Airways is threatened with a strike over Christmas that’s scheduled to begin on 22 December, potentially disrupting the plans of 1 million passengers.
• 15 December: Swine flu vaccine recall
• 7 to 18 December: Copenhagen climate talks inch forward, backward, and sideways in fits and starts
• I am not even going to try and date the ins and outs of the debate on US health care reform!
• 23 December: Blackberry network in the US falters
• The Pope is knocked down by a woman on Christmas Eve
• Christmas Day news about the failed attempt to blow up a US airliner by a Nigerian man now known as the ‘Underwear Bomber’
• Increased airport security on US-bound flights adds to travellers’ woes
• Severe winter weather cripples transport in Europe and North America
• 30 December: Google loses case against ‘Groovle’
• 4 January: Newark airport security slip causes travel chaos
• 5 January: Google launches its Nexus One phone (again?!)
• 5 January: UK winter gridlock intensifies — the worst winter weather in decades
• 7 January: Beleaguered British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, survives a third coup (never launch a political coup during Mercury retrograde…)

Image: Paddington Bear (official website)