News for today's 2018

Back to the '80's

2:24 AM Tukiyooo 0

<span style="font-size: large;">I visited a house Ciaran is building in Knocklyn. On the way back I passed this dodgy looking strip mall.  I don't think it would be missed if it was knocked!</span><br /><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Look at this Penneys sign!!! I remember this branding from the nineties, I think!</span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPb5VdB6cuGNqN21Sb74iFAnBi2XISy4C4gKsSjrt8PY6QUhflLdhSd1DN6F6cbq3wkCYLl4cDNBO1sJoZgQ3zc17IPqBB1ADPD9WY5LffXXUNTWe8M_LqAH1kf0ILFJFAihQIovQdwvkl/s640/blogger-image--1532969922.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPb5VdB6cuGNqN21Sb74iFAnBi2XISy4C4gKsSjrt8PY6QUhflLdhSd1DN6F6cbq3wkCYLl4cDNBO1sJoZgQ3zc17IPqBB1ADPD9WY5LffXXUNTWe8M_LqAH1kf0ILFJFAihQIovQdwvkl/s640/blogger-image--1532969922.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: large;">Btw, for the benefit of my US readers I should mention that Penneys has nothing to do with JC Penneys.  The Irish store Penneys is known as Primark in Britain and is a clothes and homewares store for the whole family. It is a cheap and cheerful, high fashion shop.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA6yB3rpIN4wEBUXDW2CZ73Hl3M89VbfrkIY7Pdly5PMgSdUmYvgKFJFersBDqQbbcGomp2cLsIJAGG9OKtClgd9pq6TUxQnkuFtzhy5i83zA6I6s-mW_D0szUgP0cgInt2Fjxgn_KY5t7/s640/blogger-image-192667368.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA6yB3rpIN4wEBUXDW2CZ73Hl3M89VbfrkIY7Pdly5PMgSdUmYvgKFJFersBDqQbbcGomp2cLsIJAGG9OKtClgd9pq6TUxQnkuFtzhy5i83zA6I6s-mW_D0szUgP0cgInt2Fjxgn_KY5t7/s640/blogger-image-192667368.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD0HwNIxjQ9znKQMoaEkb2dKV8dXMy9exPDkZlmtVo3rr88kZrpsOnGpUAyhPT80YcKIjmo4AtSpVl3y0-Td64WP_AaPnI62r_HdeGpmxCLofRHLXHWQZECfmu4BSS8_gdnnX_rgN3Awea/s640/blogger-image-1982239584.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD0HwNIxjQ9znKQMoaEkb2dKV8dXMy9exPDkZlmtVo3rr88kZrpsOnGpUAyhPT80YcKIjmo4AtSpVl3y0-Td64WP_AaPnI62r_HdeGpmxCLofRHLXHWQZECfmu4BSS8_gdnnX_rgN3Awea/s640/blogger-image-1982239584.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /></div>

Back to the '80's

I visited a house Ciaran is building in Knocklyn. On the way back I passed this dodgy looking strip mall. I don't think it would be mis...

UNITED STATES OF AMERICAS’ CYBER SPACE FAR SIGHT

1:35 AM Tukiyooo 0

<br />   <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_qH2F54WuwpzmHycsg6KDASckB_n1iQwluPlGRNLun6Stjd1osEpJI9dQmpL4Akyi27ouuEBk6dekSXPUsnPh4ZBhwM46A7j7I-TxkxTVgdTlmdjwuAf1I02k4FHntk3IaU6jvs5dLAYB/s1600/ooda-blue-60.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_qH2F54WuwpzmHycsg6KDASckB_n1iQwluPlGRNLun6Stjd1osEpJI9dQmpL4Akyi27ouuEBk6dekSXPUsnPh4ZBhwM46A7j7I-TxkxTVgdTlmdjwuAf1I02k4FHntk3IaU6jvs5dLAYB/s640/ooda-blue-60.jpg" width="640" /></a></b></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="color: #134f5c;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">ACTIVITY – BASED INTELLIGENCE USES METADATA TO MAP ADVERSARY NETWORKS </span></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><ul><li><b><span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">The <span style="color: #134f5c;">ROMANS</span> invented <span style="color: #134f5c;">ROADS</span> to move their armies faster and efficient, thus becoming an empire</span></span></b></li><li><b><span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">The <span style="color: #134f5c;">BRITISH</span> invented the <span style="color: #134f5c;">RAILROAD</span> to connect trade routes, and subsequently became and empire</span></span></b></li><li><b><span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">The <span style="color: #134f5c;">UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</span> invented – developed and control the <span style="color: #134f5c;">DATA – CYBER - INTERNET HIGHWAY</span> and thus emerged as an empire</span></span></b></li></ul><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .75in; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">By Geopolitical Analysis and Monitoring </span></i></b></span><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"></span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><a href="http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130708/C4ISR02/307010020/Activity-based-intelligence-uses-metadata-map-adversary-networks?odyssey=nav%7Chead" target="_blank">Source: Defense News</a></span></b></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><b> </b></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Read also related article at</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">: <a href="http://geopoliticsrst.blogspot.co.at/2013/08/usa.html">http://geopoliticsrst.blogspot.co.at/2013/08/usa.html</a></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Few outside the intelligence community had heard of activity-based intelligence until December, when the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency awarded BAE Systems $60 million to develop products based on this newish methodology. But ABI, which focuses not on specific targets but on events, movements and transactions in a given area, is rapidly emerging as a powerful tool for understanding adversary networks and solving quandaries presented by asymmetrical warfare and big data.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Indeed, ABI is the type of intelligence tool that could be applied to the vast wash of metadata and internet transactions gathered by the NSA programs that were disclosed in June by a whistle-blower.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In May, the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s Activity-Based Intelligence Working Group hosted a top-secret forum on ABI that drew representatives from the “big five” U.S. intelligence agencies.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the SPIE 2013 Defense, Security + Sensing Symposium, NGA Director Letitia Long said the agency is using ABI to “identify patterns, trends, networks and relationships hidden within large data collections from multiple sources: full-motion video, multispectral imagery, infrared, radar, foundation data, as well as SIGINT, HUMINT and MASINT information.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The technique appears to have emerged when special operators in IRAQ and AFGHANISTAN reached back to NGA analysts for help plugging gaps in tactical intelligence with information from national-level agencies. These analysts began compiling information from other intelligence disciplines — everything from signals intelligence and human intelligence to open sources and political reporting — and geotagging it all. The resulting database could be queried with new information and used to connect locations and establish a network.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This experience led to a series of seminal white papers published in 2010 and 2011 by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. The papers call ABI “a discipline of intelligence where the analysis and subsequent collection is focused on the activity and transactions associated with an entity, population, or area of interest.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This focus on interactions is the fundamental difference between ABI and previous efforts to integrate different types of intelligence, which were often confined to a single agency and aimed at a specific target.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“When we are target-based, we focus on collecting the target and, too often, we are biased toward what we know and not looking for the unknown,” NGA’s Dave Gauthier said last year at GEOINT 2012. Gauthier, who handles strategic capabilities in the agency’s Office of Special Programs, called ABI “a rich new data source for observing the world and the connectedness between objects and entities in the world.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwYFSeQsnknPYPgLOTcymsRV8LKyVVGVqFHZOPr_8H8fxi8xd4E0zbMYIb0zeEFNHSmLAitZpTA8SNbW2YywE9beBTGHjOFR3zQAphykcUw2kchK8Hw8Wwcg7lQhUWTkZemv59AdodSbuQ/s1600/harris1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwYFSeQsnknPYPgLOTcymsRV8LKyVVGVqFHZOPr_8H8fxi8xd4E0zbMYIb0zeEFNHSmLAitZpTA8SNbW2YywE9beBTGHjOFR3zQAphykcUw2kchK8Hw8Wwcg7lQhUWTkZemv59AdodSbuQ/s640/harris1.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ABI attempts to meet two challenges with traditional intelligence-gathering. First, there are no clear signatures for and no doctrine governing the activities of nonstate actors and insurgents who have emerged as the most important threats to U.S. national security. Second, the volume of big data has become “staggering,” in Gauthier’s words. Take, for example, the recent bombing in Boston: There was a massive amount of surveillance imagery available, but analysts initially had no idea whom they were looking for, and moreover, the suspects turned out to look little different from thousands of other spectators on hand.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“ABI came out of the realization that the scheduled, targeted, one-thing-at-a-time, stove-piped analysis and collection paradigm was not relevant to non-nation-state and emergent threats,” said Patrick Biltgen, a senior engineer in the intelligence and security sector at BAE Systems. “We are breaking this one-thing-after-another paradigm because information is flowing … all the time and we don’t know what to do with it because if you’ve stopped to try and collect it, you’ve missed everything else that’s coming.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 3; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">NEW METHODOLOGY</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 3; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Though the USD(I) white papers call ABI a new discipline, many prefer to think of it more as a methodology with several components.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The first is the constant collection of data on activities in a given area, then storing it in a database for later metadata searches. The NGA’s Long recently said the agency is working to create a “model that allows us to ‘georeference’ all of the data we collect persistently — over a long period of time,” one that allows “analysts to identify and evaluate data down to the smallest available object or entity.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The second is the concept of “sequence neutrality,” also called “integration before analysis.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“We collect stuff without knowing whether it’s going to be relevant or not. We may find the answer before we know the question,” said Gregory Treverton, who directs the Rand Center for Global Risk and Security. “It’s also not so driven by collection; the collection is just going to be there.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The third is data neutrality — the idea that open-source information may be just as valuable as HUMINT or classified intelligence.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAc_DaS7pcs0PW5npn4Y8PBIPVCLk24WACNU4VhUyCLev2NGoGfh-6xTAiMSgwN8rFRezoFTnVZD_midE2chpHln6WnxktIDjsX4e6-0iR7cOhlBju3NKZC8vcvIg48MKPvahfPnSdzjXt/s1600/image_gallery.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAc_DaS7pcs0PW5npn4Y8PBIPVCLk24WACNU4VhUyCLev2NGoGfh-6xTAiMSgwN8rFRezoFTnVZD_midE2chpHln6WnxktIDjsX4e6-0iR7cOhlBju3NKZC8vcvIg48MKPvahfPnSdzjXt/s400/image_gallery.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-highlight: yellow;">“Humans, unlike other entities, are inherently self-documenting. Simply being born or going to school, being employed, or traveling creates a vast amount of potentially useful data about an individual,” the white papers say. This tendency has exploded on the Internet, “where individuals and groups willingly provide volumes of data about themselves in real time — Twitter and social network forums like Facebook and LinkedIn are only a few examples of the massive amounts of unclassified data that is routinely indexed and discoverable.”</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: yellow; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-highlight: yellow;"><br /></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Finally, there is knowledge management, which covers everything from the technical architecture that makes integrated intelligence and information-sharing possible to the metadata tagging that allows analysts to discover data that may be important, but not linked spatially or temporally.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 3; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">USAGE EXAMPLES</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 3; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ABI products take the form of customizable Web-based interfaces that allow analysts to locate associations among data sets using metadata.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“You could call them Web services, apps, widgets, but they help analysts sift through large volumes of data,” said BAE Systems’ Biltgen.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These do not compete with giant systems like the armed services’ Distributed Common Ground Systems, end-to-end databases that connect thousands of users with intelligence information. Rather, they are generally designed to plug into DCGS, then help smaller working groups deal with specific problems.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Really, what we’re doing is working with the metadata — the dots and the indexes and extracted ‘ABI things’ — to get those on the screen, whereas the large systems really manage streams of imagery for exploration,” Biltgen said. “We go, ‘Let’s take clip marks and the tags that come from exploited video streams and look at all of them at the same time without ever having to touch a frame of video.’ ”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He said the goal is to “precondition the data and make it easier for the analyst to correlate them, apply their cultural awareness and knowledge to them, and really put the thought muscle on the data after it’s been well conditioned.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So what does ABI actually produce? One common format is activity layer plots. An analyst might, for example, place all available intelligence about an explosion of an improvised explosive device atop information about a kidnapping in the same area, then lay in data about the local bus line, the fruit market at the corner, or the local timber-smuggling operation.Once displayed, the information may overlap or intersect in interesting ways.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To date, ABI has primarily been used in the kinds of operations that have defined IRAQ and AFGHANISTAN: manhunting and uncovering insurgent networks. But because ABI is more a methodology than a discipline, and because the products that enable ABI are customizable, the intelligence community sees ABI applied to a broad range of problems.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“The immediate question is, can we expand it beyond counterterrorism and manhunting and the fight against terror?” Treverton said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He suggested applications such as maritime domain awareness, in which signatures exist for CHINESE frigates but not junks.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ABI can theoretically be brought to bear on any problem that might be aided by a “pattern of life” analysis, a prominent phrase in the white papers. In finance, for example, ABI might identify patterns left by a particular kind of criminal.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8bxxCkpWzrEX1tVXINVJFTHwLryMgtvGHge-vIA6qYYDoGZtQtAYrXq-w7HZq_y11LznXmNS5vqL-TbzijKCAf9sX-XCpvoKA-Ih0pVdaIRA0CuJL8Mq2ZH36rvXomxN-o3Dlq_Eo1pNG/s1600/0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8bxxCkpWzrEX1tVXINVJFTHwLryMgtvGHge-vIA6qYYDoGZtQtAYrXq-w7HZq_y11LznXmNS5vqL-TbzijKCAf9sX-XCpvoKA-Ih0pVdaIRA0CuJL8Mq2ZH36rvXomxN-o3Dlq_Eo1pNG/s400/0001.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="font1" style="font-size: 8.6px; top: -2.5px;">Analysts create ABI system events in SOCET GXP using Web services</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“You could use this in the insurance industry to try and understand the patterns of life of individuals that steal things from you and make false claims. We do some of that work today,” Biltgen said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While ABI can help anticipate patterns, advocates don’t claim it can predict future behavior.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I wouldn’t call it predictive,” Treverton said. “I wouldn’t call anything predictive. That’s asking way too much.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Still, it may help officials anticipate threats by building a deep understanding of the networks that give rise to specific incidents.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 3; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">POTENTIAL ROADBLOCKS</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 3; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Two things could hinder ABI — one technical, one cultural.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It sounds relatively uncomplicated to develop a visual network, say, by tracing all of the tire tracks captured by wide-area motion video in a given area over a period of time. Origins and destinations become nodes, and hundreds or even thousands of tire tracks describe a network from which analysts can extract meaning. But the devil is in the details. For example, it is difficult to define a “vehicle stop” in an algorithm, much less assign meaning to it. Does a “stop” last five seconds or one minute?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“It sounds easy, until you touch the data. You realize that every proposition in that value chain has hidden complexity,” said Gary Condon, an intelligence expert at MIT’s Lincoln Lab, at GEOINT 2012.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The second set of issues are cultural. Even in the post-9/11 era, legal boundaries and security clearances can prevent the kind of data-sharing that makes ABI work. The quantity of publicly available information swells by the day, but the intelligence community still often prizes classified over open-source information. And just as complex: Some of that open-source intelligence raises privacy concerns when U.S. persons are involved.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That’s been at the heart of the outcry over the NSA’s Prism program and phone-record collection.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Still, top-level intelligence officials see ABI as a valuable new tool. Several senior officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence remarked on its growing importance at the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation forum in early May.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“The defense and intelligence worlds have undergone, and are still undergoing, a radical transformation since the events of 9/11. The Department of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence have made information sharing and efficiency priorities,” the spokesman said. “This will increase collaboration and coordination, which will have a multiplying effect on approaches such as ABI.”</span></div>

UNITED STATES OF AMERICAS’ CYBER SPACE FAR SIGHT

ACTIVITY – BASED INTELLIGENCE USES METADATA TO MAP ADVERSARY NETWORKS The ROMANS invented ROADS to move their armies faster and effici...

Percy Jackson, Sea of Monsters: Mythbegotten

1:00 AM Tukiyooo 0

<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b><i>Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters</i> </b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b>(2013) • <a href="http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/fox/percyjacksonseaofmonsters/" style="color: #27a9c5; text-decoration: none;">View trailer</a></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b> </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b>Two stars. Rating: PG, for fantasy action violence</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>By <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/12885694730612878577" style="color: #27a9c5; text-decoration: none;">Derrick Bang</a></b></span></b></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>            <br /><div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Conventional wisdom suggests the value of a winning formula.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Movie studies, infamous for getting things bass-ackwards, sometimes cling to a <i>losing</i> formula.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYHSY6lt8vWt1i_VLsZRb49wOc88-db_iALVrjNvr72aAGNQ_stIUTOx8GOOFzou8QYhjD3jAY3HANHrQyIFUgLoStE0jhIuZJZiMgpYVuNCLWFW1X5wJUjVZgwhQ6wKDhkND1isbZaxY/s1600/Percy+Jackson+2+blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYHSY6lt8vWt1i_VLsZRb49wOc88-db_iALVrjNvr72aAGNQ_stIUTOx8GOOFzou8QYhjD3jAY3HANHrQyIFUgLoStE0jhIuZJZiMgpYVuNCLWFW1X5wJUjVZgwhQ6wKDhkND1isbZaxY/s400/Percy+Jackson+2+blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Having successfully invaded Polyphemus' lair and snatched the fabled Golden Fleece,<br />our young heroes — from left, Tyson (Douglas Smith), Clarisse (Levin Rambin), Grover<br />(Brandon T. Jackson), Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and Percy (Logan Lerman) —<br />discover that <i>keeping</i> their prize will be even more difficult.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2010’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief</i> offered fabulous monsters, slick special effects and an A-list cast of cameo players ... and nothing else. The film was dumb, soulless and atrociously acted; the entire cast delivered every line with smirking condescension, as if mocking the material as a waste of time. Needless to say, if the actors don’t seem to believe in what they’re doing, we certainly won’t.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Critics dismissed the film with contempt, and it was justifiably loathed by fans of Rick Riordan’s teen-lit fantasy series; Craig Titley’s snarky script completely failed to respect the source novel. The biggest surprise? Chris Columbus occupied the director’s chair, and you’d certainly think that the guy who helmed the first two Harry Potter movies would understand how to bring fantasy to the big screen.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You’d think.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite earning only $89 million in the States — on a budget of $95, which qualifies as a failure — the results were far better worldwide, with a final tally of $226 million. Those numbers spell S-E-Q-U-E-L, despite everybody’s recognition that they were dealing with a dog.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so now we’re graced with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters</i> ... which offers fabulous monsters and slick special effects, and is dumb, soulless and atrociously acted. Despite the presence of a new director (Thor Freudenthal) and scripter (Marc Guggenheim), little has changed. The young stars may be three years more mature, but their performances haven’t improved much. And it’s rather telling that the first film’s big names — Sean Bean, Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Steve Coogan, Rosario Dawson and Catherine Keener — opted out this time. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Indeed, we never catch the barest glimpse of the Olympian gods who played such an important role in the first film. Oh, they’re mentioned here, now and then, but that’s it. Instead of Zeus, Hades, Poseidon and Medusa, we get Hermes and Dionysus. Our favorite centaur, Chiron, now is played by Anthony Head (a fan favorite from the days of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Buffy the Vampire Slayer</i>), rather than Brosnan. Although I’ve no desire to slight the talents of the esteemed Mr. Head, whose work I admire, one gets the distinct impression that these filmmakers settled for the B Team.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Freudenthal deserves credit for attempting a more serious tone; he mostly eliminated the smug atmosphere that poisoned the first film. But Guggenheim’s script takes even more liberties with the second entry in Riordan’s book series, leaving us with an “adaptation” in name only. I’m sure Riordan's fans will be equally unhappy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><a name='more'></a><br />  <div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As we learned in the first adventure, Percy (Logan Lerman) is a demigod, the mixed-race result of a dalliance between Poseidon, god of the sea, and a human mother. The latter role was played by Keener in the first film, and she’s neither seen nor mentioned here ... which is rather bizarre, considering how hard Percy worked to save her, three years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyway, Percy has settled into a comfortable routine at the rather demeaningly named Camp Half-Blood, alongside best friends Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), daughter of Athena; and Grover (Brandon T. Jackson), his satyr (half man, half goat) protector. Like Lerman, Daddario and Jackson reprise their roles, which is a comfortable bit of continuity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For reasons the film series never really makes clear, various mythological creatures wish to kill these demigod younglings, and they’re only safe behind the protective barrier that surrounds Camp Half-Blood. But as this story opens, the magic tree that generates the barrier has been poisoned, leaving the camp increasingly exposed. The tree must be saved, and only the fabled Golden Fleece can handle that task.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Worse yet, this calamity has been orchestrated by Luke (Jake Abel), the petulant son of Hermes, who caused all the trouble in the previous adventure. As we learned, Luke has serious “daddy abandonment” issues, which turned him evil; his temper tantrums don’t seem to have improved.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finding the Golden Fleece falls to Clarisse (Levin Rambin), daughter of Ares (god of war), an impressively resourceful and highly competitive fighter who has become the bane of Percy’s existence. Apparently saving the world three years ago is yesterday’s news, and of late Percy has come to doubt his skills and worthiness. On top of which, Poseidon seems to have lost interest in his demigod son.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Percy’s discomfort increases when the camp’s newest arrival, Tyson (Douglas Smith), turns out to be his half-brother. As it happens, Tyson also is a cyclops, a race regarded with derision at best, and hostility at worst. Annabeth, in particular, has cause to distrust Tyson on sight ... and, truth be told, the “ocularly challenged” lad is something of a bumbling screw-up.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite being passed over in favor of Clarisse, Percy opts to seek the Golden Fleece anyway, thanks to his concern about an ill-fated prophecy. Annabeth and Grover naturally join him, as does Tyson (much to Annabeth’s disgust). And then it’s heigh-ho, off to the dread “Sea of Monsters” — which we mortals know as the Bermuda Triangle — and the lair of Polyphemus, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">genuinely</i>nasty cyclops who possesses the fleece.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unlike their first adventure, which involved some puzzle-solving and continental hopping, this time Percy and his friends just sorta bumble and stumble into a series of calamities. Guggenheim’s narrative doesn’t actually flow; it lurches from one contrived scene to the next, giving the entire film a sense of things being improvised on the spot.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Far worse something that always aggravates me, when it comes to badly conceived fantasy: the fact that our heroes — and their adversaries — are only as weak, or as strong, as they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">need</i> to be, at any given moment. When pressed, for example, Percy can summon and ride a gigantic ocean wave, which seems a nifty way to travel in general, not to mention an easy way to dispatch any pursuers. Strange, then, that Percy doesn’t rely on this trick more frequently.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s also rather peculiar that all these demigods and demigoddesses — offspring of the Olympian gods, and therefore blessed with intriguing talents and powers — inevitably resort to primitive swordplay and fisticuffs, whenever a battle brews.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One also must question Luke’s intelligence: For a bad guy determined to obtain the Golden Fleece for his own ends, you’d think he would recognize the folly of setting up shop on a yacht in the middle of the ocean, where he’s most vulnerable to Poseidon’s powers! Obviously, Luke skipped his classes in Secret Lair 101.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And speaking of powers, Percy also is gifted with magic shipping tape, which causes anything outlined to vanish: a handy gadget indeed, yet one that he uses only once ... after which, it’s left behind like every other detail in this maladroit script.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Guggenheim and Freudenthal also are guilty of bald theft, in the matter of a magical taxi driven by the three blind “Gray Sisters,” who share but one eye between them. Percy and his friends manage to snag a timely ride in a sequence that plays very much like a certain young wizard’s ride aboard the Knight Bus, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While I’m at it, another question: If the Gray Sisters’ taxi descends from the sky as swirling lights when summoned, why doesn’t it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">travel</i>that way? Why race in and out of conventional traffic, on roadways ... except to provide viewers with another meaningless special-effects sequence?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although Lerman has dropped the haughty disdain that clouded his previous outing as Percy Jackson, he still treats this role like a larkish joke (or, perhaps, like a paycheck). He’s clearly capable of much better, having delivered such a sensitive performance in last year’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://derrickbang.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-perks-of-being-wallflower.html">The Perks of Being a Wallflower</a></i>. Apparently, he views this series as slumming.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jackson once again makes Grover little more than cloven-hoofed comic relief, and Abel’s “acting” is limited to a villainous sneer; we’ve absolutely no sense of Luke as a character. Smith delivers some emotional depth as the hapless, one-eyed Tyson, but his saga — his desire to bond with Percy — isn’t well integrated with the rest of the narrative.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Daddario suffers the worst fate; Annabeth was a smart, resourceful fighter in the previous film, but here she’s demoted to a useless girl-in-peril ... a role she doesn’t play with any enthusiasm. All of Annabeth’s previous warrior skills have been transferred to Clarisse, played by Rambin as a patronizing, sword-wielding Gossip Girl. One expects her to start a waspish discussion about the latest in designer armor.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An unexpected ray of sunshine comes from Nathan Fillion, popping up in a small role as Hermes, the fleet-footed emissary and messenger of the gods. Fillion gives the right light-hearted touch to this role; it’s a shame he’s on camera for only five minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stanley Tucci also has a few droll moments as “Mr. D” (Dionysus), one of Camp Half-Blood’s mentors, who bemoans his rather cruel punishment at Zeus’ hands. But like everything else in this film, Tucci’s role is under-written, and he’s never allowed to make much of it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In terms of visual spectacle, effects supervisor Cameron Waldbauer deserves top marks for his realization of Charybdis, one of the nastiest monsters in Greek mythology. (Scylla, in contrast, gets no more than lip service.) The “fake” 3D effects, however, are a complete waste of time. And as often is the case with 3D layered onto a film after the fact, the most noticeable result is a darkened color palette; it often seems like cinematographer Shelly Johnson filmed through black gauze.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As with its predecessor, <i>Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters</i> is a family-friendly romp with plenty of ooky-spooky creatures, and nary a whiff of objectionable content; parents can feel safe watching it with their children. But “safe” doesn’t mean engaging; this film is sloppy, derivative and half-baked fantasy at its most infantile ... so I suspect young viewers will snicker even more than any adults unlucky enough to tag along.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>

Percy Jackson, Sea of Monsters: Mythbegotten

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013) • View trailer Two stars. Rating: PG, for fantasy action violence By Derrick Bang Co...

SEC Football Preview 2013

9:00 PM Tukiyooo 0

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal">Hola again football fans! My <a href="http://news-these-days.blogspot.com/2013/08/2013-nfl-team-previews.html">NFL Preview</a> was such a smashing success (kinda, not really) that I decided to expand my previewing analysis skills to college football. No, I’m not gonna preview all 100-plus big-time college football teams. I’m going to preview the only teams that matter. So, here’s your 2013 Southeastern Conference Football Preview! <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><i>SEC West: </i></b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Alabama:</b> Pfffffffft, these guys suck. The players mostly look just like the fans. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNU6wYKxjI1Vkif02VM1qP9v0L0rFByzrX_DhbhWTtkxq265vmjU_hedLJIK59XiuXE_e0MzRrdaOCIW0kDWFtHZYlsSdsJvdGT17PlPV7BJ4gZS91o7ztw32P9nJB3229xuLFT0dd8_XY/s1600/Alabama-Hot-Sexy-Babe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNU6wYKxjI1Vkif02VM1qP9v0L0rFByzrX_DhbhWTtkxq265vmjU_hedLJIK59XiuXE_e0MzRrdaOCIW0kDWFtHZYlsSdsJvdGT17PlPV7BJ4gZS91o7ztw32P9nJB3229xuLFT0dd8_XY/s1600/Alabama-Hot-Sexy-Babe.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><br /></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Arkansas:</b> The absolute, unchallenged class of the SEC. Only the highest quality human beings play on the team and they always play the game the way it was meant to be played. They play hard, practice harder and study the hardest. They are the epitome of Student-Athletes and the very definition of gentlemen. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Auburn: </b>The cheatingest, dirtiest, low-downest scum-buckets in any division of any conference in any sport on any level. Fuck those guys. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>LSU:</b> Why do both LSU and the New Orleans Saints use the “WHO DAT??!!” chant? Because it applies to all of South Louisiana. All over the bayou folks have for decades said things like “Who dat breaking into my house?” and “Who dat with the gun about to rob me on the street” and “Who dat that got killed walking to church last night for $3?” and … well, you get the idea. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Mississippi State:</b> THOSE GAWD-DAMMED COWBELLS! OMG! Most of the players can even spell Mississippi. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Ole Miss: </b>If you can’t get into Mississippi State then you’re only other options is Ole Miss, a drinking school with a football problem. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Texas A&M:</b> What’s the difference between an Aggie and a carp? One is a bottom-feeding scum-sucker and the other is a fish. Hey-OOOOOOOOOOO<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><i>SEC (L)East: </i></b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Florida:</b> The only school with more player arrests each week than points scored. Aaron Hernandez and Riley Cooper are their most distinguished alumni. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Georgia: </b>The team and fans suffer from the least deserved superiority complex in the entire country. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Kentucky: </b>I don’t really have anything against the Mildcats cause they’re not good enough to really worry about. Besides, they already have a basketball program so dirty it makes Auburn fans gasp, it wouldn’t be fair to have a good football program too. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Missouri:</b> So stupid they think Missouri really IS in the southeastern part of the country. Also, Columbia has the greatest concentration of people who can’t figure out how to use “there,” “their” and “they’re” correctly in the entire country. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>South Carolina: </b>Their only redeeming quality is being named the “Gamecocks” so everyone can just refer to them as the “Cocks.” Heh…Heh…Huh…Huh …. “Cocks” <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Tennessee:</b> Their offensive line … <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkiT0umuJ_EWTOLBzWzPZG_cOVfVQ6bPuU5QquhdoQukb2km6xvkBuSkVxd1ThTK3tEI6J6ixnZNzCDfk6HWx5hCXtWJDI1d-aEp1nijjXeUICRQ0cxjrGF8Dr5PpjfzYHQigogTHCbz7i/s1600/Tennessee-Football-Players.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkiT0umuJ_EWTOLBzWzPZG_cOVfVQ6bPuU5QquhdoQukb2km6xvkBuSkVxd1ThTK3tEI6J6ixnZNzCDfk6HWx5hCXtWJDI1d-aEp1nijjXeUICRQ0cxjrGF8Dr5PpjfzYHQigogTHCbz7i/s1600/Tennessee-Football-Players.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p><br /></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Vanderbilt:</b> Rich, stuck-up, over-privileged, condescending, Duke wannabes. Nobody likes you guys.  <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So there you go y’all! An expert analysis of the greatest football conference in the history of the world. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:Jayman3768@gmail.com">Jayman3768@gmail.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.facebook.com/jayman68">Facebook.com/Jayman68</a><br /><a href="http://www.twitter.com/jayman_iws">@Jayman_IWS</a><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div></div>

SEC Football Preview 2013

Hola again football fans! My NFL Preview was such a smashing success (kinda, not really) that I decided to expand my previewing analysis sk...

Senator-elect John Cosgrove wins 14th Senate District special election

8:13 PM Tukiyooo 0

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9sd8tqTRQmR5hPuC2W2R_HRe4BN8LZeSaIPVHNePzGjkkLdBmqsaWKbGvZVcfkysz1Jt82s3_QPO70YNQPDs3-f1XR8TnV0S5jvyeB6AV6n3oAmJTKKecBD6pltkKjFH_BG8lnDzoEC0X/s1600/John+Cosgrove+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9sd8tqTRQmR5hPuC2W2R_HRe4BN8LZeSaIPVHNePzGjkkLdBmqsaWKbGvZVcfkysz1Jt82s3_QPO70YNQPDs3-f1XR8TnV0S5jvyeB6AV6n3oAmJTKKecBD6pltkKjFH_BG8lnDzoEC0X/s400/John+Cosgrove+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><a href="http://www.johncosgrove.org/">John Cosgrove</a>, the Republican delegate who served for 10 years in the Virginia House of Delegates, won Tuesday's special 14th Senate District election after the Democratic candidate dropped out in July, leaving him unopposed in the race. He will serve the remaining two years of retired Senator Harry Blevins' term.<br /><br />Virginia House Speaker Bill Howell congratulated Cosgrove on his win:<br /><blockquote>"I  want to congratulate John on his election to the Virginia Senate. For  over a decade John has served the greater South Hampton Roads community  and the Commonwealth of Virginia with dedication. John has been a valued  member of the House of Delegates and a personal friend to many of us.  We will miss his insight and expertise on the issues, and know he will  be a tremendous addition to the Virginia Senate. On behalf of the entire  House of Delegates, we wish him the very best in the years ahead."</blockquote>In May Cosgrove <a href="http://swacgirl.blogspot.com/2013/05/john-cosgrove-wins-14th-senate-district.html">won the Republican nomination</a> in a three-way firehouse primary after his endorsement by Congressman Randy Forbes.  Other endorsements included the man he is replacing, Senator Harry  Blevins, as well as Senator Tommy Norment, Senator Ryan McDougle,  Delegate Chris Jones, Sheriff Jim O'Sullivan, Eric Wray, Commonwealth  Attorney for Chesapeake Nancy Parr, Treasurer Barbara Carroway, and  Mayor Alan Krasnoff as well as others.

Senator-elect John Cosgrove wins 14th Senate District special election

14th senate district Hampton Roads John Cosgrove Lynn R. Mitchell politics special election Virginia Senator-elect John Cosgrove wins 14th Senate District special election

John Cosgrove , the Republican delegate who served for 10 years in the Virginia House of Delegates, won Tuesday's special 14th Senate Di...

Anti-ALEC Moral Monday protests spread

2:03 PM Tukiyooo 0

<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(UPDATES final graf to CORRECT large Chicago protest is Thursday, sted Wednesday).</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">An enormous Moral Monday rally in Asheville, N.C., </span><a href="http://www.carolinamercury.com/2013/08/thousands-attend-mountain-moral-monday-protests-spread-to-chicago-and-oakland/#.UgEHInE_fyc.twitter" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">drew about 10,000 people</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> yesterday to protest passage of pro-corporate ALEC legislation in Raleigh even as demonstrators in Oakland and Chicago took up the Moral Monday cause.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgknx5Vv5S0j0BFb51HYcMKxRH8kybhrP4iUiWvTEAuq0soX2Il4K_rwMf5k6KIzhQ42dXOJVi32bkxPbigqYGmdvSsEnO7pVO1pzkCB5GaR7ilWeRTln8oEi-he3pt4trXp_dIu4itjWeM/s1600/8-6moralmondayphoto1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgknx5Vv5S0j0BFb51HYcMKxRH8kybhrP4iUiWvTEAuq0soX2Il4K_rwMf5k6KIzhQ42dXOJVi32bkxPbigqYGmdvSsEnO7pVO1pzkCB5GaR7ilWeRTln8oEi-he3pt4trXp_dIu4itjWeM/s320/8-6moralmondayphoto1.jpg" title="This is a photo that shows a crowd estimated at 10,000 gathering for a Moral Monday protest in Asheville, N.C." width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A tremendous crowd took in event in Asheville, N.C.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the county courthouse in Asheville, North Carolinians expressed their anger with Gov. Pat McCrory and the Legislature, which rolled back progress in education, voting rights and social and economic equality. During the legislative session, which just ended, lawmakers slashed unemployment benefits, Medicaid and education spending while cutting taxes to big business. <o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> In Chicago, clergy, unions and community organizers took over the Palmer House Hilton lobby during the first Moral Monday protest outside of North Carolina. They demanded the hotel rescind its invitation to ALEC, which is gathering for a conference there. Police arrested six protesters. <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Carolina Mercury reported:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif"; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Oakland protesters held the first of a series of monthly ‘Moral Monday’ peace and justice rallies.</span></span></blockquote></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Called “Mountain Moral Monday” by organizers, the Asheville event rivaled the final Raleigh rally held last week. Yesterday’s protest was the first to be held away from the state capital and will be followed by additional events in all of North Carolina’s congressional districts. Teachers again were out in full force at the Asheville event to raise their objections to policies that strike down tenure, end salary increases for those with master’s degrees and caused the firing of thousands of classroom assistants. Angela Patane said </span><a href="http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20130806/NEWS/308060023/Protest-packs-Asheville" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">it is important to raise attention about what is happening to education in North Carolina</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><u><span style="color: blue;"> </span></u></span>and was glad to see others agreed:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was amazed by the turnout. I wasn’t expecting that many people, so I was really happy to see so many thousands of people.</span></blockquote></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/05/3083774/moral-monday-protests-heading.html" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Retired teacher Sue Bartlett said she too felt the need to stand up</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> for what’s right:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We’re concerned about the children, concerned about health care, concerned about our environment.</span></blockquote></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The next Moral Monday rally in North Carolina has tentatively been scheduled for Aug. 19 in Charlotte.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There will be another large protest against ALEC in Chicago Thursday. ALEC, or the <a href="http://www.alecexposed.org/" rel="nofollow">American Legislative Exchange Council, has been exposed over the past few years as an anti-worker tool of big corporation. ALEC gatherings have been dogged with large protests over the past few years, and tomorrow's may be the largest yet.</a></span></div>

Anti-ALEC Moral Monday protests spread

(UPDATES final graf to CORRECT large Chicago protest is Thursday, sted Wednesday). An enormous Moral Monday rally in Asheville, N.C., drew a...

Today's archidose #694

9:45 AM Tukiyooo 0

Catching up from my recent break, here are some photos of projects with little to no right angles.<br /><br />Drents Archive 3.0 (2012) in Assen, Netherlands, by <a href="http://www.zecc.nl/">Zecc Architects</a>, photographed by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/klaasfotocollectie/">Klaas Vermaas</a>:<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/klaasfotocollectie/9442833728/" title="assen entreegebouw drents archief 05 2012 zecc arch (brink) by Klaas5, on Flickr"><img alt="assen entreegebouw drents archief 05 2012 zecc arch (brink)" height="427" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2812/9442833728_84dc469ef5_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/klaasfotocollectie/9440050409/" title="assen entreegebouw drents archief 01 2012 zecc arch (brink) by Klaas5, on Flickr"><img alt="assen entreegebouw drents archief 01 2012 zecc arch (brink)" height="427" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7350/9440050409_e853015527_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/klaasfotocollectie/9442833078/" title="assen entreegebouw drents archief 07 2012 zecc arch (brink) by Klaas5, on Flickr"><img alt="assen entreegebouw drents archief 07 2012 zecc arch (brink)" height="427" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2892/9442833078_0bce204d1a_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/klaasfotocollectie/9440047417/" title="assen entreegebouw drents archief 08 2012 zecc arch (brink) by Klaas5, on Flickr"><img alt="assen entreegebouw drents archief 08 2012 zecc arch (brink)" height="427" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3786/9440047417_1703345ca8_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />Ice Rink of Liège, Belgium (2012), by <a href="http://www.escaut.org/">L'Escaut Architectures</a>, photographed by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlee2010/">Ken Lee</a>:<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlee2010/9416551018/" title="the whale, Ice Rink of Liège, Belgium by Ken Lee 2010, on Flickr"><img alt="the whale, Ice Rink of Liège, Belgium" height="479" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3723/9416551018_baf9a504ef_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlee2010/9416550596/" title="the whale, Ice Rink of Liège, Belgium by Ken Lee 2010, on Flickr"><img alt="the whale, Ice Rink of Liège, Belgium" height="640" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7287/9416550596_3ffd8a06b7_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlee2010/9413784517/" title="the whale, Ice Rink of Liège, Belgium by Ken Lee 2010, on Flickr"><img alt="the whale, Ice Rink of Liège, Belgium" height="426" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2865/9413784517_d1ee28bf72_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />Roca London Gallery (2011) by <a href="http://www.zaha-hadid.com/">Zaha Hadid Architects</a>, photographed by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurencemackman/">Laurence Mackman</a>:<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurencemackman/9407628918/" title="RocaGalleryLondon E W 067 by laurencemackman, on Flickr"><img alt="RocaGalleryLondon E W 067" height="428" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3831/9407628918_90333eb954_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurencemackman/9404911677/" title="RocaGalleryLondon E W 057 by laurencemackman, on Flickr"><img alt="RocaGalleryLondon E W 057" height="428" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5537/9404911677_cacd501b97_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurencemackman/9442753188/" title="RocaGallery E W-024 by laurencemackman, on Flickr"><img alt="RocaGallery E W-024" height="428" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7418/9442753188_ff2d734e27_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurencemackman/9440036227/" title="RocaGallery 28 E W 072 by laurencemackman, on Flickr"><img alt="RocaGallery 28 E W 072" height="428" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7303/9440036227_2673555585_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />Helicopter Platform (2011) in Aachen, Germany, by <a href="http://www.ox2.de/">OX2architekten</a>, photographed by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlee2010/">Ken Lee</a>:<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlee2010/9363466893/" title="Hubschrauberlandeplattform, helicopter landing platform, Hospital of RWTH Aachen, Germany by Ken Lee 2010, on Flickr"><img alt="Hubschrauberlandeplattform, helicopter landing platform, Hospital of RWTH Aachen, Germany" height="426" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7396/9363466893_0fd0e52e3c_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlee2010/9355991422/" title="Hubschrauberlandeplattform, helicopter landing platform, Hospital of RWTH Aachen, Germany by Ken Lee 2010, on Flickr"><img alt="Hubschrauberlandeplattform, helicopter landing platform, Hospital of RWTH Aachen, Germany" height="426" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5443/9355991422_9641549962_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlee2010/9366246262/" title="Hubschrauberlandeplattform, helicopter landing platform, Hospital of RWTH Aachen, Germany by Ken Lee 2010, on Flickr"><img alt="Hubschrauberlandeplattform, helicopter landing platform, Hospital of RWTH Aachen, Germany" height="640" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5447/9366246262_69c65f2c38_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlee2010/9353214419/" title="Hubschrauberlandeplattform, helicopter landing platform, Hospital of RWTH Aachen, Germany by Ken Lee 2010, on Flickr"><img alt="Hubschrauberlandeplattform, helicopter landing platform, Hospital of RWTH Aachen, Germany" height="480" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7440/9353214419_45f47fee51_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:<br /><blockquote>:: Join and add photos to the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/archi-dose/">archidose pool</a>, and/or<br />:: Tag your photos <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/archidose/">archidose</a></span></blockquote>

Today's archidose #694

Catching up from my recent break, here are some photos of projects with little to no right angles. Drents Archive 3.0 (2012) in Assen, Nethe...

World of Warcraft: Burdens of Shaohao Part One: Doubt

8:50 AM Tukiyooo 0

<div class="separator" style="text-align: center; clear: both"> </div> <p> <div id="scid:5737277B-5D6D-4f48-ABFC-DD9C333F4C5D:a9067e47-0a13-4f84-9d0d-15061af6779a" class="wlWriterEditableSmartContent" style="float: none; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px"><div id="3b0187e9-ace7-489d-aa4b-371ed2eead06" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afpRzcAAZVM&feature=share&list=UUbLj9QP9FAaHs_647QckGtg" target="_new"><img alt="" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('3b0187e9-ace7-489d-aa4b-371ed2eead06'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "<div><object width=\"425\" height=\"355\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/afpRzcAAZVM&hl=en\"><\/param><embed src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/afpRzcAAZVM&hl=en\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"><\/embed><\/object><\/div>";" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-MVzftkIUuS4/UgJZ8dETLdI/AAAAAAAADCg/lYy_g8Y0BOM/videoa16c4f4e5a3d%25255B6%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="border-style: none"></a></div></div></div></p> <p><a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/" target="_blank">World of Warcraft</a>'s second installment in the Burdens of Shaohao animated series.  Smashing story telling in under five minutes.</p>

Blizzard Burdens of Shaohao MMO video games World of Warcraft WOW World of Warcraft: Burdens of Shaohao Part One: Doubt

World of Warcraft 's second installment in the Burdens of Shaohao animated series. Smashing story telling in under five minutes.

World of Warcraft: Burdens of Shaohao Prelude: The Vision

8:40 AM Tukiyooo 0

<div class="separator" style="text-align: center; clear: both"> </div> <p> <div id="scid:5737277B-5D6D-4f48-ABFC-DD9C333F4C5D:5c184aaa-d637-4979-b4f6-1b95409fd3f6" class="wlWriterEditableSmartContent" style="float: none; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px"><div><object height="480" width="853"><param name="movie" value="//www.youtube.com/v/-D--GWwca0g?hl=en_US&version=3"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="//www.youtube.com/v/-D--GWwca0g?hl=en_US&version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="853" height="480" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div></div></p> <p><a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/" target="_blank">World of Warcraft</a> has released a stunning new series further documenting and solidifying the lore for Pandaria.  I was blown away by the video.  It is stunning in it's simplicity and art direction.  It begins the beautiful tale of the last emperor of the Pandarian.<br><br>I may not be playing WOW any longer, but the truth is I love the lore behind WOW.  Particularly late because of much of the lore is available outside of the game and I can consume it at my own pace.  I think this was a wise move on Blizzard's part a couple of years ago.  Video games come and go from our lives like waves, some waves we ride a little longer and some waves crash upon the beach violently.  I may no longer be interested in the grind of MMO's but the lore and stories Blizzard is telling outside of the game I find fascinating and engaging.</p>

Blizzard Burdens of Shaohao lore MMO video games World of Warcraft WOW World of Warcraft: Burdens of Shaohao Prelude: The Vision

World of Warcraft has released a stunning new series further documenting and solidifying the lore for Pandaria. I was blown away by t...