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Yesterday’s Star-Bulletin included an article about the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) help desk facility at Ford Island. The official name is Pacific Theatre Battle Watch.

The facility was built inside a battle-damaged hangar, and is staffed by 12 EDS contract employees.

For those who haven’t heard of NMCI, it’s a good overview of the system’s stated goals. It’s a huge project, covering 500,000 computers and 400,000 users around the world. I’ve met several MSIS students who are associated with this project over the years. More details are available in these 2002 and 2007 GCN articles.

(Photo courtesy of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin)

I was surprised to learn that the command center cost only US$1M, but the reconstruction project for the hangar cost US$65M.

I’ve placed a tag cloud on the second sidebar of this blog. I’ve also placed a screenshot in this post.

The real tag cloud has clickable tags that I’ve used to organize my blog posts.
A tag cloud displays the frequency or importance of tags by using color, size and position. It’s a great way to display a textual summary in a graphical format. For more examples, here’s a link to Wikipedia’s article on tag clouds.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/24/tag_cloud_for_2007_s.html

This BoingBoing article points to a tag cloud that represents US President George W. Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address.

More information is available at Jason Griffey’s blog, Pattern Recognition.

USA: W admits that he “miscalculated” post-war conditions in Iraq. Has he checked the body count lately? Who in the world told W to say this? It may be as big a gaffe as “Mission Accomplished”.

W also says that he believes Kerry is teling the truth about Vietnam. W may as well take this issue off the table, as it seems that W hasn’t told the truth about his own time in the military.

Did I hear the other shoe just drop? It’s the economy, stupid. Greenspan says that baby boomer benefits are in jeopardy unless the government acts now, and he’s not talking about more tax cuts. Also, the US economy appears to be shrinking. Happy days, people. Truly happy days.

USA: The Village Voice gives the RNC a great big welcome with a top 10 list of all the ways W screwed New York City:

1. Will any convention speaker dare mention the name of Osama bin Laden? What ever happened to Bush’s cowboy threat to “smoke ‘em” out?
2. Why was Bush so afraid of a 9-11 investigation?
3. Was the Bush team awake in the nine months before the attack?
4. Iraq plus tax cuts adds up to a deficit that will force a second-term squeeze on social programs vital to NYC.
5. Bush did OK on the $20 billion, but he’s still shortchanging us on the edges of the minimal pledge he made to a city whose economy took an $80 billion hit.
6. Senator Schumer says NY doesn’t expect a share of Idaho’s farm subsidies, so why does Idaho take a chunk of NY’s security subsidies?
7. What could be worse than lying to GZ workers and residents about the air they were breathing?
8. Bush has left most New York children behind.
9. Ten thousand NY families are in jeopardy of losing their housing subsidies and homes.
10. With NYC the No. 1 target of bio and nuclear terrorists, the go-it-alone Bush administration has torpedoed international treaties that would make us more secure.

Don’t forget that W won’t stay overnight in New York City next week. He gives his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention next Thursday and then runs like a little girly man to Pennsylvania after the balloons drop.

USA: Maureen Dowd in the New York Times provides a nice summary of the Swiftie mess: “Reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post last week made it clear that the vile Swift boaters have told wildly varying accounts, sometimes supportive of Mr. Kerry. The Times revealed that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - is that like the administration’s Clear Skies Act for spewing pollution? - has a trellis of ties to Karl Rove, the Bush family and Bush supporters…. It makes sense for W. to use surrogates to do his fighting, just as he did when he slid out of Vietnam and just as he did when he sent our troops to fight his administration’s misbegotten vanity war in Iraq.”

Meanwhile, Edwards challenges W. to call off his attack dogs, and William Rood provides more support for Kerry’s story. Where’s W? He’s cowering in Crawford this week before attending next week’s riots, er, the Republican convention in NYC.