Writing the Declaration of Independence may have fallen to Thomas Jefferson (center, wearing red vest), but how to keep the document in shape has been anything but self-evident. Declaration of Independence, John Trumbull (oil on canvas, 1819)/Independence Hall Association

1776: The Declaration of Independence is signed. It will take 127 years before someone gets around to saying, “Hey, maybe we should preserve this thing.”

The Declaration of Independence can be fairly said to stand alongside the Magna Carta and Bill of Rights as the most important documents in the history of democracy. Its significance was understood from the moment it was signed, so one is left to wonder why its preservation was ignored for so long.

During the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence was rolled up and toted around like a Thomas Bros. map, although, given the vicissitudes of war, that’s perhaps understandable. Less understandable is what came later. Water was spilled on it while it was being copied in 1823. Then it was tacked up on the wall at the U.S. Patent Office for about 40 years, where it was subjected to a strong northern light.

Finally, the suggestion was made in 1903 that maybe it shouldn’t be exposed to sunlight and, oh, by the way, maybe it should be kept dry, too. The latter turned out to be a bad idea because the Declaration, which was written on parchment, actually needs a bit of moisture to keep from cracking

It wasn’t until 1951 that the first modern preservation efforts began. The document was sealed inside a bronze, bullet-proof glass case at the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. Humidified helium replaced oxygen to prevent further erosion, and the glass was filtered to cut down on light exposure.

Beginning in 1987, using camera equipment developed for the Hubble Space Telescope, preservationists were able to monitor the Declaration for even the most minute signs of fading or flaking ink.

The measures proved effective, so much so that the Declaration outlived its original protective case. After undergoing careful inspection for further erosion in 2003, the document was resealed in a titanium casement filled with inert argon gas. Similar preservation techniques are used to protect the Bill of Rights and Constitution.

The Declaration of Independence remains on display in the rotunda of the National Archives, where it is seen by roughly 6,000 tourists every day. At night, when the crowds have all gone home, the case is lowered 22 feet into a vault.

That’s almost as much protection as the French give to Napoleon.

Source: History.com

The media reports that have dubbed “The Hottest Girls” application removed from the Apple iTunes App Store, “iPorn,” is not in any way associated with the authentic iPorn mobile web application that was unveiled with much fanfare outside the Apple World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco on June 8. The “real” mobile iPorn site is meeting with rave reviews and has attracted over 45,000 registered users already. One site proclaimed that iPorn “is the best reason to upgrade to an iPhone 3GS.”

iPorn is the first adult mobile web app developed using Apple specifications to take advantage of iPhone’s unique multi-touch and accelerometer motion sensing display innovations and benefits from the faster processor available for the new iPhone 3GS. iPorn also provides its adult users with social networking capabilities similar to those found in YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. Versions for the Blackberry, Palm Pre and Android phones are currently in development and will be released later this year.

“It was widely reported that Apple stated that the developers of ‘The Hottest Girls’ iPhone application added x-rated content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed through the iTunes App Store,” stated a representative of iPorn. “In contrast, the makers of the iPorn web application never sought to deceive Apple. Instead iPorn was developed as a web application that can be obtained by users over the age of 18 through their iPhone web browser for free without having to purchase it through Apple’s iTunes App store and bypasses Apple’s ability to censor content from the iPhone.”

iPorn members can stream high-resolution videos, post and share sexy videos and photos with friends, create member profile pages, meet and interact with other members, send private messages to each other and make lots of new friends who share a passion for sex. Its users can personally interact with hundreds of amateur and professional adult performers via live video webcams, chat and mobile texting. Members can send adult videos from the website to their iPhone or iPod Touch-equipped friends.

PHOTOS of the iPorn Girls appearing outside at the Apple WWDC at the Moscone Center are authorized for media publication and broadcasting and can be found at http://idahoglbl.com/small (web resolution) and http://idahoglbl.com/img (high resolution).

President Barack Obama announced plans on Tuesday for a national fuel-economy and greenhouse-gas standard that would significantly increase mileage requirements for cars and trucks by 2016.

Obama called it “an historic agreement to help America break its dependence on oil, reduce harmful pollution and begin the transition to a clean energy economy.”

The new requirements mark the first time there has been a nationwide standard for emissions of greenhouse gases. They require an average mileage standard of 39 miles per gallon for cars and 30 mpg for trucks by 2016 – a jump from the current average for all vehicles of 25 miles per gallon.

Obama made the announcement in a Rose Garden ceremony flanked by representatives of auto workers unions and 10 auto manufacturers, plus elected officials including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“In the past an agreement such as this would have been considered impossible. It’s no secret these are folks who’ve been at odds for years, even decades,” Obama said. But, he said, “The status quo is no longer acceptable.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22650.html#ixzz0KCDMdMVB&C

If these senators are allowed to deny coverage of abortion services, the burden will inevitably fall on low-income women and widen the huge gap in health status and access to health care services that reforms are meant to remedy. Compared to their higher-income counterparts, low-income women are four times as likely to have an unintended pregnancy and five times as likely to have an unintended birth.

As people of faith, we believe that health care reform should expand coverage to provide for the basic services that every human being deserves; it should not deny essential services to half of the population and aggravate the troubling disparities in health care affecting minorities and low-income individuals. For example, compared to her higher-income counterpart, a low-income woman is four times as likely to have an unintended pregnancy and five times as likely to have an unintended birth.

Let there be no mistake, basic health care includes abortion services. According to the Guttmacher Institute, one in three American women will have an abortion by age 45.

Reproductive health care, including abortion services, is an essential component of women’s health. Women must get a fair shake in the final health care reform bill.

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is the national interfaith coalition of religious and religiously affiliated organizations from 15 mainstream denominations and traditions.

Democracy is based on the principle that an effective majority can determine everything about a society. Vox populi, vox dei. A republic is based on the principle that concentrations of power have to be avoided in order to preserve liberty for all or part of a population. Democracy is a weighing. A republic is a balancing. In a democracy, some selected degree of control is given to the people because it’s the people’s right. In a republic, some selected degree of control is given through various sundry paths because the people hopefully provide a check on the elites of their polity, preserving space for liberty. It is the series of balances, power being made to counter power and ambition being made to check ambition, that define a republic. If giving people none of the power would maintain liberty, that would be an acceptable republican solution. If giving people all of the power would maintain liberty, that would be an acceptable republican solution. It is the maintenance of liberty, not the expression of the will of a majority, that is the overall goal of a republic.

The Peisistratos playbook has been to use democracy, the means, to undermine liberty, the end. You get support from the poorest against the elites and, using the numerical and moral superiority of commanding an effective majority of the people, you gain enough power to overturn the fundamental law of a political community. This opens the road to tyranny. However it’s a special type of tyranny. It’s tyranny legitimized by the magical invocation of democracy. The clause “democratically elected” attached to any petty tyrant is an instant red flag that something is terribly wrong. Even the original form of democracy instituted by Cliesthenes in Athens was not called demokratia. It was called isonomia (”equality vis à vis law”, iso=equality; nomos=law). Equal rights was the refrain, not equal suffrage. It may even be that sortition, rule by the lot, also used in places by the Athenian democracy, is a better mechanism than majority rule to ensure liberty. Republics like Venice used a mixture of sortition and election quite successfully.

Democracy is not an ideal to uphold. It is an evil to be tolerated because other means have greater toxicity for liberty.

China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. said Tuesday afternoon that it reached an agreement to acquire the brand from GM for an undisclosed ammount. The Detroit automaker had announced Tuesday morning that it had a memorandum of understanding to sell the brand of rugged SUVs, but it didn’t identify the buyer.

Sichuan Tengzhong deals in road construction, plastics, resins and other industrial products, but Hummer would be its first step into the automotive business.

GM said the sale will likely save more than 3,000 U.S. jobs in manufacturing, engineering and at various Hummer dealerships. Tengzhong said it will assume GM’s existing agreements with Hummer dealers.

“We will be investing in the Hummer brand and its research and development capabilities, which will allow Hummer to better meet demand for new products such as more fuel-efficient vehicles in the U.S,” Chief Executive Yang Yi said in a statement.

As part of the proposed transaction, Hummer will continue to contract vehicle manufacturing and business services from GM during a transitional period. For example, GM’s Shreveport, La., assembly plant would continue to contract to assemble the H3 and H3T through at least 2010, GM said. AM General LLC in Mishawaka, Ind., makes the larger H2 under contract for GM.

Hummer will keep its existing management team and remain based in the United States, the companies said. Tengzhong said it expects to expand the brand’s dealer network worldwide, including to China.

“GM is close to a sale of its Hummer brand, which is good news for the 3,000 Americans who will be able to keep their jobs, the two American plants that will remain open and the more than 100 Hummer dealers that should be able to stay in business all around the country,” White House spokesman Bill Burton said earlier in the day.

On Monday, the Shreveport plant, which has about 800 workers, escaped being among 12 plants that GM said would be shut down by next year. The plant, which employed 3,000 several years ago, also produces Chevrolet and GMC pickups.

Johnny Bell, 59, who has worked at GM for 28 years, said many workers are still concerned about the plant’s long-term future.

“Good news is good news, but we want all the news,” he said. “We’re concerned about what happens after 2010.”

Morgan Johnson, head of the United Auto Workers local at the plant, said GM indicated to the union that pickup assembly would continue in Shreveport through 2012.

“We’re just happy that the doors are still open considering all the plant closings,” said Sharon Brock, 52, who has worked at the sprawling plant for 26 years.

GM also said Tuesday that it has 16 buyers interested in purchasing its Saturn brand, while three parties are interested in the Swedish Saab brand.

Chief Financial Officer Ray Young told reporters and industry analysts on a conference call that GM is continuing to pursue manufacturing agreements with a new Saturn buyer.

GM would like to sell the money-losing Saturn brand’s dealership network, contracting with the new buyer to make some of its cars while the buyer gets other vehicles from different manufacturers.

At the same time, bridge loan discussions with the Swedish government are progressing, Young said.

GM, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York on Monday, is racing to remake itself as a smaller, leaner automaker. In addition to its plan to sell the Hummer, Saab and Saturn brands, GM will also phase out its Pontiac brand, concentrating on its Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC nameplates.

The company hopes to follow the lead of fellow U.S. automaker Chrysler LLC by transforming its most profitable assets into a new company in just 30 days and emerging from bankruptcy protection soon after.

But GM is much larger and complex than its Auburn Hills-based rival and isn’t up against Chrysler’s tight June 15 deadline to close its deal with Fiat Group SpA.

Sharon Lindstrom, managing director at business consulting firm Protiviti, said the companies pose different challenges. But as with Chrysler, she notes that the Treasury Department made sure many of GM’s moving parts were in order ahead of time so a quick bankruptcy reorganization might be possible.

“They had a lot of their ducks in a row because the terms of the government financing forced them to get all the parties to the table in a very, very short period of time,” Lindstrom said.

Separately, the German government said Tuesday it paid out the first euro300 million ($425 million) in bridge loans to GM’s Adam Opel GmbH division. The loans are part of a deal to shrink GM’s stake in Opel and shield it from GM’s bankruptcy protection filing in the U.S.

Canadian auto supplier Magna International Inc. and Russian-owned Sberbank will acquire 55 percent of Opel.

A sale of the Hummer brand had been expected. Chief Executive Fritz Henderson had said in April that the automaker was expecting final bids from three potential buyers within the month.

Eric Lane, vice president of Baton Rouge, La.-based Gerry Lane Enterprises, which has four dealerships — including one offering Hummers — welcomed the sale.

Lane said a lack of new products and the recession figured into the Hummer equation much more than last year’s runup in gasoline prices. “I haven’t had a single owner complain about mileage. Nobody buys a Hummer because of the gas. You don’t buy a vehicle for $60,000 and worry about the price of gas.”

Critics had seized on the rugged but fuel-inefficient Hummer as a symbol of excess as GM’s financial troubles grew and gas prices rose. Sales at Hummer, which is known for models with military-vehicle roots, have been in a steep slide since gasoline prices rose to record heights last summer. For the first five months of this year, Hummer sales are down 64 percent.

GM nailed down deals with its union and a majority of its bondholders and arranged the Opel deal in order to appear in court Monday with a near-complete plan to quickly emerge with a chance to become profitable.

The government has said it expects GM to come out of bankruptcy protection within 60 to 90 days. By comparison, the judge overseeing Chrysler’s case approved the sale of its assets to a group led by Italy’s Fiat in just over a month. Some industry observers think Chrysler could emerge as early as this week.

During Monday’s hearing, GM attorney Harvey Miller stressed the magnitude of the case and the importance of moving GM through court oversight as fast as possible. He noted that the automaker only has about $2 billion in cash left.

“If there’s going to be a recovery of value, it’s absolutely crucial that a sale take place as soon as possible,” Miller said in his opening statement.

The automaker wants to sell the bulk of its assets to a new company in which the U.S. government will take a 60 percent ownership stake. The Canadian government would take 12.5 percent of the “New GM,” with the United Auto Workers union getting 17.5 percent and unsecured bondholders receiving 10 percent. Existing shareholders are expected to be wiped out.

U.S. Judge Robert Gerber moved swiftly through more than 25 mostly procedural motions during the automaker’s first-day Chapter 11 hearing.

Gerber set GM’s sale hearing for June 30, putting it on a path similar to that of Chrysler. Objections are due on June 19, with any competing bids required to be submitted by June 22.

Gerber also gave GM immediate access to $15 billion in government financing to get it through the next few weeks, and interim approval for use of a total $33.3 billion in financing, with final approval slated to be ruled on June 25. The funds are contingent on GM’s sale being approved by July 10. Gerber also approved motions allowing the company to pay certain prebankruptcy wages, along with supplier and shipping costs.

The sheer size of GM makes it a more complicated case than Chrysler.

GM made twice as many vehicles as Chrysler’s 1.5 million last year and employs 235,000 people compared with Chrysler’s 54,000. GM also has plants and operations in many more countries, meaning it will likely have to strike separate deals to navigate the bankruptcy laws of those places.

Henderson said GM has learned a few things by watching Chrysler’s case.

“Certainly the court showed that it can address 363 (sale) transactions in an expeditious fashion,” Henderson said at a news conference Monday. “Particularly in our case with what will be a very large 363 transaction.”

GM’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection is the largest ever for an industrial company. GM, which said it has $172.81 billion in debt and $82.29 billion in assets, had received about $20 billion in low-interest loans before entering bankruptcy protection.

Source :

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/db2009062_646348.htm

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,524520,00.html

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-06/03/content_7965803.htm

Paint

Paint.Net. This is an absolutely fabulous program. It is a great photo editor. It may not be as powerful as photoshop, but it is definitely close, and plug-ins made by users increase its potential. I have made some pretty cool things with Paint.Net, including the header. Paint.Net is also very user-friendly. When I was just starting graphic design, I tried GIMP. I turned it on (which took forever on my old computer) and saw all of these buttons and menus and stuff. So I tried Paint.Net and something about it made it much more user-friendly than GIMP, despite being able to do the same things.  I am pretty sure there is a new release coming soon, that will be awesome!

Messenger

Trillian. Trillian is a instant messenger program that includes Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, and AIM. For me (I have AIM and MSN) it gets the job done. It allows me to keep an eye on my contacts in one window. I have a friend who introduced me to it, and we will alternate between IM clients in the same conversation (in other words, we have 2 conversations at once).

Cleaning and Defragging Hard Disk

CCleaner and Defraggler. These two programs are both by the same developer, Piriform. I use them both regularly and they are both great. My computer is a lot faster after cleaning and defragging. Although windows has utilities to do these tasks for you, these two programs are much better at them. It is amazing how much junk you store up on your computer in about a week that you can clean out. When I first got defraggler (I had already been using CCleaner for a few months) I defragged my hard drive 4 or 5 times in a row in order to get it better. I noticed my computer was significantly faster.

Calendar

Sunbird. This is a great free calendar program. It is nice because you can have multiple calendars (i.e, one for family stuff, one for work stuff etc.), and there are great add-ons out there for it. I use it because of its user freindliness. User freindliness is one of the main things I look for in a program and this one has it.

Clean Desktop

Rocketdock- Great icon dock, it is free, has a lot of features, and helps you clean-up your desktop in a cool way. It features drag and drop functionality, supports .ico and .png files as icons, and a lot more.

Editor

Notepad++- Very nice program for coding. I use it to make my (basic) python programs. It features a ton of file formats and color codes different things once you specify the language you are typing. It also allows you to have multiple files open in the same window, which is handy for modding things.

I probably forgot a few becaues I am so used to these programs I take them for granted.