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What is man’s greatest achievement?

With the 40th anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, CNN polled people from around the world and asked them the question, “What is man’s greatest achievement?” They got a surprising variety of answers to this question. While a few people did say the luna landing, this was usually not the answer. Here are some of the opinions in no particular order:

Fire
The Wheel
The Computer
The Airplane
The Written Word
The Alphabet
Architecture
Agriculture
Coffee
Sanitation
Music
Space Travel
The Internet
Antibiotics
Sliced bread
Discovery of the Atom
Velcro
Nuclear Fission
The Pyramids
Satellite Communication
Language
Plastic
Religion
Vaccines

I think I’d pick antibiotics. What do you think is man’s greatest achievement?

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WhiteHouse.gov

As soon as Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, his new WhiteHouse.gov site went public.  One of the first signs that this “Change” will be good.  This tech-savvy president understands the importance of the internet in our new globel society.  If you’ve ever visited the old site, you will immediately see improvement as the first “wired president” takes advantage of the technology that helped to get him elected.

The new site is interactive and includes a blog.  Obama plans to use this new site to stay connected with citizens through the blog and also email and video updates.

A couple of things that struck me on my first visit was that you can email the president from the site and subscribe to email updates.

On the contact us page it states:  “President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history.”

Under agenda and disabilities, I found the following quote:

“We must build a world free of unnecessary barriers, stereotypes, and discrimination…. policies must be developed, attitudes must be shaped, and buildings and organizations must be designed to ensure that everyone has a chance to get the education they need and live independently as full citizens in their communities.”
— Barack Obama, April 11, 2008

p.s.  Remember it’s whitehouse.gov, not to be confused with whitehouse.org, which is a spoof site.  Got to love the Internet!

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Inauguration Day on Twitter

According to twitter’s blog, they received 5 times the normal tweets per second which peaked as Obama was being sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.

Other social-networking sites also reported surges.  Facebook received more than one million status updates with an average of over 4,000 updates per hour, which peaked during Obama’s inaugural speech.  This was a record for Facebook, one of the Internets most popular social networks.

My tweets and updates were among the millions who watched the days events and followed the news on-line.  The internet sure can bring people together and it makes the world a much smaller place.  I thought Barack’s speech was excellent and right for the times.  The world has changed and we need to adapt.  It is such a relief to have a competent leader in the White House during these difficult times.

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