TREASURES OF THE RHINE, Part two
June 21: We boarded the Viking Sun, a four-year old, 433-foot long ship, with 99 cabins and a crew of 44 http://www.cruisecompete.com/ships/viking_sun_cruises.html
in Breisach, Germany. By the vote of its inhabitants in 1950, Breisach was the first European town to declare itself for a United Europe. http://www.breisach.de/html/seiten/text.phtml?nav=40&lang=en
Our first dinner was Swiss.
June 22: We walked around Basel (name comes from Celtic word for water) and toured an art museum. Welcome cocktail hour with the captain and crew was followed by dinner.
June 23: We toured the Black Forest, seeing stork’s nests on the way on high roofs. Yes, we saw a demonstration of cuckoo clocks, and had an opportunity to purchase Black Forest Cake. One of our fellow travelers joked that the Black Forest was named for Black Forest Cake. In the afternoon, we toured Colmar, the birthplace of sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904). On February 18, 1879, Bartholdi earned U.S. Patent #11,023 for a "Design for a Statue." This statue, "Liberty Enlightening the World," would become one of the most famous monuments of world history. http://corrosion-doctors.org/Landmarks/statue-sculptor.htm
Dinner was French, followed by a lecture on the European Union.
June 24: We had a bus and walking tour of Strasbourg (more stork’s nests) and saw the Council of Europe building http://www.coe.int/ The European Parliament meets in Strasbourg and also has a complex in Brussels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament
As usual, four-course dinner on the ship. TO BE CONTINUED

Bankruptcy Court Approves Plan to Sell G.M.'s Assets
New York Times DealBook: A federal judge late on July 5 approved a plan by General Motors to sell its best assets to a new, government-backed company, a crucial step for the automaker to restructure and complete its trip through bankruptcy court. The decision by the judge, Robert E. Gerber, of Federal Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, came after three days of hearings to address the 850 objections to the restructuring plan and after he received a revised sale order from G.M.’s lawyers. In his 95-page opinion, Judge Gerber wrote that he agreed with G.M.’s main contention: that the asset sale was needed to preserve its business, in the face of steep losses and government financing that is slated to run out by the end of the week.
Related postings on General Motor's bankruptcy and the financial system

WSJ: New Evidence on the Foreclosure Crisis, - Zero money down, not subprime loans, led to the mortgage meltdown, by Stan Liebowitz, Ashbel Smith Professor of Economics, University of Texas at Dallas: "...the focus on subprimes ignores the widely available industry facts (reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association) that 51% of all foreclosed homes had prime loans, not subprime, and that the foreclosure rate for prime loans grew by 488% compared to a growth rate of 200% for subprime foreclosures. (These percentages are based on the period since the steep ascent in foreclosures began--the third quarter of 2006--during which more than 4.3 million homes went into foreclosure.)"
Lender Processing Services' June Mortgage Monitor Report Shows Foreclosure Starts Increased to Second Highest Level Since 1992

Resource of the Week: Roundup of Recent Posts About eBooks…and Some Kindle Stuff by Shirl Kennedy and Gary Price July 6, 2009
Why eBooks? Why now? Because the Fourth Annual World eBook Fair got underway July 4…which means you have free access to more than two million eBooks through August 4. Also, the Kindle DX—with its larger screen format—just made its appearance…and apparently sold out quite rapidly. Word from Michael Hart, the Founder of Project Gutenberg, that once again this year the World e-Book Fair will take place from July 4th-August 4th. This is the 4th year of the annual book fair. It starts on July 4th to celebrate the 38th anniversary of Project Gutenberg which began on July 4th, 1971. Once the event begins you’ll find FREE access to over 2.5 million full text eBooks that you can download to your computer. Some titles can also be downloaded and read on certain types of mobile phones.
Book Sources include:
+ Project Gutenberg
+ Digital Pulp Publishing
+ Internet Archive
+ The World Public Library (normally a fee-based site)
+ E-Books About Everything
++ Direct to World eBook Fair Web Site and Database

NDIIPP Launches New Digital Preservation Video Series
July 6th, 2009 From the Announcement:
The Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program has released a new video: Bagit: Transferring Content for Digital Preservation.
Just over three minutes long, the video is aimed at librarians, archivists, and others interested in working with digital content. The Bagit production is the first in a planned series of videos that will address specific digital preservation issues. Currently, the Library has a number of online video presentations featuring NDIIPP partners discussing their projects. View Video/Access Transcript Collection of other NDIIP Videos

July 7 is the birthday of "the dean of science fiction writers," Robert Heinlein, (books by this author) born in Butler, Missouri, in 1907. He served in the Navy, but when he got sick and was discharged, he was too weak to get a normal job. So when he saw an ad in a pulp fiction magazine offering $50 for the best story by an unpublished author, he decided to give writing a try. In four days, he had finished a story about a machine that could predict a person's death. It was published in 1939, and he went on to write almost 100 novels and short stories, including his famous novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961). He said, "I took up writing because I needed money. And I continued to write because it's safer than stealing and easier than working."
The Writer’s Almanac