Lenovo rolls ultra-thin netbook, NVIDIA Ion nettop

relatively new technology for the company. The IdeaPad S10-3s is one of the thinnest netbooks yet at about 0.63 inches thick and also makes use of the same design techniques borrowed from the ThinkPad Edge. It carries the same rounded chiclet keys and a trackpad that runs to the lip, in this case using a MacBook-style "buttonless" design that clicks the pad itself.

As a netbook, the S10-3s is relatively customizable with the choice of a 1.66GHz or 1.83GHz Atom, up to a 720p 10-inch display, and the option of 3G. It normally comes with between 160GB to 320GB of disk space, but it can be outfitted with a 16GB or 32GB SSD when used with a lightweight OS like Windows XP. Most systems come with Windows 7 Home Starter or Home Basic, and all of them have the earlier instant-on Linux boot for quick tasks.

The new IdeaPad ships mid-April for $380 in its base configuration.

The C Series all-in-ones get the C200, Lenovo's first nettop with NVIDIA's Ion for graphics; it also has the pick of either the 1.6GHz Atom D410 or 1.66GHz D510 versus the single-core options for the C300. Its 18.5-inch display tops out at 1366x768, but it can get a single-touch screen. Lenovo equips it with up to 4GB of RAM and between 160GB and 500GB of permanent storage, along with the requisite DVD burner.

Shipments of the C200 have a less definite April release date and will start out at a slightly more expensive $399.

In popular culture

In popular culture

Main article: The Statue of Liberty in popular culture

The Statue of Liberty is on the reverse of all Presidential $1 coins

The Statue of Liberty quickly became a popular icon, featured in scores of posters, pictures, motion pictures, and books. A 1911 O. Henry story relates a fanciful conversation between "Mrs. Liberty" and another statue;^[89] it figured in 1918 Liberty Loan posters. During the 1940s and 1950s, pulp Science Fiction magazines featured Lady Liberty surrounded by ruins or by the sediments of the ages. It has been in dozens of motion pictures. It is a setting in the 1942 Alfred Hitchcock movie Saboteur, which featured a climactic confrontation at the statue. Half submerged in the sand, the Statue provided the apocalyptic revelation at the end of 1968's Planet of the Apes. The statue walked from Liberty Island to Manhattan in the 1989 film, Ghostbusters II, to defeat the villain with positive energy when it inspired hope amongst cheering New Yorkers. It was the setting for the climax of the first X-Men film. It can also be seen lying broken on the ground in the movie Independence Day, after the first wave of attacks by extraterrestrials. In the 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow, the statue gets frozen, and in the 2008 movie Cloverfield, it is decapitated by a giant monster; its head lands in a Manhattan street. In the 1994 Gundam series G Gundam, the protagonist hides his Gundam in the abandoned statue and then makes it jump out of the statue, destroying it. In the film, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, the sister statue in Paris provides a clue. The history of the Statue of Liberty is retold in the hit 2008 illustrated book Lady Liberty: A Biography.

It was the subject of a 1978 University of Wisconsin–Madison prank in which Lady Liberty appeared to be standing submerged in a frozen-over local lake.^[90] It has appeared on New York and New Jersey license plates, is used as a logo for the NHL's New York Rangers and the WNBA's New York Liberty, and it was the subject of magician David Copperfield's largest vanishing act.^[91]

Michael Jackson's music video Black and White where you can see him at the torch. In 1982 Jessica Skinner was born inside the statue. Her mother went into labor while climbing the stairs, and gave birth before she could get back to ground level.^[92]

In Men in Black II, an emergency neuralizer is built into the statue's torch to erase everyone's memories in case of a mass display.

It also starred in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV, in which it's called "The Statue of Happiness", since the statue is smiling in the game. It also holds up a cup of coffee instead of a torch.

Replicas and derivative works

Replicas and derivative works

Bronze replica of the Statue of Liberty, today located in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris

Main article: Replicas of the Statue of Liberty

Boy Scouts of America placed a small-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty at the Gentry Building in Columbia, Missouri in 1950. Located at the Parks & Recreation Administration Offices, at Seventh and Broadway, the plaque notes that the statue was dedicated as a pledge of everlasting fidelity and loyalty. The local project was a component of the Scouts' national 40th anniversary celebration which had Strengthen the Arm of Liberty as its theme. More than 200 replicas were placed nationally as a result.^[87]

There also is a replica statue in the middle of the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The statue is almost entirely white as viewed from US-322 East and West going past the river. Another replica, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, stands at the entrance of Capaha Park. There is also a replica in Medford, Oregon. There are replicas in theme parks and resorts, including the New York-New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas on the Strip, replicas created as commercial advertising, and replicas erected in U.S. communities by patriotic benefactors, including no fewer than two hundred donated by Boy Scout troops to local communities.

Hundreds of other Statues of Liberty have been erected worldwide. A smaller replica is in the Norwegian village of Visnes, on the island of Karmøy, in Rogaland County where the copper used in the original statue was mined.

Statue of Liberty replica at Odaiba, overlooking the Rainbow Bridge in Tokyo Bay

There is a sister statue in Paris and several others elsewhere in France, including one in Bartholdi's home town of Colmar, erected in 2004 to mark the centenary of Bartholdi's death; they also exist in Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, Brazil and Vietnam; one existed in Hanoi during French colonial days. During the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989, Chinese student demonstrators in Beijing built a ten meter image called the Goddess of Democracy, which sculptor Tsao Tsing-yuan said was intentionally dissimilar to the Statue of Liberty to avoid being "too openly pro-American."^[88] At around the same time, a copy of this statue was made and displayed on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C., in a small park across the street from the Chinese Embassy.

The sculptor James Alexander Ewing's most prestigious commission was for the carving of the Glasgow City Chambers' Jubilee Pediment, its apex group of Truth, Riches, and Honour, and the statues of The Four Seasons on the building's tower. The figure of Truth also is known as Glasgow's Statue of Liberty, because of its close resemblance to the similarly posed, but very much larger

Aftermath of 9/11

Aftermath of 9/11

Liberty Island closed on September 11, 2001; the island reopened in December, the monument reopened on August 3, 2004, and the crown and interior finally reopened on July 4, 2009. The National Park Service claimed that the statue was not shut after 9/11 because of a terrorist threat, but principally because of a long list of fire regulation contraventions, including inadequate evacuation procedures.

The Statue of Liberty had previously been threatened by terrorism, according to the FBI. On February 18, 1965, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced it had uncovered a plot by three terrorists from the "Black Liberation Front", who allegedly were connected to Cuba, and a female co-conspirator from Montreal connected with the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), seeking independence for Quebec from Canada, who were sent to destroy the statue and at least two other national monuments—the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C..^[77]

In June 2006, a bill, S. 3597, was proposed in Senate which, if approved, would have re-opened the crown and interior of the Statue of Liberty to visitors.^[78] In July 2007, a similar measure was proposed in the House of Representatives.^[79]

On August 9, 2006, National Park Service Director Fran P. Mainella, in a letter to Congressman Anthony D. Weiner of New York stated that the crown and interior of the statue would remain closed indefinitely. The letter stated that "the current access patterns reflect a responsible management strategy in the best interests of all our visitors."^[80] The Park Service was criticised for delays in re-opening the base and pedestal, as well as for relying on private donations to implement the necessary safety and security measures.^[81]

On July 4, 2009, the Statue of Liberty's crown was re-opened for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.^[82]

The statue (excluding the torch), museum, and ten-story pedestal are open for visitors, but are only accessible if visitors have a "Monument Access Pass" which is a reservation that visitors must make in advance of their visit and pick up before boarding the ferry. Visitors to Liberty Island and the Statue are subject to restrictions, including personal searches similar to the security found in airports. There are a maximum of 3,000 passes available each day (with a total of 15,000 visitors to the island daily). The ladder to the torch still is closed and has been since 1916.

Dominion of Liberty Island

Dominion of Liberty Island

Main article: Liberty Island

Liberty Island has been the property of the United States government since 1800, and until 1944 served as a military installation called Fort Wood. It has been operated by the National Park Service since 1937. The built portions of Liberty Island (as well as 3 acres of nearby Ellis Island) are under the jurisdiction and are part of New York City. They are bounded completely by the municipal borders of Jersey City, New Jersey, which retains riparian rights to all its portions of the Hudson River and the Upper New York Bay. Historical circumstances have led to the unusual situation of Liberty Island being an exclave of one state, New York, located completely within another, New Jersey. The dominion of the island has variously been a subject of (or directly affected by) a land grant, a government directive, an interstate compact as well as several court cases and US Supreme Court decisions.

liberty centennial

liberty centennial

See also: Liberty Weekend

First Lady Nancy Reagan re-opens the statue to the public

The Statue of Liberty was one of the earliest beneficiaries of a cause marketing campaign. A 1983 promotion advertised that for each purchase made with an American Express card, American Express would contribute one penny to the renovation of the statue. The campaign generated contributions of $1.7 million to the Statue of Liberty restoration project.^[64] In 1984, the statue was closed so that a $62 million renovation could be performed for the statue's centennial. Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca was appointed by President Reagan to head the commission overseeing the task (but was later dismissed "to avoid any question of conflict" of interest)^[65] and republican fundraiser Wyatt A. Stewart ran the huge grassroots fundraising campaign.^[66] Workers erected scaffolding around the statue, obscuring it from public view until the rededication on July 3, 1986—the scaffolding-clad statue can be seen in the 1984 film Desperately Seeking Susan, in the 1985 film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, in the 1985 film Brewster's Millions, and on the cover of the 1986 Jackson Browne album Lives in the Balance. Inside work began with workers using liquid nitrogen to remove seven layers of paint applied to the interior of the copper skin over the decades. That left two layers of coal tar originally applied to plug leaks and prevent corrosion. Blasting with baking soda powder removed the tar without further damaging the copper.^[36] Larger holes in the copper skin were repaired with the addition of an inner lip upon which new copper patches were inset, riveted, and hammered flush.^[67]

Each of the 1,350 shaped iron ribs backing the skin had to be removed and replaced. The iron had experienced galvanic corrosion wherever it contacted the copper skin, losing up to 50% of its thickness. Bartholdi had anticipated the problem and used an asbestos/pitch combination to separate the metals, but the insulation had worn away decades before. New bars of stainless steel bent into matching shapes replaced the iron bars, with Teflon film separating them from the skin for further insulation and friction reduction.^[67]

The internal structure of the upraised right arm was reworked. The statue was erected with the arm offset 18" (0.46 m) to the right and forward of Eiffel's central frame, while the head was offset 24" (0.61 m) to the left, which had been compromising the framework.^[67] Theory held that Bartholdi made the modification without Eiffel's involvement after seeing the arm and head were too close. Engineers considered reinforcements made in 1932 insufficient and added diagonal bracing in 1984 and 1986 to make the arm structurally sound.

Besides the replacement of much of the internal iron with stainless steel and the structural reinforcement of the statue itself, the restoration of the mid-1980s also included the replacement of the original torch with a replica, replacing the original iron stairs with new stairs, installing a newer elevator within the pedestal, and upgrading climate control systems.^[67] The Statue of Liberty was reopened to the public on July 5, 1986.

New torch

Original torch, replaced in 1986

A new torch replaced the original in 1986, which was deemed beyond repair because of the extensive 1916 modifications. The 1886 torch is now in the monument's lobby museum. The new torch has gold plating applied to the exterior of the "flame," which is illuminated by very large spotlights embedded in the ground surrounding the monument.

Origin of the copper

Origin of the copper

Historical records make no mention of the source of the copper used in the Statue of Liberty. In the village of Visnes in the municipality of Karmøy, Norway, tradition holds that the copper came from the French-owned Visnes Mine.^[61][62] Ore from this mine, refined in France and Belgium, was a significant source of European copper in the late nineteenth century. In 1985, Bell Labs used emission spectrography to compare samples of copper from the Visnes Mines and from the Statue of Liberty, found the spectrum of impurities to be very similar, and concluded that the evidence argued strongly for a Norwegian origin of the copper. Other sources say that the copper was mined in Yekaterinburg or Nizhny Tagil.^[63] The copper sheets were created in the workshops of the Gaget-Gauthier company, and shaped in the Ateliers Mesureur in the west of Paris in 1878. Funding for the copper was provided by Pierre-Eugène Secrétan.