As you can imagine, we make a big deal about celebrating the Bill of Rights here at the National Archives. Most people are awed by what the Bill of Rights says and what it means to our country, but they often forget that the Bill of Rights was created by Congress through the same legislative process used to create thousands of other pieces of legislation.
Here is the story behind today’s document:
Just after the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, Congress began considering a series of amendments introduced by Representative James Madison of Virginia. The House debated his proposal during the summer of 1789, and on August 24 the House passed seventeen amendments to be added to the Constitution. The Senate then deliberated over the amendments, suggesting revisions to, or marking-up, the House-passed amendments. The documents above reflect the Senate’s changes to the amendments. Notes written in pen as the Senate deliberated show a series of revisions that included consolidating some amendments and rejecting others, changes that reduced the overall list to twelve amendments. Once both houses of Congress reached an agreement about the final text of the amendments through a conference committee, the Bill of Rights was sent to the states for ratification. On December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights was ratified by Virginia. Virginia’s ratification was the eleventh and final state needed for articles three through twelve to be officially added to the Constitution. Happy Bill of Rights day, everyone!
Senate revisions of the House proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution, 9/9/1789, SEN 1A-C2, Records of the U.S. Senate (NAID 3535588)
(via todaysdocument)
![cwnl:
Spiders’ Hundreds of Fine Hairs Are Hundreds of Ears
Side Note: I have a thing for fuzzy insects, more specifically the tiny jumping spiders that I’ve always found to be the most adorable creatures on the face of the planet [next to my cat]. This is a very interesting article that caught my eye via Wired that explains how these little guys not only see with their multiple eyes.. but also with their hair!
How their tiny specialized hairs do it has puzzled researchers for decades, but one team of scientists may have found a break. Their physics-focused work suggests each hair acts like a single, independent ear — not a network of ear parts that, together, turn a spider’s exoskeleton into one giant ear, as was previously assumed.
“Nobody had looked at these hairs in just the right way. When you look at what they are mechanically optimized to do, you could design better ones,” said physicist Brice Bathellier of the Institute Of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, who co-authored a study of trichobothria hairs Dec. 14 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
“But nature optimizes. Animals evolve under stringent conditions,” Bathellier said. “So it became a question of what [the hairs] actually do, what type of signals tell animals ‘I should leave’ or ‘that’s just wind blowing on me.’”
Trichobothria are fine hairs found on spiders, insects and other animals with exoskeletons. The hairs are so sensitive that some can pick up air movement down to one ten-billionth of a meter, roughly the width of an atom, allowing animals to feel the presence of nearby predators and prey. (Crickets and flies, for example, have tufts of them on their rumps to sense prowling enemies.)
Journal: Air motion sensing hairs of arthropods detect high frequencies at near-maximal mechanical efficiency
Follow the link for more information and a nice video provided within the article.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw9jgepb6x1qbn5m1o1_500.jpg)
