I’m incredibly busy today, but I really must clean out my lunchtime reading links, so here goes…
- Feeling Safer. The NY Times has an interesting article on the surge in home safes. Specifically, more and more homes are installing home safes, as opposed to safety-deposit boxes. This is due to the cost of boxes, as well as recent events such as tornadoes or earthquakes (although I have no idea how a home safe helps in either of those cases — if the wind can pick up a car, it can tear off a safe, and a safe underwater doesn’t help much). Sales have boomed, and there is a much wider variety — they have a host of customizable features to satisfy owners’ aesthetic desires as well as their security needs. There are also more safes that look like ordinary household items but have secret compartments, (or diversion safes, as they are known in the trade): not just the standard hollowed-out book, but less expected items like a fake head of lettuce or a can of soda, with space to hide that gold watch or diamond bracelet. Some safes also have biometric locks (which read fingerprints or irises), GPS antitheft systems (LoJack-like devices, in case someone manages to carry the safe away) and automatic watch winders (so expensive watches stored in the safe keep perfect time).
- Did You Ever Watch a Moonbeam? While at the CSSF on Tuesday, I ran into former Governor George Dukmajian observing student projects. I mention this because the NY Times has a nice long profile of his predecessor, our current governor, Jerry Brown. This article really shows the way Brown has changed from his first incarnation… and the way he hasn’t. It really gives me confidence that we elected the right person to be governor.
- Acceptable Discrimination. KTLA has a short article on a particular group that has long been subject to discrimination that has finally decided to out themselves: the athiests!. Reading the comments are interesting. The attitude isn’t surprising — the predominant religion in a country — official or not — has never liked non-believers or different-believers. Look at Spain. It wasn’t until this week that some governments in Spain issued a condemnation of the Inquisition. Of course, I wan’t expecting that (ducks and runs).
- Word Processor Wars. Speaking of things I never thought I would see: Novell has been given clearance to sue Microsoft over WordPerfect. Now, I’m a WordPerfect user, when I can. I’m using X3, and I’ve been a user since the days of 5.1. I’ve never liked Word, although I’ve gotten more used to it.
- Gol’ Dang Gummerent. Well, it seems the Tea Party is upset again about the government sticking its nose where it shouldn’t be. This time, they are hopping mad about the Arizona government issuing a specialized license plate commemorating… the Tea Party movement. “No, I won’t buy one,” said Jim Wise, a Tea Party activist from this community northwest of Phoenix, who wrote to lawmakers in a failed effort to nix the plates. “I realize the people behind this had the best of intentions, but it goes against what we stand for, which is limited government.”
