Wired Mag

There's 2 great articles in September's WIRED magazine.
The New Diamond Age and Confessions of a Baggage Screener.

The first is about companies that have begun MAKING diamonds. This is a fascinating article. The implications on the gem market are enormous (and being hubby makes his living that way I of course was interested). It would be great for the tech market who could use the diamonds for semi-conductors and get them cheap. But for jewelers who could begin seeing almost flawless fancy colored (nice diamonds in colors besides clear) diamonds flooding the market it could be a disaster. People who don't care if their gems are natural but want a big stone that look like the celebs are wearing would be getting great bargains. This is something to watch. From the article, DeBeers, the multi-national diamond company that has had a stranglehold on the business for more than 100 years are scared. And jewelers everywhere should be too, because the stones, look act and are the same as natural diamonds, they just were created in about 3 days, instead of thousands.

The second story is about a new baggage screener for the government. I thought I felt confident in the machines at the airport for finding bad things. According to this woman that's not the case. The machines are prone to being wrong and the people working them are often, well for a nice way of putting it, stupid. Take a look, there's some humorous and even worrisome at times.