Interesting where technology comes from

My husband, one of our friends, and myself went to Disneyland yesterday (Sunday). Lots of fun, I haven't uploaded the pictures yet but I will soon. I was reading the news this weekend and found the story of the kidnapped baby interesting. Especially interesting, this quote:

Susanne Moore, a former Covenant nurse who had a baby Friday at the same hospital, told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that the hospital placed an electronic band on her newborn girl's ankle. She said she was told that if the baby were taken too close to a door or elevator, a sensor would cause the door to lock or the elevator to shut down.
Moore said she also was told that if the band were cut off before it was deactivated, the hospital would be locked down.

A couple of comments here...

1. What has the world come to that we need to do this because we seemingly EXPECT babies to be stolen from hospitals...?
2. Cool idea. I imagine it's RFID technology, but how do you get it to detect when the band has been broken? Does this mean it's a non-re-sizable band that's completely made of electronic components/cables? Is it just a single cable that goes the whole circumference, and if so how do you prevent someone from cutting the rest of the band and slipping that part off? Hmmm.
3. This proximity-based door and elevator control is pretty clever, we were talking about something similar on the way home from Disneyland.
4. I can see other hospital applications here, particularly for hospitals that have this proximity based control already... why doesn't the ER/OR double doors swing open when a gurney approaches? (So you have to tag all the EMT's gurneys, but that's okay!) Why doesn't the elevator door automatically stay open when a gurney's approaching unless you press the close button (if you're full, you know).

Then you expand it out to office buildings, places where people can't carry their keys/badges all the time... aquatic centers come to mind! Hanging 2 big keys and like 9 small keys from the shoulder strap of my swimsuit on a whistle lanyard while I was teaching lessons may have worked, but it's not nearly as cool as the doors recognizing me automagically! Fun stuff. By the way, whoever was still sick at Charles's parents' house (I babysat on Saturday), I think I caught it from them. I've had a stuffy nose all day and feeling generally "blah." Still pretty productive though, I did the laundry that backed up due to our lack of drying capabilities since Friday. I also went to school today. I did better than I expected on the test we took last week, I got partial credit for admitting that something went over my head in the reading. =P The reading was about a girl who wanted to eat at the rectory of her Catholic school instead of walking home to eat. The question was something along the lines of "the author criticizes the role of the Catholic church, what criticisms does she have?" Totally over my head, I thought if there was anything criticized it may have been the Mother Superior, but not the "role" of the Church in daily life. Apparently the right answer had something to do with equality and preferential treatment. I guess I was too literal reading the question, because I still feel that's a stretch- inequality among students in that era is a socio-economic issue that may well be limited to that particular scenario that was described, and it's not the church's fault. Other than that, I only had a couple of minor errors, mostly accents and/or spelling in my short answer questions. Tomorrow, I have to go to parents' house. They're leaving to Mexico on Wednesday night, they'll be gone for two months. There's some talk about parents selling their rental property in about a year, supposedly mom thinks that she spends all of the rental income on upkeep. I think I need to talk her into sitting down and figuring out where her money goes when she gets back. Of course, there are those in our family who know where mom's money goes, that namely being to the thrift store, the other thrift store, the thrift store in the next town over once a month, the swap meet on Thursdays and Sears. She needs to figure it out for herself, though, to make it stick. Hopefully we can talk her out of selling, though, because that will leave both of my sisters without a place to live. Unless she doesn't really like them and that's her sneaky evil plan all along... Hmmm. Wow, that kind of jumped around... alot. I guess I haven't posted as often as I should. =P I'd break it up into subject-specific posts, but that ruins the free flow of information and such!