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The (new) Hayden Planetarium has a *very cool* projection system on a hemispherical dome. Combines output from a 28-CPU, 7-GFX-pipe SGI Onyx2 (~1999 technology) with some computer controlled lasers and a new computer controlled Zeiss star projector. *Very* impressive stuff. This ain't the planetarium that your parents took you to as a kid, it'll blow you away.

http://www.sgi.com/features/2000/feb/hayden/index. html

http://www.amnh.org/rose/digitaldome.html

Yeah, yeah, I know the jokes... Plane-Arium. And yeah, yeah, SGI doesn't include their compilers with thier OS... but it's still the coolest thing I have ever visited.

...is the obvious fact that demoting Pluto to a mere Kuiper Belt object runs the grave risk of offending its namesake, the dread Lord of the Underworld. I have yet to see any respectable scientist propose the obvious solution to this problem: to ameliorate Pluto, several fattened heifers should be slaughered in sacrifice on the steps of the Rose Center. I'm shocked, shocked that these scientists would risk angering the god; the last time someone (namely, Persephone) did so, Demeter plunged the Earth into famine, and ulimately the seasons were split in two.

po_boy wrote: I refuse to believe that in the few thousand years since humans started being "civilized" that we have caused more animal species to become extinct than in the few million years before that. Unless species are becoming extinct at several thousand times the previous rates of extinctions, this is pretty much impossible.

well, If you "refuse to believe" then you are mindlessly dogmatic and debate with you is pointless... but, on the offchance that you were just being melodramatic when you employed that damning phrase, I'll present an argument here. Even if you refuse to believe what you don't like to hear, others who have been misled by your dogma may ne more open minded.

Widley accepted figures indicate that current rates of extinction are 100 times the "natural" rate and climbing to something between 1,000 and 10,000 times the natural rate of extinction. According to an article in the Washington Post:

"The speed at which species are being lost is much faster than any we've seen in the past -- including those [extinctions] related to meteor collisions," said Daniel Simberloff, a University of Tennessee ecologist and prominent expert in biological diversity who participated in the museum's survey. [Note: the last mass extinction caused by a meteor collision was that of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.]

Most of his peers apparently agree. Nearly seven out of 10 of the biologists polled said they believed a "mass extinction" was underway, and an equal number predicted that up to one-fifth of all living species could disappear within 30 years. Nearly all attributed the losses to human activity, especially the destruction of plant and animal habitats.

Other sources of depressing news you won't want to believe:

According to scientists at the American Museum of Natural History:"This mass extinction is the fastest in Earth's 4.5-billion-year history and, unlike prior extinctions, is mainly the result of human activity and not of natural phenomena." The same scientists note that "In strong contrast to the fears expressed by scientists, the general public is relatively unaware of the loss of species and the threats that it poses." I guess they've been talking to po_boy...

http://www.greenpeace.org/majordomo/index-press-re leases/1997/msg00184.html

http://beacon-www. asa .utk.edu/issues/v78/n2/asteroids.2n.html

http://www.mapcruzin.com/ scr uztri/docs/news0922991.htm

http://www.well.com/user/davidu/ fie ldguide.html

http://www.pupress.princeton.e du/ titles/6276.html

http://www.well.com/user/davidu/ ext inction.html

Who knows how many fingers a Dodo bird is supposed to have, anyway?

I think the answer you're looking for is "none".

Oh, the dodo, what a lovely bird it was!

De Beers managed to increase the preceived value of diamonds though a carefully planned campaign of giving them to female Hollywood stars in the 1940s. Before that they were (rightly, IMO) considered rather boring.

A chunk of a Diamondtalk.com Forum has some nice information on this. In particular, one poster cited an article in The Atlantic entitled "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?" notably, it says the following:

The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa. As De Beers took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it assumed many forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond Trading Company. In Israel, it was known as "The Syndicate." In Europe, it was called the "C.S.O." -- initials referring to the Central Selling Organization, which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company. And in black Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with names like Diamond Development Corporation and Mining Services, Inc. At its height -- for most of this century -- it not only either directly owned or controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa but also owned diamond trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland.

Just like any other cartel, like the Cocaine People(tm).

Yeah, but diamond mining requires moving a huge amount of material to get a few diamonds. Titanium mining requires moving a large amount of material into a smelting facility. This process is not going to substantually change things other than making it cheaper. But it is going to change the lifestyle of titanium salesmen.

That's true now, but remember that previous article in The Atlantic? Well, it links to another article which has this next juicy tidbit:

Diamonds arrived in Namaqualand millions of years ago, tumbling down the rivers and into the sea. When the ocean receded, some of the diamonds remained on the beach.

Namaqualand is described slightly above that snippet of text as "...a sandy slab of South Africa along the Atlantic coast. Namaqualand's pan-hot desert and scraped little hills start north of Cape Town and run up to the Orange River..." which is striking, because what that means is that at one time, you could head off from Cape Town, go to the beach with a rake, and just dig up uncut diamonds.

Also, the American Museum of Natural History has a nice diamond web exhibit which contains, among other things, this page which points out that diamonds were discovered in South Africa by a boy finding one just lying around on his father's farm. Nice anectodal evidence.

And just to make you ill without sending you to goatse.cx, consider this article (in Red Herring) which talks about a company (now called Blue Nile) which got billions of dollars (literally) in two rounds of VC funding in one month.

So when you're forking over two months' salary for an engagement ring like a barmy git, keep in mind that once upon a memory you could walk on the beach in Cape Town and spontaneously find a diamond in your toes. How often do you think that happens nowadays?

Enough data mining for tonight. You're all on your own from here on out.

De Beers managed to increase the preceived value of diamonds though a carefully planned campaign of giving them to female Hollywood stars in the 1940s. Before that they were (rightly, IMO) considered rather boring.

A chunk of a Diamondtalk.com Forum has some nice information on this. In particular, one poster cited an article in The Atlantic entitled "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?" notably, it says the following:

The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa. As De Beers took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it assumed many forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond Trading Company. In Israel, it was known as "The Syndicate." In Europe, it was called the "C.S.O." -- initials referring to the Central Selling Organization, which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company. And in black Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with names like Diamond Development Corporation and Mining Services, Inc. At its height -- for most of this century -- it not only either directly owned or controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa but also owned diamond trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland.

Just like any other cartel, like the Cocaine People(tm).

Yeah, but diamond mining requires moving a huge amount of material to get a few diamonds. Titanium mining requires moving a large amount of material into a smelting facility. This process is not going to substantually change things other than making it cheaper. But it is going to change the lifestyle of titanium salesmen.

That's true now, but remember that previous article in The Atlantic? Well, it links to another article which has this next juicy tidbit:

Diamonds arrived in Namaqualand millions of years ago, tumbling down the rivers and into the sea. When the ocean receded, some of the diamonds remained on the beach.

Namaqualand is described slightly above that snippet of text as "...a sandy slab of South Africa along the Atlantic coast. Namaqualand's pan-hot desert and scraped little hills start north of Cape Town and run up to the Orange River..." which is striking, because what that means is that at one time, you could head off from Cape Town, go to the beach with a rake, and just dig up uncut diamonds.

Also, the American Museum of Natural History has a nice diamond web exhibit which contains, among other things, this page which points out that diamonds were discovered in South Africa by a boy finding one just lying around on his father's farm. Nice anectodal evidence.

And just to make you ill without sending you to goatse.cx, consider this article (in Red Herring) which talks about a company (now called Blue Nile) which got billions of dollars (literally) in two rounds of VC funding in one month.

So when you're forking over two months' salary for an engagement ring like a barmy git, keep in mind that once upon a memory you could walk on the beach in Cape Town and spontaneously find a diamond in your toes. How often do you think that happens nowadays?

Enough data mining for tonight. You're all on your own from here on out.

De Beers managed to increase the preceived value of diamonds though a carefully planned campaign of giving them to female Hollywood stars in the 1940s. Before that they were (rightly, IMO) considered rather boring.

A chunk of a Diamondtalk.com Forum has some nice information on this. In particular, one poster cited an article in The Atlantic entitled "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?" notably, it says the following:

The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa. As De Beers took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it assumed many forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond Trading Company. In Israel, it was known as "The Syndicate." In Europe, it was called the "C.S.O." -- initials referring to the Central Selling Organization, which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company. And in black Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with names like Diamond Development Corporation and Mining Services, Inc. At its height -- for most of this century -- it not only either directly owned or controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa but also owned diamond trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland.

Just like any other cartel, like the Cocaine People(tm).

Yeah, but diamond mining requires moving a huge amount of material to get a few diamonds. Titanium mining requires moving a large amount of material into a smelting facility. This process is not going to substantually change things other than making it cheaper. But it is going to change the lifestyle of titanium salesmen.

That's true now, but remember that previous article in The Atlantic? Well, it links to another article which has this next juicy tidbit:

Diamonds arrived in Namaqualand millions of years ago, tumbling down the rivers and into the sea. When the ocean receded, some of the diamonds remained on the beach.

Namaqualand is described slightly above that snippet of text as "...a sandy slab of South Africa along the Atlantic coast. Namaqualand's pan-hot desert and scraped little hills start north of Cape Town and run up to the Orange River..." which is striking, because what that means is that at one time, you could head off from Cape Town, go to the beach with a rake, and just dig up uncut diamonds.

Also, the American Museum of Natural History has a nice diamond web exhibit which contains, among other things, this page which points out that diamonds were discovered in South Africa by a boy finding one just lying around on his father's farm. Nice anectodal evidence.

And just to make you ill without sending you to goatse.cx, consider this article (in Red Herring) which talks about a company (now called Blue Nile) which got billions of dollars (literally) in two rounds of VC funding in one month.

So when you're forking over two months' salary for an engagement ring like a barmy git, keep in mind that once upon a memory you could walk on the beach in Cape Town and spontaneously find a diamond in your toes. How often do you think that happens nowadays?

Enough data mining for tonight. You're all on your own from here on out.

1) The discovery that the Captain Crunch whistle made a 2600 Hz tone, and What That Means To Telephones.

2) The way Sir Earnest Shackleton rescued the Endurance expedition. You gotta read the story, you won't believe it.

It's stolen property -- unless they can find a rich collector who is willing to pay for a rare prize that he can't even brag about, it can't be liquidated as is.