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> And Al Qaeda were criminal masterminds?

Remember Bin Laden's billion dollar underground super fortress in Tora Bora?

http://www.edwardjayepstein.co...

Selling information on how to cheat isn't the same as cheating. In the case of those who used his information, those individuals should be subject to sanction. for example, I can tell you how to hotwire a car. I can even demonstrate it on my own vehicle and provide teaching aids that can allow you to be able to do it yourself. However if you steal a car using the methods I teach, you're committing the crime. I realize that free speech only goes so far such as yelling "fire" in a crowded theater but he wasn't creating panic, just offering methods to overcome pseudo science that's all about intimidating the person taking the test.

In his secret testimony before the Warren Commission in 1964, J. Edgar Hoover, said that the "polygraph, often referred to as a lie detector, is not in fact such a device." He explained that its value to law enforcement agents was as a tool of intimidation: if a subject believed the central deception that the machine could detect lies, he would have an incentive not to lie when strapped in the machine.

He was in Hong Kong, not in the "PRC". Document yourself instead of spouting nonsense.

And he knew the FSB was going to be interested in him, he was just hoping to leave Russia ASAP to go to South America. The Obama administration revoked his passport, stranding him in Russia. Furthermore, I believe that most of what Snowden gave to Greenwald, the FSB/Russian intelligence knew already: NSA, like many other US agencies have had its share of moles.

You're correct. GE and the USSR both started producing artificial diamonds decades ago. Most industrial diamonds are synthetic. The USSR was selling synthetic gem diamonds in the 70s -- see http://edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/chap17.htm .

That article is an excerpt from Epstein's book The Diamon Invention, which is available in full online on the author's website. It's an amazing read.

Yep, and "consumer" diamonds are a scam, only valuable because they're controlled by a cartel. This guy has a very nice write up about it. Most interesting about the whole thing is how the resell value is just really low.

They were not afraid of 'box cutters'.

The reason for this is that there are no reports or evidence of any kind anywhere that the hijackers had box cutters.

It's far more likely they were carrying combat knives. The box cutter myth was started to explain how they carried the knives through airport security.

See:
http://edwardjayepstein.com/nether_fictoid9.htm

I did read that 2 years ago when I proposed and was researching diamonds...but wikipedia says you are right.

I swore it was here: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm
but I didn't see it and don't have time to read the whole thing right now.

"Industrial diamonds - In 2004 De Beers pleaded guilty and paid a $10 million fine to the United States Department of Justice to settle a 1994 charge that De Beers had conspired with General Electric to fix the price of industrial diamonds.[24][25]" - wikipedia

There are multiple locations in the us accoriding to: http://www.debeers.com/page/storelocator

Whoops..sorry. But they are certainly a monopoly and and have price fixed and probably continue to do so. And as long as women demand diamonds...noone can stop them...

resized at Zales.

Suggestion 2, don't buy the ring at Zales, (or any mall store for that matter). They do have some nice designs, but they pass on very low quality diamonds (usually SI2 ) onto their customers while charging a much higher price. Note that most reputable places won't even sell SI2 diamonds as imperfections and flaws (like a chunk of black carbon) can be seen by the naked eye and grossly affect the diamonds fire (amount of light that is reflected internally then broken apart in a prismatic effect and sent back out to the eye).

I know this because the first ring I got my wife was from Zales, but luckily they had a 30 day return policy ^_^ (I returned it before I proposed and got something much better).

Now as to what to do,
1. Decide what kind of ring, design, and materials best describe her and appeal to her tastes. For example, my wife is geeky, just like me, but does like sapphires, white gold or silver jewelry and can appreciate technology and such, so I endeavored to have a ring custom made with white gold, sapphires, and for the center stone I used a very geeky stone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite"> Moissanite . All and all it did cost me as much as much as a diamond ring, but it ended up being a beautiful, unique, and fitting ring (beautiful and geeky!).
a) Find out what is her favorite cut or shape (or if she even wants a center stone)
b) Find out what color metal she likes (it is a ring, and it is mainly a thing of beauty, so find out what metals she finds beautiful). Iridium does sound interesting.
c) Find out what her favorite colors are, you can find stones in these colors (even "Cultured" or "Synthetic" diamonds"). And don't fall for the birthstone nonsense or even diamond engagement ring tradition (both marketing fabrications).
d) Find out what type of band design (stone arrangement, etched designs, side elevation) she likes. Heck if she's a Lord of the Rings geek there's a even a band she may like!
2. Now shop around, find a design that you like (don't settle for what's in the store), if you don't see it in a store, some can order it or make it. I ended up looking through literally over 2000 ring designs.
3. Buy a loupe and carry it with you (they cost $10). Even if you're not buying a diamond, the moment a jeweler sees you with a loupe they'll know they can't pawn off crap on you.
4. Shop around, pay attention to small but established stores in your area. Those will typically be able to accomodate custom orders.

I wont' go much into stones since you just mentioned a band, but If you do decide to get a stone added into that ring then do your research. Find out if she'll care about a synthetic vs natural grown stone (don't confuse synthetic with simulant, a simulant is something that isn't the original but tries to approximate it, a synthetic is just a man made (or cultured) version. So the difference between a synthetic and a natural stone is just like the difference between say a banana grown in a jungle (in a natural environment) vs a banana grown in a farm or greenhouse, they're both bananas (except the synthetic product has less defects). If she's a geology freak she'll probably want a natural stone, otherwise it shouldn't matter. Heck even jewelers can't tell the difference between say a synthetic diamond and one that was pulled from the earth. Only diamond certification labs have the equipment necessary to tell the difference.

Materials? Well Platinum is nice and valuable, but also easy to ding and hard to keep looking good. Titanium is very cool (and is what my band is made out of), and don't believe the FUD about it, it is safe, emergency rooms have equipment to cut through it if needed (they don't have to cut off your finger as one jeweler claimed....) . Gold

Wanna bet?

Sure, lets bet. Unfortunately I'm lazy and only found numbers for WorldWide sales in 2004.

Video / DVD Sales - $20.9 billion
Portable / Console game sales - $18 billion

I didn't include hardware or accessories. So... I dunno is $20 fair?

the story of the most successful marketing campaign in history

Right you are.. and here's the book to prove it:

The Diamond Invention

The US government cares about maintaining the competitive position of American firms in foreign markets. This is hardly new. Intellectual property is one of the areas where the US maintains a positive balance-of-trade with the rest of the world. US policymakers have worked for years to develop international systems that protect American rightsholders around the world.

"Foreign sales account for fifty percent of the revenues of the US record industry," according to this statement by an RIAA spokesperson before Congress. The figures for movies aren't very different; nearly half of all movie revenues come from countries outside the US and Canada.

I don't think there's any conspiracy here to impose US DRM solutions on foreigners. There is a concern to ensure that US firms receive compensation for the use of their copyrighted works overseas. If DRM helps American rightsholders preserve their revenue streams, then US policymakers are going to support it.

If you auction second-hand diamond jewellery, it suddenly has resale value. Since diamonds don't wear out, deBeers really don't want that, because their fortune depends on their control of the price of diamonds. If you could sell diamonds for anything like their market price, people would be more inclined to do so, the market would be flooded with the enormous number of precut diamonds in the hands of people everywhere and the price would drop like a (shiny but pointless...) stone.

De Beers spend a great deal of effort persuading you to attach sentimental value to these small chunks of carbon, in order to dissuade you from selling them. Jewellers will rarely offer anything close to market price for second-hand stones, because they know if they do, their lucrative first-hand business would dry up.

You'd think so, wouldn't you. However, you might want to read this story about the Iranian students in 1979.

First three sentences of the fourth paragraph:

This was the situation up until November 1979 when Iranian students seized an entire archive of CIA and State Department documents, which represented one of the most extensive losses of secret data in the history of any modern intelligence service. Even though many of these documents were shredded into thin strips before the Embassy, and CIA base, was surrendered, the Iranians managed to piece them back together. They were then published in 1982 in 54 volumes under the title "Documents From the U.S. Espionage Den", and are sold in the United States for $246.50.

This particular story didn't say so but I read elsewhere that the students laid out the shredded documents on the floor of gymnasiums and pieced the documents back together.

A gross distortion — about oil. You are basically right about diamonds. While he may overhype matters somewhat, Epstein's classic book documents how the diamond cartel has been ruthless in its limit of supply to a value-sustaining level of marketing-created demand. If supply were to float free, diamonds would drop sharply in price. Furthermore, their intrinsic value within the economy isn't that high-- industrial use mainly. If the US government banned the sale of diamonds for non-industrial uses, DeBeers (and a chunk of the jewelry industry) would collapse, but the overall economy would be OK. Banning the industrial uses would hurt more, and probably trigger a recession, but not a total economic collapse.

Oil, on the other hand, has many uses -- fuel, plastics, fertilizers, and chemical feedstocks probably heading the list. Furthermore, in economic terms, there are NO elasticly substitutable replacements for it, and an exponentially growing demand as China and India become fully industrialized. Since conventional biodiesel relies on petroleum fertilizers and machinery, the "best" elastic replacement is sythetic petroleum from coal, probably becoming competitive in the $120/bbl to $200/bbl range. In the good (?!?) news, this means base (untaxed) gas prices can't do much more than triple from current levels, so we shouldn't go over $10/gallon for gasoline for about 30 years after peak oil (given the vast US coal reserves). The bad news is that the ecologic impacts are higher... which might require higher gas taxes to deal with the impact.

In addition, OPEC (and other cartel) quotas are not the primary limit on supply at this point — although they may be getting rich off it for the moment. Supply today is mainly limited the finite known reserves (with new discoveries having peaked pre-1970), and by current production rate limits (which is why a hurricane in the Gulf caused a price spike of oil to over $70/bbl). OPEC is pretty much pumping as hard as it can now.

Diamond prices are indeed deeply controlled by deliberate supply controls, and there have been times when oil prices were influenced that way, but right now, the price of oil is pure unrestricted supply and demand... where supply is running out.

(Why, yes, I am one of those "Peak Oil" kooks. Pleased ta meetcha.)

Love your women. Educate them on the power of marketing to create synthetic needs, and despise the peddlers instead.

It's no wonder Hollywood is considering alternatives, they've just experienced their worst box-office slump in 20 years. Ticket sales are down nearly 8% compared with 2004. With movie revenue quickly shrinking (due to lackluster movies, overpriced tickets and dvd's), this seems like a logical transition for Hollywood studios.

There is no slump!

This so called "slump" is just political marketing on the part of the big studios. There is no slump as far as they are concerned. In fact, their theaterical revenues went UP 10% from $797M to $870M for the first 3 quarters of the year.
REF: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/US205MPA.htm

The real hit has been to indie and otherwise non-MPAA films, they are the ones that have been losing out at the box office. You can find more details in the pair of articles here: http://slate.msn.com/id/2123286/

"I don't think man made diamonds are ever going to eclipse natural ones for jewelry" - I will have to disagree with you there.

I know there will always be a niche market (read people with more sense than money) who will always want naturally grown diamonds, however I think most folks will actually not care. Most (uneducated) diamond buyers simply look for 3 things beauty, cost , and carat (wow factor). This is the only reason stores such as Zales can stay in business. They sell the worst diamonds around (I-2's for their regular merchandise - usually up to $1500 and SI-2's for their "Zales Diamond", note that most reputable jewlers won't touch I-2 diamonds). The reason Zales (and other maul stores) sell so much merchandise is first location and 2nd the design, pricing and wow factor (1 carart ring for how much?!).

Now back to synthetic diamonds, eventually most folks will realize that choosing a natural diamond over a synthetic just "'cause it has to be naturally grown" is like choosing furniture built of trees that were grown naturally in a forrest vs using trees that were planted and grown on a farm. There both real trees (plus you'll get less defects in your furniture with the farm grown trees).

Now there's already a lot of companies out there growing diamonds. Check out:

Gemesis in Florida
Apollo Diamond (which uses Carbon Vapor Deposition)
Life Gem- turn the ashes of a deceased loved one into a diamond
There was also an interesting article about it on Wired a ways back: The New Diamond Age

And lastly the one "book" that taught me everything I could have ever wanted to know about the diamond business: The Diamond Invention Very interesting read.

Intersting note, after all the research and shopping (and shopping and more shopping) that I did when I was looking for an engagement ring (including researching Synthetic Diamonds) I decided on having a ring custom made by a local jeweler using moissanites instead of diamonds. Ended being a very beautiful and unique ring of a much higher quality than a mass produced setting and with quite a bit of geek factor to it as well. So I think folks will be accepting of synthetic diamonds once production ramps up to the demand (right now Gemesis is growing as fast as it can).

Another good stab at de Beers and the diamond scam: Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?

THE DIAMOND INVENTION

Besides the the sarcasm he probably intended?

Here are some various and recent articles on (not) making money in Hollywood. They're not all related to (lack) of profit, but all at mention in different ways where all the money comes from and where it goes.

First three by Leonard Klady, who writes for moviecitynews.com:

Lies, Damn Lies And Statistics... (the average cost to produce and market a major Hollywood studio picture is $98 million)
Profits of Doom ... (this one goes gets around to showing how a blockbuster movie might never break even)
In Praise of Popcorn...

Then three from Slate, all written by Edward Jay Epstein:

Concessions Are for Girlie Men: Arnold Schwarzenegger's absurdly advantageous contract for Terminator 3 (a brand new article on a movie released in 2003)
How Did Michael Eisner Make Disney Profitable? Not with cartoons. (

"In 1984, when Eisner took command, the "Mouse House" produced only one animated picture every three to five years. Its entire film library had only 158 features, and its single cable channel, the Disney Channel, lost money. In addition, Disney had virtually no income from sales of videos. To keep afloat, the company depended on its amusement parks and its Mickey Mouse licensing. Yet even with these assets Disney had a tax-free cash flow of just $100 million. Its share price, reflecting this precarious financial position, was $1.33 (adjusted for splits).
In 2005, Disney was one of the richest companies in America. Its enterprise value--Wall street's favored measure of an entertainment company--had increased 32-fold since 1984 and stood at $69 billion."

)
How To Finance a Hollywood Blockbuster. Start with a German tax shelter; How NOT To Make Any Money On A Hollywood Blockbuster, a comment on the article written by David Poland, editor of moviecitynews.com, who finds it interesting but is not impressed by its accuracy.

And can a slashdot posting be complete without porn?

How much money did perhaps the most famous porn movie of all time, Deep Throat (1972), gross? The documentary Inside Deep Throat (2005) claims that it that it is the most profitable picture ever made, and that it has grossed $600 million.
Michael Hiltzik of The Los Angeles Times disputes this, using the technical term "baloney". This set off a number of responses back and forth between Hiltzik and Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato who wrote, co-produced and directed the documentary.

Initial Hiltzik column: 'Deep Throat' Numbers Just Don't Add Up
Bailey and Barbato: More Numbers for 'Deep Throat', a somewhat longer version of their response: 'Throat' Gets Cut, Directors Perform Surgery
Hiltzik then asked them to answer twelve questions, which resulted in this column:
Hiltzik: Bad 'Deep Throat' Revenue Number

Remember that they had to keep up the charade of looking like a bunch of tolerably good guys fro the benefits of Europe and the UN, see the Khatami fan movement over here. Now that they are busy working on a nuke and that the IAEA sniffed it, there's no point ln lulling us schmucks into quietness.

This is a free online book by Edward Jay Epstein that details the DeBeers empire from the inside. If you've got some free time, check it out... it's well written and really interesting.

The Diamond Invention

This is a free online book by Edward Jay Epstein that details the DeBeers empire from the inside. If you've got some free time, check it out... it's well written and really interesting.

The Diamond Invention

There is a school of thought that the market of a diamond as an engagement gift is one that was artificially created by the powers behind the global diamond cartel.
Just a couple of links to flesh out this point of view are here and here

Here is the Prologue

Mehmet Ali Agca, perhaps?

enjoy!