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Huge Diamond Deposits Revealed In Russia
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the Christian Science Monitor: "'Russia has just declassified news that will shake world gem markets to their core: the discovery of a vast new diamond field containing 'trillions of carats,' enough to supply global markets for another 3,000 years. The Soviets discovered the bonanza back in the 1970s beneath a 35-million-year-old, 62-mile diameter asteroid crater in eastern Siberia known as Popigai Astroblem. They decided to keep it secret, and not to exploit it, apparently because the USSR's huge diamond operations at Mirny, in Yakutia, were already producing immense profits in what was then a tightly controlled world market."
I remember learning about DeBeers and having this bit of information come up at some point.... lots of people in Russia dying mysterious deaths surrounding the topic of diamonds in Russia.
Diamonds are fairly plentiful and common. That they are expensive and considered valuable is marketing... or racketeering... whatever you want to call it.
If Russia can help it, not at all.
please let this drop diamond prices down to what they should be and force deBeers to find other ways to earn money like flipping burgers or whatever they have where they are
Reading through TFA it sounds like these are industrial quality diamonds rather than the sparkly, clear, goes on a ring type. Still a big find though.
Unlike Gold, or even many other gemstones which have a rarity that enhances value? Diamonds are only of spectacular value, when they achieve very large carat size, without flaws or inclusions.
But there's a mystique , deliberately crafted, to conflate the value of a 2-carat Zales engagement ring with something like the Koh-i-noor.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
We've known about this for years. All the fucking diamonds are radioactive as hell.
Graphite field + meteor impact = nuclear diamonds.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Nope. The price of diamonds is completely artificial, agreed upon by all the suppliers and does not reflect their actual value or supply availability. It's the biggest case of non-penalized price fixing in the history of the world.
I am curious if there's going to be a huge diamond down there... I'm assuming that they formed from the pressure created by the impact...
Bow before me, for I am root.
This makes me wonder if there has ever been a more successful cartel. The last time it was threatened was when they found them in Canada. Of course the Canadians knew better than to just let them out in a free market. Even if you're not in DeBeers, everybody understands that you have to release.... them... slowly...
Show her you really care by spending outrageous cartel prices. Has to be one of the greatest scams in history.
Diamonds are common as dirt.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
In Russia, Diamond deposits reveal YOU!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
In Soviet Russia, diamonds find you.
There has long, long been a rumor that DeBeers will never open an "official" office in the US..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
According to Wikipedia graphite in an 8.5 mile radius of the impact was turned into diamond due to impact pressure.
This was my first thought, as my girlfriend knows to expect something shiny in the relatively near future
So the USSR was financially strangled during the Cold War by low oil prices while at the same time they had these diamond deposits?
I recall reading that some time ago De Beers had conspired with GE to fix the price of industrial diamonds. I've also been told that synthetic diamonds can be produced with higher quality than most naturally occurring diamonds, but their manufacture is kept at a relative minimum to keep prices high. Although apparently De Beer's monopoly isn't what it used to be, not that it means an end to price fixing or other questionable practices.
as long as you keep it a secret.
Cue "In Soviet Russia" in 3...2...1... dammit, too late!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There's diamonds in them thar hills!
My kingdom for a donkey!
Control supply and stimulate demand. The 'tradition' of a diamond engagement ring is a DeBeers invention that dates to the twenties. Also DeBeers subsidizes advertising. Jewelers can get money from DeBeers to help them place ads provided they stick to certain themes. DeBeers will even supply stock art. Something else few people realize. DeBeers is heavily invested in gold production. They own controlling interest in a lot of mines. So it is not only diamonds that have been manipulated, but gold as well. Same deal: stimulate demand with subsidized ads and control supply. Gold is not as well controlled as are diamonds, but a review of the recent price trend gives a clue. Watch what happens to gold when the world economy goes back on the boil. It may be a while, but trust me. The people who cornered this market will clean TF up.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
This was my first thought, as my girlfriend knows to expect something shiny in the relatively near future
Ya, girls, like fish, like shiny things, so might I suggest a two-fer: silver or gold?
Let me know how it turns out :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This Slashdot. You must be new here.
What is this "wife" of which you speak?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yeah, it's called price fixing.
Bastards.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
Here is an informative article, a must-read if you're interested in diamonds. It's old (written in 1982) but everything still applies. In fact it's amazing that the public still hasn't gotten wise to the diamond racket in the 30 years since the article.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/1/?google_editors_picks=true
Price is artificial.
A peer reviewed paper describing the occurrence is here (paywalled):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1945-5100.1998.tb01639.x/abstract
The diamonds are ~0.2-0.5mm, elongate or tabular layered grains. They are sometimes colorless but often are yellow, grey, or black. Rarely there are diamonds which reach 10mm found in the alluvial gravel.
If the deposit is as rich as the article claims it looks like an excellent source for industrial diamonds, although given how fractured they are it won't change the gem diamond market much.
...and suddenly Putin decides he wants to deal in diamonds.
Yeah it's almost like someone decided to put a funny pattern on some paper, cut it up into small rectangles, and declare it worth something. Can you imagine people accepting something like that?! A completely artificially-restricted supply of controlled by one organization! What next, they arrest people who try and print their own!?
In seriousness, there is no value beyond consensus. Gold is not any more intrinsically valuable than diamonds (or fiat currency!); people simply agree to trade a certain amount of one thing (paper, bank balance, etc) for it. This is why people pay for BitCoins (and other virtual goods), why currency fluctuates, and in essence, how the economy works.
(The malleability of gold and other arguments of function are entirely irrelevant; people always agree on value for some reason, from "I have too much money and I felt like it," to "I need it for my research." Reason is a constant, and one reason is not inherently better or more valid than another.)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Forgive my ignorance but I thought diamond was a defined crystal lattice structure. How can it be "twice as hard" if it is a diamond? Is this another naturally occurring state of carbon that should be called something else?
Get a book called, "The Rise And Fall of Diamonds". Dimonds are nearly worthless rocks and are in no way precious. The only value associated with them is the value created by 100% artifically manipulated supply and demand. Before WWII, you literally couldn't give diamonds away. DeBeers PAID stars of the era to wear them as if they were precious. This created demand. Over the years, by means of extremely strict control of the market, people now pay a lot for what is literally a worthless gem, outside of industry.
In parts of Africa, simply picking up a diamond is punishable by death. At one point in time, diamonds were harvested by forcing slaves to place buckets around their necks with twine. They would then crawl across the sand, shoulder to shoulder, dropping diamonds into their bucket. The noise was compared to machine guns in a war zone. Now you know why its illegal to pick up diamonds.
Regardless of how you feel about diamonds, one things is for sure, the world would literally be a better place if the DeBeers family were removed from the face of the earth. In case you didn't know it, DeBeers is directly responsable for the resurgance of slavery and indentured servitude.
http://www.gifbin.com/981440
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
This was my first thought, as my girlfriend knows to expect something shiny in the relatively near future
Get a lab-created diamond. A huge, high-quality stone costs a fraction of the price of a natural one. Being real diamonds (carbon crystals), they're indistinguishable without special equipment. There's no reason to pay a fortune for gemstones today (unless you're rich or are stocking a museum, I guess). Find a good local jeweler; they can tell you more.
Visit the
There are diamond reserves in the older regions of Africa and North America. It is not surprising that there are diamonds in the centre of Asia as well. The geology is similar. Basically what you need is an area with very old rock that hasn't been hugely disturbed by geological processes. The Canadian Shield contains 3 to 4 billion year old rock, and I believe there are also areas with similar rocks in both central Africa and central Asia. Diamonds can be found in areas with rocks with ages more than 2.5 billion years. I think this is because the kimberlite pipes that bring them to the surface only happened that long ago, though I'm not absolutely sure of this. Once deposited by those pipes, the diamonds remain at or near the surface, where they can be mined.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
"It's the biggest case of non-penalized price fixing in the history of the world."
It would be interesting to see whether OPEC price fixing cost the world more than this cartel. I have a sneaking suspicion it would win hands down.
Your monopoly is gone. New monopolists such as Monsanto and MPIAA are taking over.
I have no idea these days, but last time I spec'd out the purchase of carbide cutting inserts they weren't much more than $5 when sintered into your desired shape in bulk. Wouldn't the diamonds burn up pretty easily?
Fiancees who reject the diamond industry!
Yay for rejecting the marketing that every engagement needs a big sparkly rock!
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
He (Jeremiah Cornelius) came up with that meme before 'meme' was a word you whipper snapper.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
The four C's. Cut, Color, Clarity, and Carat Weight. Cut is an artificial item, so let's focus on Color, Clarity and Carat. Of all the diamonds found in nature, what percentage of them are valuable to the consumer market? Low grade yellows and industrial diamonds are in fact dirt cheap by comparison.
BTW, I'm married. I don't discount the fact there is pricing fixing going on, I just questions the natural ratio of quality diamonds that we all know and love (or she does anyways)
Life is not for the lazy.
This just makes me even more curious about why the geological community is covering up the obvious impact crater in Tennessee!
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/08/28/2217237/tennessee-crater-inches-toward-recognition
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Back in the eighties I spent 6 years in Udachny (see the nick?) What are and were near 20,000 people doing so far north? Why was there an underground nuclear explosion there? Diamonds. For the longest time that place supplied 80% of Soviet and then Russian diamonds. Udachny is the deepest open diamond mine at 610 meters. The largest diamond in Russia was found there on the 23 of December 1980. It was 48x36x25 mm, at 342.5ct, it was very clear, yellow stone.
Some pictures.
Russia is full of diamonds, but mostly they are small, used to make drill bits, parts of machines.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
The price of the diamonds may go down, but the amount of money you are required to spend on your wife to demonstrate your love for her will remain fixed. Bigger diamond, more diamonds, platinum band, all these options are open to her to make sure you don't spend less on her than she expects. And she expects
you to spend enough on her that you notice the cost. Not enough to cause resentment, but enough to delay discretionary and hobby purchases for yourself for anything up to year or so, depending on the occasion (e.g. an eternity ring).
This will elevate her status amongst her peers, confirming to them and her family that she made the right choice in a lifetime mate: someone who has the financial wherewithal to make these purchases and someone who has an emotional attachment to her that's strong enough to actually do it. It will also increase her financial self-worth, giving her something she can personally contribute to the family (at high emotional cost) in times of great need, or something of intrinsic and emotional value she can hand on to favoured descendants. At worst, she can flog it off if you separate.
Buy these things for her, and be happy with your lot. With luck, you may get a blowjob on your birthday.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Suggestion: stop buying useless things and tell her to stop being so superficial and useless.
I was planning to move to Russia and marry a babushka and start a goat farm,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Do you even know a woman? She would not like this. She wouldn't like the truth and she wouldn't like you lying to her.
De Beers presently sets their price at roughly that of the price to have one manufactured by Gemesis.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Link to a company that sells them? I've been having a hard time finding them
Diamonds are very common. However, large carat diamonds are not. Very large diamonds are indeed quite rare. As well as the fancy color diamonds. Red diamonds being quite rare indeed. Why people are willing to pay so much for plain old white diamonds is a mystery to me. Certainly flawless diamonds are more rare, but considering DeBeers, et al are sitting on the motherlode of them, it's hard to know just how much more rare they are, if at all.
DeBeers had an office in the US. They used to own the diamond mine down in Arkansas. But due to the Apartheid thing, and the price fixing, they were forced out, and on the way out they dynamited the diamond mine rather than leave an operation working mine. Almost all the diamonds coming out of Diamond Crater are gem quality. The Star of Arkansas came from there. A beautiful colored diamond.
Considering the effort that the diamond cartels have made to discredit lab grown stones a "worse because they're too perfect" I have qualms trusting them as far as I can throw South Africa. If they say the stones are rare I bet they've got enough to bling out the grand canyon.
50.25% of us are wise to it. Only the other 49.75% matter.
The four C's. Cut, Color, Clarity, and Carat Weight. Cut is an artificial item, so let's focus on Color, Clarity and Carat. Of all the diamonds found in nature, what percentage of them are valuable to the consumer market? Low grade yellows and industrial diamonds are in fact dirt cheap by comparison.
BTW, I'm married. I don't discount the fact there is pricing fixing going on, I just questions the natural ratio of quality diamonds that we all know and love (or she does anyways)
There's not much to question. It's pretty well known that De Beers had kept prices artificially high. And if that wasn't enough, now you see retailers charging premiums for shitty brown diamonds because they are now calling them "chocolate". Or yellow ones "canary yellow". They're made from carbon. I'd say that carbon heat and pressure are pretty plentiful on earth. I never thought about it, but I was pretty pissed off when I learned that diamonds will burn just like coal would in a fire.
Gemesis ( http://gemesis.com/ is where I got my fiancee's diamond several months ago. I have nothing but good things to say about them, especially about their customer service. There are a handful of other places though, however the only one I can recall is Apollo Diamonds, which was bought around the start of the year, I assume for industrial use. Shoot me an email if you'd like to know more.
My UID is prime... is yours?
In Soviet Russia....diamonds buy you.
In fact a CVD-grown diamond can be far superior to any natural stone you could ever find - with potentially zero inclusions or other defects. In fact if not for the laser-inscribed serial number on them the only way they could be distinguished from natural diamonds is that they are "too perfect"
As a bonus instead of funneling money into an abusive cartel you'll be supporting an industry which hopes to eventually be able to produce bulk laboratory-grade diamonds of arbitrary size, allowing the creation of things like diamond-based microprocessors which would be impossible with even the least-flawed natural stones (diamond is a dopeable electric insulator and an *incredible* thermal conductor, making it ideal for high-performance semiconductors)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The poor bastards that marry these women...
Yes, I have my fears of commitment just like any other guy, but at least I can rest easy knowing the current lady being given consideration could care less about all this stuff.
She'll only turn into a shallow bitch if you let her.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
I'd rather blow my brains out than live like that.
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.
It will also increase her financial self-worth, giving her something she can personally contribute to the family (at high emotional cost) in times of great need, or something of intrinsic and emotional value she can hand on to favoured descendants. At worst, she can flog it off if you separate.
As long as you make sure most of the value is in the precious metals of the setting. Diamonds aren't worth shit for resale.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Do you even know a woman? She would not like this. She wouldn't like the truth and she wouldn't like you lying to her.
Obviously you don't lie about it -- that's a terrible way to start a marriage. There are lots of women who are fine with lab-created gems. I'm dating one right now.
Visit the
Diamonds, tennis-bracelets, rings, necklaces, whatever.
If marketing-men tell the women that men need to buy these to "prove" their "love", they can live off the labor of those enslaved by their little scheme.
When I see diamonds, its obvious that these things are absolutely useless for anything but some rather esoteric applications, which would demand the perfection of a manufactured diamond, or a run of the mill abrasive.
If its glittery jewelry, go for the optical stuff - it can be manufactured much cheaper than trying to find them in nature. Hell, so is a Coke bottle.
Why aren't women as enthused over a gift of carborundum? Marketing.
Its much like religion, where microphone-men hock up all sorts of stuff about demonstrating one's faith while passing the plate.
Marketing heads tell us to work our a** off and give them the nectar of our efforts, and we - being the obedient sheeple we are - obey.
The marketing head gets rich while the rest of us try to earn a wage.
DeBeers gets rich by convincing men that they have to be paid before we can get access to women's heavenly parts.
And we pay. And pay. And pay. We are sooooo dumb!.
A local brick and mortor store that does custom jewelry is also a good place to try. They'll have sources that aren't available to the general public and can also help you with the mounting.
Visit the
Intersting to bring in "blood diamonds" to the story. It's a way to control lots of diamonds not controlled by De Beers by having the public avoid them. Note that Zaire which was listed in the end of the article as a possible threat to the cartel is now a part of the Kimberly process and its diamonds are not "blood diamonds" despite the civil wars that occurred while many were mined. How much of this is real, how much is influenced by De Beers, and how much is fabricated?
Use a grandmother's diamond ring instead of a new one. Buy one at a pawn shop. Get a sapphire or emerald or ruby. Buying a new diamond would be succumbing to the world's most successful advertising campaign.
And this price you pay and the expection that you will pay it has been carefully orchestrated and programmed into your brain. 100 years ago very few people purchased diamonds for engagements and those that did were not buying expensive ones.
Also, she will not be able to flog it off for anything like what you pay for it. When it leaves the store it will drop in value faster than an automobile leaving the lot.
DeBeers had an office in the US. They used to own the diamond mine [craterofdi...tepark.com] down in Arkansas. But due to the Apartheid thing, and the price fixing, they were forced out, and on the way out they dynamited the diamond mine rather than leave an operation working mine. Almost all the diamonds coming out of Diamond Crater are gem quality. The Star of Arkansas came from there. A beautiful colored diamond.
Nowhere in the site link you provided was DeBeers mentioned. In fact, there is no "mine" in the traditional sense of a hole in the ground. The area sits atop a kimberlite pipe; the area is continually turned over to expose new material. I've been there several times; it's nothing more than a large mud field (when wet) or furrowed hardpack (when dry).
But the thing is, you only need like .00001% of them to be gem quality to have a shit load of gem quality diamonds.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The Soviets discovered the bonanza back in the 1970s
The USSR was selling synthetic gem diamonds in the 70s
In soviet Russia, synthetic diamond comes from big crater in the ground.
Good god man, what you describe is refered to as a "gold digger". Seriously, you don't have to buy women, but if you really think it is necassary then a hooker is far, far, cheaper than a gold digger.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Cubic zirconia is *not* diamond. I'm not downplaying CZ as a material to be used in jewelry. It's nice stuff. Just don't confuse the two.
Life is not for the lazy.
What does cubic zirconia have to do with anything???
I have resisted the little suggestions for an eternity ring ("what, has it been that long already?") and my observations are based on other women, not my saint of a wife. We even went cheap on the wedding (and proud of it!).
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Seriously, please site where I can find someone with this technology. Someone that actually sells real synthetic diamonds (crystal lattice and all). It would be the first I've heard of it.
Life is not for the lazy.
Well, you can have your cremated remains turned into a diamond at least. Does that count?
http://www.lifegem.com/secondary/LifeGemFAQ2006.aspx
- Toast
And with the price of gold so high, I've seen lots of little gold-buying kiosks popping up in the shopping centres. Problem is that most of the gold rings in Australia are 9k, unless you know what you are looking for.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
It sounds like you've memorized all the diamond industry marketing material.
What do any of those four things have to do with the value of a rock?
You could come up with a set of metrics for valuing lumps of coal and it still wouldn't change the fact that a lump of coal is worthless.
You want to know how valuable your diamond is? Try to sell it.
Google points to these guys: http://d.neadiamonds.com/ . I know someone who intentionally got a synthetic gem in their wedding ring, so it is definitely possible.
Not that much, I think. I am not an expert, but if those are impact metamorphism diamonds, they are probably polycrystalline (composed of lots of small grains of different size and orientation) and not well suited for jewelry.
Buy these things for her, and be happy with your lot. With luck, you may get a blowjob on your birthday.
You know, being north American has it's draw backs. Absurd materialistic expectations from wives don't really have anything to do with love and marriage. I call myself lucky to be European. EU women -and men- tend to be a little less on the money.
(Besides that, I admire the USA for the research and business culture that brought prosperity to many parts of the world.)
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I guess, she is going to fall in hook, line and sinker.
DeBeers gets rich by convincing men that they have to be paid before we can get access to women's heavenly parts.
Would it not be the women who are being convinced? I mean otherwise it wouldn't matter.
Tell that to Minecraft players..
This potentially devalues my fiancée. Negative equity on the house and fiancée, ho hum
No they don't. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/
Short version: If you try to *sell* diamonds, you quickly discover they're now worth a fraction of what they where "worth" when you where the buyer. This is true to some degree with everything ofcourse, but to a much larger degree with diamonds than with other valuables such as precious metals.
I dunno. At this point the bullshit around diamonds is sufficiently well-known that I'd expect most smart women to not even want them. Among my friends I can't think of any who has diamonds in their engagement or wedding-rings, and it's not because they couldn't afford it.
sounds like a bitch
There's no reason to pay a fortune for gemstones today
Try explaining that to a woman...
No sig today...
Seriously, you don't have to buy women, but if you really think it is necassary then a hooker is far, far, cheaper than a gold digger.
Plus you can change hookers at will.
Changing a gold digger for (eg.) a younger model is a long, painful, extremely expensive process.
No sig today...
3.1. Announce it woldwide and start frenetically building extraction mines
3.2. Watch the prices of diamonds tumble while you build the extraction mines due to other providers making sellout contracts to insure buyers
3.3. Buy an shitload of diamonds at reduced price and demolish the extraction mines
4. sell the diamonds once prices get restored for a profit
-- no sig today
Diamonds used to sell for around $8000 for a 1 Ct stone in 1995 and now it sells for about $3000. So if you happen to be the proud owner of a stone bought 20 years ago, then you may be unhappy with the price, but the stone is still the same, whereas a car bought for $8000 in 1995...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Nuclear weapons do not "rely on mushing things together quickly enough to generate fission." Nuclear weapons take material that is already fissioning at a very low rate -- or on the edge of doing so, and can be made to do so by the addition of the appropriate neutron source -- and "mushes it together" fast enough and dense enough that the resulting chain reaction occurs very rapidly, creating an explosion instead of just a general warming of the material.
The "mushing" is what creates the explosion, not what creates the fission. The fission is a property of the material itself, which is why the international control of fissionable material -- primarily plutonium and enriched uranium -- is sufficient to control the spread of nuclear weapons (in theory). Nuclear arms control is not done by controlling "things that mush."
Well, 'meme' was coined in The Selfish Gene, published 1976. I think the 'meme' meme postdates the 'Soviet Russia' meme.
My future wife tells me that she wants a nice ring. I mean hell, if I need to spend $3000 on her for a ring, I can do that. I love her. I mean, for some reason I need to have a nicely built PC that most people think is useless. We all have our niches. If she wants to wear a shiny piece of rock on her finger, then I can handle that. She makes me happy, and I want to make her as equally happy.
Luckily I live in a non-diamond-proposing part of the world. :) Diamond-rings are some item in U.S. movies like Lincoln Town Car cabs or phone numbers that start with 555. They just add some local flair to the plot like the pyramids do for a movie set in ancient Egypt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond/
We've been able to grow diamonds (real diamonds, not substitute materials) since 1954.
Eh, most girls prefer a nice pearl necklace.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
You mean supply of diamonds could effect their prices? But according to the Communist economic theory it's the labor that goes into producing the goods that acts as the deciding factor on the prices. Don't we all know now that "hard working" is the same as "most useful"? Oh, wait, that's not a Soviet mantra... anymore. Everything new is a well-forgotten old.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Right here, sir. This group bought the crystal reactors (and presumably also hired personnel) from the previous corporation that went bankrupt trying to make and sell synthesized diamonds. You can even buy stock in the company.
http://www.sciodiamond.com/
Fascinating article. Thanks for the link.
I want to chime in like others on this point.
I was surprised a few months ago to find out that diamonds are NOT valuable. Diamonds, even natural ones, are not rare. Diamonds are in plentiful supply and the price is kept Artificially HIGH by the DeBeers family who buys up or otherwise controls the excess.
When you buy that engagement ring, you may be showing your fiance that you are willing to sacrifice a large portion of your savings to give her a conventional symbol for the extent of your love..........but you aren't giving her anything value.
do they have to be my remains?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
except it's not as much BS as people think.
"and it's not because they couldn't afford it."
Yes, it's becasue the buy into emotional documentarys at face value.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It may not be diamond, but it will be something.
Assuming you are both human and neither one of you is a robot.
While the GP portrays a sad view of it, the fact is people need something they value that they can tell others about.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" Absurd materialistic expectations from wives "
that's not really as common as the GP makes it look.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Even then, it's difficult. Precious metals are difficult to sell. For gold, in the quantities found in jewellery, the cost of verifying the quality is often close to the value of the metal.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Natural diamonds are for hipsters, apparently.
Women want to know that men aren't just in it for the action. Cash would make a nice signal of male intent, but from the male side, it's too darn fungible. The man wants to make sure the women isn't in it just to reap the reliable signal.
Enter the diamond: expensive to buy (reliable signal to women), lousy to resell (putting the men more at ease), and a nice racket for the middlemen, who supply the tsunami of romantic propaganda to wrap the whole ridiculous spectacle in broad public approval.
Here's an interesting related article from 2003 Wired: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html
Wikipedia maintains a list of synthetic diamond manufacturers at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_synthetic_diamond_manufacturers
That's the main reason why DeBeerRacketeers now put serial numbers on each diamond. "Real"[sic] diamonds will have serial numbers on them to allow tracing and guarantees of being "real"...
Wouldn't it be cool if diamond fell to the price level of any other earth mineral, like iron, or whatever..... I wonder if they could make diamond glasses that would never scratch (for example), or faces for some devices portable devices so scratching doesn't render a screen useless over time.
They are just shiny coal, what's the big deal. They even burn like coal. Waste of money. I guess De-Beers will have an increasing amount of trouble keeping a lid on the diamond market sooner or later.
Paul E. Bahre
I am glad to hear it, I have always thought that the blood diamond problem in Africa was something that could be avoided if we saturated the market with enough diamonds to bring the price way down...and now we have trillions of carots! SO bring it all out at once, saturate the market and become worthless....and
you will see no more diamonds coming out of africa....
Now will this ever happen, probably not, because I am sure some people will try their best to not let this happen....but if it was the Chinese, you think they would care about that.....they would bring out as much as possible and sell the stuff overnight if they could...bringing about a market crash for anyone who has stocks in diamonds...
Its a shame I cannot simply donate $5000 to a charity of her choice rather than be forced to subsidize a corporation I have absolutely no love for - just for the sake of "proving" my love for her.
It ought to be obvious... this diamond mentality is nothing more than a demonstration of our obedience to do really asinine things just because we are told to do so.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Nope, loved ones remains (or even just hair I think) can be as well.
I guess it's not just the remains used to make the diamond, but rather, it's the specific additions from the remains which impurify or "add character" to the diamond by adding color and whatnot. I assume that the base for the diamond would be provided by the company.
Also, judging by their pages, it looks like you can pickup loose stones of whatever color you want as well.
- Toast
... are only relevant for the dull and boring "decorative" or jewellery diamond industry. These factors are completely irrelevant for the far more interesting diamonds which contain inclusions that can tell us about the deep history of the planet.
Oh, what's this in the corner of my wallet? A 0.5 carat diamond. Meh.
I'm a geologist. To me, diamonds are terribly interesting and valuable. I can't see why people ruin them by cutting them up, destroying their idoemorphic crystal forms and fascinating growth textures and replacing them with flat polished planes. A complete waste.
Going back to the original subject ... I thought from the headline that this might be Popigai. When the confirmation of the structure as an astrobleme ("astrobleme" is correct ; TFS is wrong) came through in the mid-'90s, presence of micro-diamond was one of the cited pieces of evidence. I did wonder then if this could be from the basement. Seems so. But there were enough other indications of extreme strains and high pressures that the diagnosis didn't rely on the micro-diamond.
I still want to see a kimberlite eruption. From a suitably large distance.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
(For rock drilling, tungsten-carbide "cutters" are coated with synthetic diamond to create "Poly-crystalline Diamond Compacts" or "PDC" bits ; the cutters are then rigidly mounted in a machined steel "matrix" that channels the flow of drilling fluid and cuttings away from the working face of the bit. When these cutters break off, or the matrix comes in contact with the rock and is torn to dust, the "cutters" (a.k.a "compacts" ; I think different companies use different names ; bit selection is a someone-else problem) can be left loose on the bottom of the hole, and tend to destroy the next bit sent down the hole (change out cost ~$200,000 in machinery and personnel rental ; bits are a trivial $30,000 to $150,000), so "junk baskets" are generally run to try to collect the fragments. I have to extract the cutters from the rest of the junk, count them, and we try to work out if we've got everything out of the hole. I used to keep the pieces, as being interesting materials. And at 1.5 times the density of lead alone, they're good additions to my diving weights.)
FYI, the diamond is grown in situ on the surface of the WC cutters. The processes used vary, if you believe the manufacturer's blurb, but are variants of vapour deposition. The diamond isn't available separately.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
There are a huge number of scammers in the "cash-for-gold" game. Use the high street and get competing quotes from the 3 oldest jewellers in town, who have a local reputation to maintain. Then, if you can beat that price, go for it.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
There's no mine because DeBeers dynamited the field years ago. The state turned it in to a tourist attraction. I've been there myself. The story is told inside the park if you care to actually do any reading, rather than just being negative. My visit paid for itself in semiprecious gemstones. A diamond was found while I was there, along with numerous other (semi-)precious stones. No, it's no longer a mine, hence the State Park designation. It was a mine, a DeBeers mine. As to the fact it is a kimberlite pipe, what else would you expect? Where else do you expect to find diamonds? Up Laurance Olivier's ass?