2007: Today Mogok still look pretty much the same. In Burma, everything is slow. The way of life + the ruby intrigue + the traditions still attracts a lot of Westerners to this one-of-a-kind gem deposit in the world. Edward Gubelin describes the way of life of the Burmese in a colorful tone + he happened to be one of the lucky Westerner to visit Mogok in the 1960s and collect samples from the source for his research.
(via The Journal of Gemmology, Vol.IX,No.12, October 1965) E Gubelin writes:
The ruby mines in Burma have been known for centuries and the large mining district of Mogok above a lovely lake has always proved to be of great interest because of the wonderful rubies found there. Mogok itself is full of mysteries and whoever goes there for the first time is delighted with its beautiful streets and the soft music of the bells from the temples and pagodas. The author visited this valley for the first time three years ago, after his second stay in Ceylon, and was in no way disappointed.
The western mountainous Shan-plateau rises towards the east over the middle Irrawaddy valley; there are mountains in the north and the lake to the south. The valley of rubies is narrow and long and towards its lower end lies Mogok. It is about 700 km north of Rangoon and 150 km north-east of Mandalay, the last residential town of the Burmese kings. Only 145 km east of this town is the frontier of Burma with China. The township lies about 1500 meters above sea level and is surrounded by mountainous sometimes reaching a height of 2500 meters, all covered with thick jungle. The climate is agreeable, although there is a great difference of temperature between the very hot hours around noon and the cold nights. It rains often and rainfall during the summer months of the monsoon can reach more than 250 mm. It is very rare that the temperature during the winter drops to freezing point.
At the time of writing the visa given to foreigners does not exceed 24 hours, which makes it impossible to leave Rangoon, but before this additional difficulty arose, there were several ways of going to Mogok. Mandalay can be reached by a slow train taking two days for the trip or by a four to six hour flight by the Union of Burma Airways. From Mandalay there are again several ways of reaching Mogok. One can fly on to Momeik and if one has any friends in Mogok ask them to fetch one by jeep. One then travels along a good mountainous road. But as it was well known that many robberies occurred at the time of the visit, the author thought it safer to use the official coach. The coach uses many dusty roads, full of ox-carts, along the Irrawady valley on a very bumpy road and then slowly rises on a narrow but good road through beautiful mountain country towards Mogok, where it arrives twelve hours later. Four days after the author’s safe arrival three private jeeps traveling down the valley were ambushed and robbed.
There are neither hotels nor boarding houses in Mogok, and if one wants to stay in a bungalow for government officials, one has to supply one’s own bed linen and either cook one’s meals, or eat in one of the small Chinese stalls. The author was very lucky and was invited to stay in the house of his Burmese interpreter and agent and was thus able to take part in the daily life of the family. They were all very kind and hospitable and tried to make the visit as agreeable as possible. There are only a few streets in Mogok, the most important being macadamed and at their sides are beautiful houses. Most of these are made of wood, some using teak. In the last few years a few villas were erected from stone. Around the town and in the surrounding villages the houses are made of interwoven bamboo sticks, build on piles. These airy rooms usually form the workshop and the gems are polished here. Unfortunately only the older houses are covered with straw, tiles or brick, the newer houses being covered with corrugated metal sheets, which are not attractive. Many small shops and stalls along the two main roads form the business quarter, where one can buy most consumer goods from a tea cup to a loupe or a washing basket made of bamboo strips to household articles made of plastic. Of the greatest interest is the bazaar, where there is a market every five days and the inhabitants of the surrounding districts and mountains gather in their colorful costumes to sell vegetables, herbs, baked articles, tobacco and all sorts of homemade goods and who seldom return home without looking at, or even buying a few rubies. One must also mention the waterworks and sewage arrangements, which work very well, and a very old-fashioned electricity plant which sells its electricity (220V) during the day to the mines and only after 6 pm to the townspeople, so that one can only then use the electric light. It is then used so much that the voltage falls from 220V to 110, so that one can hardly read. The foreign visitor is well advised to take a torch along together with a sufficient supply of batteries. There is no official waste disposal, so it is not surprising that there are often cases of malaria, dysentery and typhoid. The visitor must be careful in every respect. Apart from various nature-cures and quacks, there are also a few good doctors in Mogok, but hospitals, old people’s homes and orphanages are not necessary since all these services are given by the family. There is always much life in the streets. Most goods are still transported on a shoulder-yoke or by ox-cart. There are many bicycles, and a few cars and vans. The riche mine owners have land-rovers, and there are various jeeps which are used as taxis to which transport people to the surrounding villages.
Although the whole district is only a few square miles and Mogok itself only a small town, there must be about 20000 people living in the district. The inhabitants are very mixed: apart from Burmese, there are Ghurkas, Hindus, Chinese and the romantic looking people from the Schan tribe. On each side of the street, in market places, in front of the tea houses and bazaars, there are small groups of squatting women showing each other small brass bowls with rubies. One soon has the impression that the whole population from the earliest youth to the oldest age is involved in the prospecting, production and sale of rubies, whether as a mine worker, mine owner, gem merchant, polisher, host or tradesman. The people are very friendly, helpful and open: the few that speak a foreign language like to talk to visitors.
The famous ruby mines are secondary deposits, that is, they have been brought down into the valley from decomposed primary deposits. Such alluvial deposits are found in most of the smaller and larger valleys of the district, and everywhere there is prospecting for rubies. Mogok lies in the lower part of a larger valley on what used to be the most profitable deposits. When the population realized this, they moved their township to the lower part of the hills so that they could mine the rubies in the valley. When there were no rubies, the craters which were formed by the mining operations filled with water, forming the lovely Mogok Lake, which today beautifies the valley. In the neighboring valleys the yellow clay is full of holes, and looks like a volcanic field of craters.
Prospecting and mining licenses are only given to Burmese. The owner who wants to open a small mine registers his intention with the district officer, who examines the claim. Depending on the size of the mine, the owner pays several hundred Kyats (1 Kyat = 1s. 6d) for the license. The license for a so-called machine-mine is about 1000 Kyats. The license cannot buy the land, which is only rented from the state for mining purposes. When mining operations are finished it is not necessary to fill in the craters and holes, contrary to practice in Ceylon. This is a defect in the law and leaves the valleys full of holes and unsuitable for agricultural purposes. For each employee the mine owner pays a monthly license fee of 10 Kyats and as a receipt obtains a small oval disc, which each miner must wear to facilitate inspection. Most mining is still done by hand with the help of water—without the local water supplies the mining could not have developed as it has.
Most of the stones are found in open-cast mines. The small narrow holes are widened with sticks and spades. The earth is put into woven bamboo baskets and lifted to the surface where it is emptied onto a heap. When the ruby-containing-the byons layer is reached, a byon heap is started, whence the earth is transported to the washing hole. Within a few weeks the small hole has become a mine of about 100 meters in diameter, perhaps reaching a depth of 20-30 meters, when the water level is reached. From a neighboring water tank water is hosed over the byon layers. The softened earth is pumped, either electrically or with a petrol engine, to a washing plant built from wood or stone and measuring perhaps four square meters and consisting of a basin which is about ½ -1 meter deep and from which there is a step-like arrangement of locks. Usually the earth is mined during the afternoon and then worked and washed the following morning, so that the gem-containing byon earth can settle during the night. In the morning clear water is pumped into the basin, washing away the top layer of waste earth, whilst the heavier gems settle in a series of boxes. During this time the washers stir up the deposit, so that it may be rinsed with water and carried away to a lower lock. Starting at the top the washers scoop some of the deposit up with their hands and shake it in a rough wire-mesh sieve to get rid of the large stones, the finer and medium deposit is then put into a shallow basket, from which the so-called therbat is put on the sorting table. The sorter, who in the case of small mines is the same man as the owner, combs through the therbat with a wooden comb and picks out the rubies. Just as the washing of the deposit below the last lock is free to everybody, so friends and relatives look through the waste from the sorting table either without remuneration or against a small fee. In this way all the innumerable small rubies which are used for adorning pieces of jewelry are won.
About 10 km west of Mogok, in the small township of Kathe and Kyatpyin, the valley is very dry and water not abundant and thus a new method of mining has developed. Parallel to each other long narrow trenches are dug, which are often connected under the surface by horizontal channels. These workings are usually co-owned by three to five men. At the opening of the shaft one or two winches are erected which help to bring to the surface the baskets which have been filled by a miner with the gem-containing earth or byon. The last man carries the basket either to the slack heap or the byon heap, which grows during the dry months from October to the end of April, and then is washed and worked during the summer monsoon season. Characteristic of the whole district is that there are no specially rich localities, but the precious stones can be found anywhere or everywhere, in a brook, in a rice field or in a mine. Ruby is the most looked for stone, but not the most common gem; there is one ruby found to every five spinels. There are fields which yield mainly rubies, other spinels, or moonstones or sapphires, and it has been known that certain mines produce certain colors, but in one basket of byon all types of unusual gems can be found. For the gem collector and gemologist the mines of Mogok are a real paradise, for apart from rubies, spinels, sapphires, moonstones and peridots, which are found in quantities, one also finds almandine garnets, amethysts, beryls, chrysoberyls, spessartites, topazes, tourmalines, zircons and citrines and mentioning some rare gems the following have been found as well: amblygonite, blue apatite, danburite, diopside, disthene, enstatite, violet fluorite, fibrolite, iolite, kornerupine, scapolite, titanite and others. The inhabitants of the districts know very little of these various gem types, and it is not surprising that one is often offered these stones under a wrong name. For instance, pink scapolite is known as pink moonstone and every yellow to brown stone as topaz. But if one knows anything about these stones, and in addition even possesses a refractometer, one can enrich a collection with many beautiful and rare specimens. There is a trade with rough rubies everywhere, along the mines, along the streets, in the bazaars, in the market places, in the backyards, and, of course, in the houses of the mine owners and gem dealers. Because there are always people looking on, a sign language using the fingers has been developed, with which one can express all numerals. Offers and acceptances are communicated under a cloth or in the wide sleeves of the engyis worn by the natives, so that none of the onlookers and strangers are any the wiser.
A large part of the gems found in Mogok and surrounding district are cut locally. Taking into account the very primitive grinding wheels the quality of the produced goods is fairly good, and quite usable according to Western standard. Depending on the resulting style the cutter chooses his tools and his method. Small stones, which are made into small cabochons, are usually worked by children and young girls. The rough stones are fixed onto a bamboo stick; five to ten of these sticks are held in each hand, then held onto a horizontally rotating grinding wheel. It is most instructive and enjoyable to watch how the hands lead the sticks on the wheel and how a few minutes later a number of cabochons are produced.
Large cabochons and star stones are produced by men who use special grinding boards with a carborundum covering; these boards have grooves of various widths in them which are also covered with various grades of carborundum. The rough stones are again fixed on bamboo sticks, which are pushed forwards and backwards in these grooves using finer and finer carborundum until the finished cabochons show a smooth highly polished surface.
The smaller facets are made by young boys, girls and women. The stones are fixed in a simple dop and the first facets are ground roughly on a carborundum board. After they have received their first rough shape they are fixed again onto sticks which can be held in a simple dop. The facets are then cut and polished on horizontally rotating grinding wheels, and from time to time checked by eye to ensure that they are even.
The large faceted stones are produced by a similar method, but only older and experienced cutters are allowed to make them. The advice of these cutters is welcomed by owners and dealers alike. The grinding wheels are rotated with the feet by a sort of treadle arrangement, as the old-fashioned electricity plant is not powerful enough to work all the wheels. Special large crystals are sometimes sawn before being cut and polished. In the whole of the district there is only one specialist who does this; he uses a machine which looks similar to an old sewing machine. It has a horizontal spindle on which a diamond sawing wheel is rotated by a foot pedal. Although the tools of their trade are primitive, most cutters are masters of their craft and know how to obtain the best results from an irregularly colored stone, or how to place inclusions or cracks in the stone into a position where it is extremely difficult to see them. Often stones with cracks are put into peanut oil so that cracks become invisible. It is also amazing how the Mogok cutters produce stones with even facets and regularity of geometrical planes. All these points show that their technical knowledge is greater than that of the Ceylonese cutters.
The buying of gems in Mogok is a time consuming but very interesting business, which needs absolute concentration and denial of western habits. It takes a long time for one to meet the people who sell the goods one wishes to buy. Once one has found them it needs a lot of patience until the stones are shown. Of the thousands of stones which are shown, only a few are of really good gem quality. Doubtless the families keep the very best stones to themselves and evens in Burma have shown the wisdom of this. But now and then a very fine gem is offered for sale. When the author was in Mogok, only after days of bargaining did the most important dealers show him a really good ruby or sapphire. The author was thus very impressed by the rarity and value of the finest gems. Most dealers show many lots of smaller and medium as well as a few larger rubies, but these lots are only shown one at a time, and much time and patience is needed to look through them all and wait for the appearance of better stones. The deal is never finalized without the wife giving her consent. The women of Mogok not only wear the jewels, they are also important in the mining, production and trade. In fact, the female gem merchants in Mogok are much tougher than the men and understand the fine qualities especially well.
The unit of weight is not the carat, but the Burmese rattie (1rt = 0.90 cts). The price of fine rubies has risen very sharply during the last 15 years. This has been caused not only by the increase in rarity, but also by the purchases of Indian merchants who pay too high a price for the rubies, as they earn some money on the transaction of the rupee-Kyat exchange. The inflationary and political uncertainities in Burma also play a part. The Burmese government is nationalizing all industries and has now also forbidden private businesses such as gem mining and dealing. The gem production is guarded by the army and all gems have to be sold to the Petrol and Mineral Development Corporation. The PMDC has now tried to sell the gems on the western markets, but was unsuccessful because of the low quality offered. During the first half of last December 180 gem dealers from 25 countries were invited to an officially organized sale, but most of these visitors were disappointed because of the poor quality offered to them. Many did not purchase anything as the poor qualities cannot be resold on the western markets. It seems a pity that most important gem producing countries have made free trading so difficult. For these countries the loss is usually only a few percent, while the loss in the free world is quite noticeable. These circumstances do not help to make the gems any cheaper, and every jeweler who has a few fine specimens is proud of them and knows how to treasure them.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Problems In Burma
2007: What a clever way to learn about gemstone pricing!
(via Journal of Gemmology, Vol.IX, No.10, April, 1965)
One way of obtaining a valuation of gems is reported in the February 1965 Lapidary Journal. An extract says:
Recently the present Burmese government, which is completely Communistic in its national policies, held a purported auction sale of seized gems in Rangoon from 1st December to 12th December. Supposedly the ordinary passport and visa regulations were relaxed for this purpose in order to attract foreign gem experts. The sale, it was said, was meant only for gem dealers and stone sellers.
Reliable persons who were inveigled to attend from outside Burma have now returned disappointed and report that the whole things was fake. The government only wanted to get a free appraisal of the gems from gem experts and dealers through written bids on each item of gemstones. This seems to be the only purpose of such a fake sale. Persons who made offers in writing were answered by slips under their hotel room doors stating that the gems they bid on were not for sale. Many persons complained about losing their valuable time and their own transportation money in this deal.
It is widely known that the gem mines of Burma have been nationalized, that is, seized by the Communistic dominated government authorities and that all former owners have been dispossessed, particularly and especially the Chinese who owned the principal gem mines in the ruby district of Mogok and in the jadeite regions of Upper Burma.
(via Journal of Gemmology, Vol.IX, No.10, April, 1965)
One way of obtaining a valuation of gems is reported in the February 1965 Lapidary Journal. An extract says:
Recently the present Burmese government, which is completely Communistic in its national policies, held a purported auction sale of seized gems in Rangoon from 1st December to 12th December. Supposedly the ordinary passport and visa regulations were relaxed for this purpose in order to attract foreign gem experts. The sale, it was said, was meant only for gem dealers and stone sellers.
Reliable persons who were inveigled to attend from outside Burma have now returned disappointed and report that the whole things was fake. The government only wanted to get a free appraisal of the gems from gem experts and dealers through written bids on each item of gemstones. This seems to be the only purpose of such a fake sale. Persons who made offers in writing were answered by slips under their hotel room doors stating that the gems they bid on were not for sale. Many persons complained about losing their valuable time and their own transportation money in this deal.
It is widely known that the gem mines of Burma have been nationalized, that is, seized by the Communistic dominated government authorities and that all former owners have been dispossessed, particularly and especially the Chinese who owned the principal gem mines in the ruby district of Mogok and in the jadeite regions of Upper Burma.
New Fund Will Add Greater Liquidity to the Multi-Million Dollar Stones Market
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about liquidity crunch in the diamond industry + capital raising efforts via derivatives, futures markets, securitization and hedge funds to other schemes + commodity investment management firm and Swiss-based Diapason + the funds concept of aiming at the high end of the market + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
Light Generates Electricity
(via National Geographic Magazine) Light generates electricity with the aid of crystals, a boon to camera fans and space scientists. When sunlight strikes the crystalline selenium in a light meter or the silicon solar cells on a satellite, electrons in the crystals become activated, providing the current that powers the meter and satellite.
Friday, June 29, 2007
The Art Of Failure
Malcolm Gladwell writes about performance studies + why some people choke and others panic @ http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_08_21_a_choking.htm
Threads: Their Types And Some Of Their Characters
(via The Journal of Gemmology, Vol 12, No.7, July 1971) Robert Webster writes:
For some time it has been the writer’s intention to consider some aspects of the nature of threads used to string pearls and beads into necklets, for the subject, which one might readily admit is not gemology proper, does have some importance in answering questions sometimes posed to a laboratory.
The reason which has prompted further investigation into this sphere devolved from some remarks made by the late Dr V B Meen, of Canada, after the writer had read a paper on damage to gemstones at the XIIIth International Gemmological Conference held at Brussels in 1970. During this talk the blackening of some cultured cultured pearls by the action of cosmetic creams was mentioned.
Dr Meen asked if any attention had been paid to the type of thread which had been used in stringing the pearls in the case mentioned, as some types of thread were more prone to attract grease than others. It was possible to show that in the records of this case there was a note to the effect that the string did not appear to be normal, but that this aspect was not pursued.
There may be other problems, too, where some information on the nature of the string used in threading beads may well be needed. This article is an attempt to give a short survey and to provide a basis for any future investigation. It will be readily seen that any full-scale investigation on the types and characters of threads would be a long-term project, but one which might well be worthwhile.
According to Walls threads, the more scientific name being fibres, can be classified into four groups as follows:
1. Animal hairs such as wool, mohair (Angora goat), camel, none of which have any place in the present study.
2. Vegetable fibres, which are divided into two groups. (a) Seed hairs, such as cotton and kapok, cotton being the only one which needs consideration here. (b) Bast and structural fibres; these are exemplified by flax (linen), jute, hemp and sisal. Only flax is of interest.
3. Fibres produced by the solidification of a liquid extruded through a fine orifice; these are again subdivided into sub-groups:-
(a) Natural, of which silk is the only important member.
(b) Artificial (man-made); there are two well defined groups:-
(i) Those made from animal or vegetable raw materials, such as regenerated cellulose (Rayon); cellulose esters, usually acetate (Tricel, Arnel, Trilon); alginates (from seaweed); regenerated proteins (casein) and others.
(ii) Purely synthetic fibres: such as polyolefines (polyethylene, etc); polyamides (Nylon, Brilon); polyesters (e.g. Terylene—Dacron in the United States of America—a polyethylene terephthalate); acrylonitrile polymers (Orlon, Acrilan, Courtelle, etc); vinyl chloride and vinylidene chloride polymers (Vinyon, Saran, and others).
4. Miscellaneous fibres; such fibres are natural mineral fibres (asbestos) and fibres of glass, metal, etc. which have no place in this study.
Of these numerous fibres, most of which are used in the textile industry, the only ones which need to be discussed are silk, cotton, linen, and some of the artificial fibres, particularly Nylon.
Silk
The most important fibre used for pearl stringing, silk is produced by the caterpillar of the moth Bombyx mori, which, when fully grown, spins a cocoon with a secretion produced by the caterpillar from a pair of tubular spinning glands. Each of these glands produces a single fibre, which is at first in a fluid condition.
These two fibres are then, by muscular action, and possibly aided by another secretion, formed into a single thread. This is silk, an albumoid, and the fibres normally receive certain cleaning treatments before being spun and woven into fabrics.
When a flame is applied to the end of a silk thread it burns, but does not readily flame, and the thread forms a shriveled blob. The flame does not tend to travel along the thread and is quickly extinguished. Under the microscope the threads are seen to be more or less structureless cylindrical rods which at places may flatten or bulge out. The fluorescence varies considerably due, as mentioned by Radley and Grant, to the fact that dressing agents, oils and dyestuffs, often completely alter the color of the fluorescence, and these writers also state that small traces of fluorescent dyestuffs added as brightening agents may produce complicating effects in ultraviolet light. Fluorescence can have scant discriminative value in the detection of the fibres themselves.
Cotton
Threads of cotton are not normally used for pearl stringing but some mention is included in this survey for there is reason to believe that they have been used for such a purpose, and, further, they are certainly used for stringing necklets of amber, coral, jet and some ornamental stones, such as malachite and rhodonite. Star sylko or Clark’s anchor stranded embroidery silks are often used for stringing such necklets.
The most important of the vegetable fibres, cotton, consists of white or yellowish-colored fibres which are obtained from the seeds of various species of the genus Gossypium of the order Malvaccae. Well bleached cotton is said to be nearly pure cellulose.
When a flame is applied to cotton threads they readily burn with the flame traveling along the thread leaving very little ash. On extinction of the flame the glowing embers emit a smell of burnt wood. When fibres of raw cotton are examined under the microscope the general appearance resembles that of a wrinkled, twisted irregular ribbon which may be likened to an exhausted rubber tubing. After treatment, such as mercerizing, which imparts a luster to the cotton so that it resembles to some extent silk, the typical appearance of the threads may not be so apparent under magnification.
Linen
The name is derived from the flax plant Linum usitatissimum, which is pulled just after flowering. The linen fibre, being the first layer under the epidermis of the stalk is separated from the rest of the stalk by retting in stagnant or running water. Following this the mucilaginous substances contained in the flax are removed by suitable treatments.
Like cotton, linen burns fairly readily with, on extinction, a smell of smoldering wood. Examined under the microscope the central canal is not so marked as in cotton and the fibre has notches at irregular intervals, and, further, may show diagonal striations. Linen lacks the convolutions shown by cotton fibres.
Artificial fibres
The beginning of the artificial fibre industry began with the work of Count Hilaire de Chardonnet of France during the 1880’s, although as early as 1665 the idea of making artificial silk was mooted by Robert Hooke. Chardonnet’s silk was nitrated cellulose, a type of celluloid, and was far too inflammable and, indeed, the sale of this silk was eventually banned in France.
The next advance in the production of artificial silks was due to the work of C F Cross and E J Bevan, who produced the rayons. These fibres were and are produced by regenerating cellulose. Plant cellulose, such as cotton linters, wood-pulp, are chemically dissolved and then regenerated and extruded through a diaphragm pierced with very fine orifices called spinnerette. Such regenerated cellulose fibres are Viscose rayon, cuprammonium rayon, and acetate rayon, but these fibres have little importance in this discussion.
The most important of the man-made fibres for this study is the super-polyamide called nylon, the production of which was the outcome of researches carried out by the American plastics chemist Carothers, aided by some of his colleagues. Made from hydrocarbons obtained from coal, and from ammonia, nylon, of which there are at least three types, is said to be twice as strong as silk and to be more elastic. It is probably due to this latter effect that nylon is not favored for pearl stringing as it does not knot well is inclined to stretch. There are two kinds of nylon cord which may be purchased for pearl and bead stringing. The first is made up of twisted fibres and resembles the true pearl silk, while the other, more used for beads than pearls, consists of a single strand, like a flexible rod. There is a variation of this latter type which is wound round with a spiral of fine metal wire and presumably used for heavy beads. If the single strand nylon cord is used for pearls or lightweight beads the necklet tends to bow and does not hand at all well.
Nylon melts before burning, producing a sticky blob which follows the flame traveling along the string. This blob of molten material, if dropped on to the skin, burns like hot fat. The flame of burning nylon is, however, readily extinguished. Nylons, like most of the other man-made fibres, are usually assumed to be structureless internally, but microscopical examination has shown that there appear to be masses of fine bubbles oriented parallel to the length of the fibre. This phenomenon seems to be more prominent in the case of nylon and this may be accounted for as nylon is extruded from a molten mass and not from a liquid which is expelled through the spinnerettes into a coagulating bath which solidifies the fibres.
In order to ascertain the probability of differential absorption of grease by various fibres a series of experiments were undertaken. A frame was constructed consisting of a length of channel aluminum, bored with eight small holes through both sides, which was screwed down to a suitable baseboard. The metal channel, intended to carry the grease, was closed at each end by aluminum angle plates. A series of different threads were then threaded through the holes in the channel and anchored so that they were fixed at the outer face of the channel. The threads then passed across the channel and across the baseboard for a distance of some 12 centimeters, where the ends were anchored to a fixed wooden strip by the aid of drawing pins. Suitable lettered labels were stuck down on the baseboard in order to identify the strands.
It was considered that suitable grease would be a cosmetic cream and Pond’s cold cream was used. To ascertain if the grease traveled along the string a small quantity of the chemical rhodamine was mixed with the cold cream, the notion being that it would not only give color to the but would show up under ultraviolet light, for rhodamine is highly fluorescent and glows with an orange or reddish brown light. During the experiment the frame was kept in a glass-topped box.
The strings used in the first experiment were as follows:
(a) Silk (dyed brown)
(b) Pearl silk
(c) Sylko mercerized cotton
(d) Linen thread
(e) Terylene thread
(f) Nylon (single thread)
(g) Spun nylon pearl silk (Nylcord)
(h) Clark’s anchor stranded embroidery cotton
The result observed after the grease had been placed in the channel was striking in that within an hour the grease had traveled down some of the threads, admittedly not very far but with significant differences. Strangely the seepage seemed to stop at these points and there was little further increase even after a week. The distances the grease, which colored the strings, had traveled along the strings were then measured, giving the following results:
(a) Dyed silk: no apparent effect
(b) Pearl silk: very weak seepage of about 1.5 mm
(c) Sylko mercerized cotton: 5mm
(d) Linen: 2mm
(e) Terylene: 4mm
(f) Nylon single cord: no effect
(g) Twisted nylon (Nylcord): 11mm
(h) Embroidery cotton: 3mm
The frame was then unstrung and the grease removed and kept, and the frame itself thoroughly cleaned and restrung with different threads as under:
(a) A fine tacking cotton
(b) Brown linen thread
(c) Terylene, same type of thread as in (e) in first run
(d) Pearl stringing silk. A different source from (b) above
(e) Pure silk (yellow dyed Regal)
(f) Polyethylene thread (blue dyed)
(g) Terylene (Coat’s white)
(h) Embroidery silk (cotton) as in (h) above
The cold cream plus rhodamine, which was removed from the channel after the first run, was then mixed with as much again of the cold cream but no more rhodamine added. Thus the concentration of rhodamine was only half that of the previous mixture.
After some hours the frame and threads were examined, but the results appeared to be disappointing, mainly because the lower concentration of rhodamine did not strikingly color the threads, and the fluorescence effects were masked by the strong whitish glow emitted by the threads themselves. However, some trace of differential seepage was apparent.
There was always the question of how much body heat would affect the mobility of grease in the case of a necklet worn for some time around the neck. To test this, the frame was removed from the glass-topped box and placed on a warm print dryer. This print dryer gave off much more heat than the heat given off by a human body, and, hence, the results obtained would be expected to be much more rapid, as, indeed they seemed to be as the following shows:
(a) Cotton thread: diffuse staining decreasing in intensity up to 5 to 6 cms
(b) Linen: a little staining up to 2 to 3 mm
(c) Terylene: slight tinting for practically the full length of the string
(d) Pearl silk: very slight staining for 3 to 4 cms
(e) Yellow dyed pure silk: very slight staining
(f) Polyethylene: color of the dyed thread precluded much in the way of observation or by fluorescence
(g) Terylene: weak staining for a considerable distance, and in fact seemed to behave rather like (c)
(h) Cotton embroidery silk: staining for about 15 mm
Note: the very slight staining of the Terylenes (c) and (g) could only be identified by comparison with thread taken from the original reels.
In conclusion, it may be said that the experiments have shown that there is some justification for the suggestion that there is differential absorption and percolation of grease along fibres of different natures. However, much more information is required and far more experimentation needs to be carried out on a greater number of kinds of fibres for a really full study of the subject. It seems apparent that twisted fibres tend to carry grease more readily than single strand material, as exemplified by the nylon samples tested. This was rather to be expected and most probably due to the greater possibility of capillary attraction between the threads.
Most of the threads carried grease for upwards of two millimeters, and as the nacreous shell of a cultured pearl is seldom more than a millimeter thick, it is clear that the grease would reach the discontinuation layer between the skin and the bead of the cultured pearl and tend to travel along it, as indeed, was found to have happened in the case mentioned at the beginning of this article.
What is further to be considered is that the experiments were carried out with static threads on a frame. There is movement of the beads on a necklet when it is worn and this would assist the grease to seep along the string. What does seem to be proved by the experiments is that silk is the best material to use in stringing natural and cultured pearls and to use other types of thread may well lead to trouble for the jeweler.
For some time it has been the writer’s intention to consider some aspects of the nature of threads used to string pearls and beads into necklets, for the subject, which one might readily admit is not gemology proper, does have some importance in answering questions sometimes posed to a laboratory.
The reason which has prompted further investigation into this sphere devolved from some remarks made by the late Dr V B Meen, of Canada, after the writer had read a paper on damage to gemstones at the XIIIth International Gemmological Conference held at Brussels in 1970. During this talk the blackening of some cultured cultured pearls by the action of cosmetic creams was mentioned.
Dr Meen asked if any attention had been paid to the type of thread which had been used in stringing the pearls in the case mentioned, as some types of thread were more prone to attract grease than others. It was possible to show that in the records of this case there was a note to the effect that the string did not appear to be normal, but that this aspect was not pursued.
There may be other problems, too, where some information on the nature of the string used in threading beads may well be needed. This article is an attempt to give a short survey and to provide a basis for any future investigation. It will be readily seen that any full-scale investigation on the types and characters of threads would be a long-term project, but one which might well be worthwhile.
According to Walls threads, the more scientific name being fibres, can be classified into four groups as follows:
1. Animal hairs such as wool, mohair (Angora goat), camel, none of which have any place in the present study.
2. Vegetable fibres, which are divided into two groups. (a) Seed hairs, such as cotton and kapok, cotton being the only one which needs consideration here. (b) Bast and structural fibres; these are exemplified by flax (linen), jute, hemp and sisal. Only flax is of interest.
3. Fibres produced by the solidification of a liquid extruded through a fine orifice; these are again subdivided into sub-groups:-
(a) Natural, of which silk is the only important member.
(b) Artificial (man-made); there are two well defined groups:-
(i) Those made from animal or vegetable raw materials, such as regenerated cellulose (Rayon); cellulose esters, usually acetate (Tricel, Arnel, Trilon); alginates (from seaweed); regenerated proteins (casein) and others.
(ii) Purely synthetic fibres: such as polyolefines (polyethylene, etc); polyamides (Nylon, Brilon); polyesters (e.g. Terylene—Dacron in the United States of America—a polyethylene terephthalate); acrylonitrile polymers (Orlon, Acrilan, Courtelle, etc); vinyl chloride and vinylidene chloride polymers (Vinyon, Saran, and others).
4. Miscellaneous fibres; such fibres are natural mineral fibres (asbestos) and fibres of glass, metal, etc. which have no place in this study.
Of these numerous fibres, most of which are used in the textile industry, the only ones which need to be discussed are silk, cotton, linen, and some of the artificial fibres, particularly Nylon.
Silk
The most important fibre used for pearl stringing, silk is produced by the caterpillar of the moth Bombyx mori, which, when fully grown, spins a cocoon with a secretion produced by the caterpillar from a pair of tubular spinning glands. Each of these glands produces a single fibre, which is at first in a fluid condition.
These two fibres are then, by muscular action, and possibly aided by another secretion, formed into a single thread. This is silk, an albumoid, and the fibres normally receive certain cleaning treatments before being spun and woven into fabrics.
When a flame is applied to the end of a silk thread it burns, but does not readily flame, and the thread forms a shriveled blob. The flame does not tend to travel along the thread and is quickly extinguished. Under the microscope the threads are seen to be more or less structureless cylindrical rods which at places may flatten or bulge out. The fluorescence varies considerably due, as mentioned by Radley and Grant, to the fact that dressing agents, oils and dyestuffs, often completely alter the color of the fluorescence, and these writers also state that small traces of fluorescent dyestuffs added as brightening agents may produce complicating effects in ultraviolet light. Fluorescence can have scant discriminative value in the detection of the fibres themselves.
Cotton
Threads of cotton are not normally used for pearl stringing but some mention is included in this survey for there is reason to believe that they have been used for such a purpose, and, further, they are certainly used for stringing necklets of amber, coral, jet and some ornamental stones, such as malachite and rhodonite. Star sylko or Clark’s anchor stranded embroidery silks are often used for stringing such necklets.
The most important of the vegetable fibres, cotton, consists of white or yellowish-colored fibres which are obtained from the seeds of various species of the genus Gossypium of the order Malvaccae. Well bleached cotton is said to be nearly pure cellulose.
When a flame is applied to cotton threads they readily burn with the flame traveling along the thread leaving very little ash. On extinction of the flame the glowing embers emit a smell of burnt wood. When fibres of raw cotton are examined under the microscope the general appearance resembles that of a wrinkled, twisted irregular ribbon which may be likened to an exhausted rubber tubing. After treatment, such as mercerizing, which imparts a luster to the cotton so that it resembles to some extent silk, the typical appearance of the threads may not be so apparent under magnification.
Linen
The name is derived from the flax plant Linum usitatissimum, which is pulled just after flowering. The linen fibre, being the first layer under the epidermis of the stalk is separated from the rest of the stalk by retting in stagnant or running water. Following this the mucilaginous substances contained in the flax are removed by suitable treatments.
Like cotton, linen burns fairly readily with, on extinction, a smell of smoldering wood. Examined under the microscope the central canal is not so marked as in cotton and the fibre has notches at irregular intervals, and, further, may show diagonal striations. Linen lacks the convolutions shown by cotton fibres.
Artificial fibres
The beginning of the artificial fibre industry began with the work of Count Hilaire de Chardonnet of France during the 1880’s, although as early as 1665 the idea of making artificial silk was mooted by Robert Hooke. Chardonnet’s silk was nitrated cellulose, a type of celluloid, and was far too inflammable and, indeed, the sale of this silk was eventually banned in France.
The next advance in the production of artificial silks was due to the work of C F Cross and E J Bevan, who produced the rayons. These fibres were and are produced by regenerating cellulose. Plant cellulose, such as cotton linters, wood-pulp, are chemically dissolved and then regenerated and extruded through a diaphragm pierced with very fine orifices called spinnerette. Such regenerated cellulose fibres are Viscose rayon, cuprammonium rayon, and acetate rayon, but these fibres have little importance in this discussion.
The most important of the man-made fibres for this study is the super-polyamide called nylon, the production of which was the outcome of researches carried out by the American plastics chemist Carothers, aided by some of his colleagues. Made from hydrocarbons obtained from coal, and from ammonia, nylon, of which there are at least three types, is said to be twice as strong as silk and to be more elastic. It is probably due to this latter effect that nylon is not favored for pearl stringing as it does not knot well is inclined to stretch. There are two kinds of nylon cord which may be purchased for pearl and bead stringing. The first is made up of twisted fibres and resembles the true pearl silk, while the other, more used for beads than pearls, consists of a single strand, like a flexible rod. There is a variation of this latter type which is wound round with a spiral of fine metal wire and presumably used for heavy beads. If the single strand nylon cord is used for pearls or lightweight beads the necklet tends to bow and does not hand at all well.
Nylon melts before burning, producing a sticky blob which follows the flame traveling along the string. This blob of molten material, if dropped on to the skin, burns like hot fat. The flame of burning nylon is, however, readily extinguished. Nylons, like most of the other man-made fibres, are usually assumed to be structureless internally, but microscopical examination has shown that there appear to be masses of fine bubbles oriented parallel to the length of the fibre. This phenomenon seems to be more prominent in the case of nylon and this may be accounted for as nylon is extruded from a molten mass and not from a liquid which is expelled through the spinnerettes into a coagulating bath which solidifies the fibres.
In order to ascertain the probability of differential absorption of grease by various fibres a series of experiments were undertaken. A frame was constructed consisting of a length of channel aluminum, bored with eight small holes through both sides, which was screwed down to a suitable baseboard. The metal channel, intended to carry the grease, was closed at each end by aluminum angle plates. A series of different threads were then threaded through the holes in the channel and anchored so that they were fixed at the outer face of the channel. The threads then passed across the channel and across the baseboard for a distance of some 12 centimeters, where the ends were anchored to a fixed wooden strip by the aid of drawing pins. Suitable lettered labels were stuck down on the baseboard in order to identify the strands.
It was considered that suitable grease would be a cosmetic cream and Pond’s cold cream was used. To ascertain if the grease traveled along the string a small quantity of the chemical rhodamine was mixed with the cold cream, the notion being that it would not only give color to the but would show up under ultraviolet light, for rhodamine is highly fluorescent and glows with an orange or reddish brown light. During the experiment the frame was kept in a glass-topped box.
The strings used in the first experiment were as follows:
(a) Silk (dyed brown)
(b) Pearl silk
(c) Sylko mercerized cotton
(d) Linen thread
(e) Terylene thread
(f) Nylon (single thread)
(g) Spun nylon pearl silk (Nylcord)
(h) Clark’s anchor stranded embroidery cotton
The result observed after the grease had been placed in the channel was striking in that within an hour the grease had traveled down some of the threads, admittedly not very far but with significant differences. Strangely the seepage seemed to stop at these points and there was little further increase even after a week. The distances the grease, which colored the strings, had traveled along the strings were then measured, giving the following results:
(a) Dyed silk: no apparent effect
(b) Pearl silk: very weak seepage of about 1.5 mm
(c) Sylko mercerized cotton: 5mm
(d) Linen: 2mm
(e) Terylene: 4mm
(f) Nylon single cord: no effect
(g) Twisted nylon (Nylcord): 11mm
(h) Embroidery cotton: 3mm
The frame was then unstrung and the grease removed and kept, and the frame itself thoroughly cleaned and restrung with different threads as under:
(a) A fine tacking cotton
(b) Brown linen thread
(c) Terylene, same type of thread as in (e) in first run
(d) Pearl stringing silk. A different source from (b) above
(e) Pure silk (yellow dyed Regal)
(f) Polyethylene thread (blue dyed)
(g) Terylene (Coat’s white)
(h) Embroidery silk (cotton) as in (h) above
The cold cream plus rhodamine, which was removed from the channel after the first run, was then mixed with as much again of the cold cream but no more rhodamine added. Thus the concentration of rhodamine was only half that of the previous mixture.
After some hours the frame and threads were examined, but the results appeared to be disappointing, mainly because the lower concentration of rhodamine did not strikingly color the threads, and the fluorescence effects were masked by the strong whitish glow emitted by the threads themselves. However, some trace of differential seepage was apparent.
There was always the question of how much body heat would affect the mobility of grease in the case of a necklet worn for some time around the neck. To test this, the frame was removed from the glass-topped box and placed on a warm print dryer. This print dryer gave off much more heat than the heat given off by a human body, and, hence, the results obtained would be expected to be much more rapid, as, indeed they seemed to be as the following shows:
(a) Cotton thread: diffuse staining decreasing in intensity up to 5 to 6 cms
(b) Linen: a little staining up to 2 to 3 mm
(c) Terylene: slight tinting for practically the full length of the string
(d) Pearl silk: very slight staining for 3 to 4 cms
(e) Yellow dyed pure silk: very slight staining
(f) Polyethylene: color of the dyed thread precluded much in the way of observation or by fluorescence
(g) Terylene: weak staining for a considerable distance, and in fact seemed to behave rather like (c)
(h) Cotton embroidery silk: staining for about 15 mm
Note: the very slight staining of the Terylenes (c) and (g) could only be identified by comparison with thread taken from the original reels.
In conclusion, it may be said that the experiments have shown that there is some justification for the suggestion that there is differential absorption and percolation of grease along fibres of different natures. However, much more information is required and far more experimentation needs to be carried out on a greater number of kinds of fibres for a really full study of the subject. It seems apparent that twisted fibres tend to carry grease more readily than single strand material, as exemplified by the nylon samples tested. This was rather to be expected and most probably due to the greater possibility of capillary attraction between the threads.
Most of the threads carried grease for upwards of two millimeters, and as the nacreous shell of a cultured pearl is seldom more than a millimeter thick, it is clear that the grease would reach the discontinuation layer between the skin and the bead of the cultured pearl and tend to travel along it, as indeed, was found to have happened in the case mentioned at the beginning of this article.
What is further to be considered is that the experiments were carried out with static threads on a frame. There is movement of the beads on a necklet when it is worn and this would assist the grease to seep along the string. What does seem to be proved by the experiments is that silk is the best material to use in stringing natural and cultured pearls and to use other types of thread may well lead to trouble for the jeweler.
Paying The Price For Suffering Banking Discord
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about M Fabrikant & Sons + the bankers + risk-mitigation strategies of banks + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=26543
Audio Slideshow: Sapphire Miners
BBC writes about Madagascar gemstone deposits, especially sapphires + other colored stones, with more than half the population living in miserable conditions @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/629/629/6230594.stm
Delicate Whiskers
(via National Geographic Magazine) Delicate whiskers each a single crystal of sapphire, possess amazing strength and heat resistance. Combined with metals, they form materials that may one day meet the structural demands of superlength suspension bridges and heat-plagued hypersonic aircraft.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Treatment Of Verneuil Synthetic Corundum
Heat treatment of Verneuil synthetic corundum at temperatures of more than 1600°C can substantially reduce the visibility of curved color banding and striations (striae arise from fluctuations in the composition used for the feed in the flame fusion process). The high temperatures reached in the treatment process allow these impurities to diffuse, and become much less prominent. If the heating is irregular, with sudden temperature changes, small surface cracks can be developed at the surface of Verneuil synthetic corundums. If these cracked corundums are then packed in borax and heated once more, partial healing takes place, and some of the borax penetrates into surface fissures producing features very similar to those seen in natural ruby (Nassau). Many colored varieties of treated synthetic corundums are sold in the gem markets and mines around the world as natural. Even experienced gemologists make mistakes perceiving them to be natural.
Blowing Up
Malcolm Gladwell writes about Nassim Taleb + the way he turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy @ http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm
It's The Distribution – Stupid!
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about sight boxes + the pricing + rapidly growing diamond industry + the bad apples in the industry + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=26510
The Treasure Of The Moghul Emperors Of India
(via The Journal of Gemmology, Vol.12. No.3, July 1970) N Viswanath writes:
During the 16th and 17th centuries, India was ruled by the Emperors of the Moghul Dynasty. Of them, six were the most powerful and notable. They were: Babar, Humayun, Akbar, Jehangir, Shahjahan and Aurangzeb. With the death of the last Emperor, the dynasty began disintegrating.
It was during the reign of the last three Emperors that the wealth of the Moghuls was at its peak. Historians have been unable as yet to determine exactly how much the Moghul treasure was worth as some of it was looted by subsequent rulers of India.
Fortunately, Emperor Jehangir has left an authoritative account of his treasure and the list still exists. There was bullion in his treasury amounting to seven tons of gold, and 1116 tons of silver. Among precious stones, there were 80 pounds (more than 5,000,000 carats) of uncut diamonds, 100 pounds each of rubies and emeralds, and 600 pounds of pearls. “Of the other less important varieties of precious stones, the quantity is infinite,” says the document.
The royal armory included 2000 swords studded with diamond-encrusted handles, and the court furniture included 103 chairs of solid silver and five of solid gold. For high dignitaries and visiting monarchs, there were better seating arrangements. Five gorgeous thrones, two of gold and three of silver, were set apart for such persons. Emperor Jehangir himself had seven diamond-studded thrones besides the famous Peacock Throne.
Jehangir’s bathtub today, would be worth the ransom of a billionaire. It was seven feet by five feet in dimensions and was decorated with diamonds to relieve the drabness of gold.
His son Shahjehan, the fifth Moghul Emperor who built the world famous Taj Mahal at Agra was a great connoisseur himself. It was said of him that there was no jeweler in the East who could value precious stones better than he could and the emperor had all luck in pursuing his hobby. He had the first choice of the world’s richest diamond mines, the famous Goldconda fields, and only his rejections were allowed to circulate in the market.
Incidentally, until 1726 AD, the major sources of diamonds in the world were the Golconda mines in India. The Pitt, the Regent, and the Kohinoor are a few of the historic diamonds that owe their origin to Golconda.
Sir Thomas Roe, the British Ambassador to Emperor Shahjehan’s Court, knew to his cost that there could no trifling with the Emperor. Sir Thomas had something like the mythical Unicorn’s horn to palm off. Knowing Shahjehan’s weakness for rare treasure, Sir Thomas tried some sales talk with the Emperor saying that he was offering the horn to him only because the Emperor was the person to appreciate its value.
The horn was supposed to have the rare property of neutralizing any poisonous liquid and as such was considered to be a very welcome gift to sovereigns like Shahjehan, whose life was always in constant danger from enemies. He had hoped this would induce the Emperor to pass it at a high price.
But the shrewd Emperor knew that the horn was not worth the price quoted. He merely thanked the Ambassador and dropped the subject with a courteous expression. The diplomat had to find some other gullible purchaser, and finally, it was disposed of at a cheap price to a Dutch captain.
Shahjehan was no hoarder and often gave away fabulous gems as outright gifts. One day, a diamond brighter than the Pole Star came to his hands from the Golconda mines and the bulwark of Islam as Shahjehan like to call himself, decided that this would be a worthy gift to the Prophet’s Mosque at Mecca. He immediately ordered that a gold candelabra weighing 14 pounds be selected, embellished it with the brighter than the Pole Star diamond, and had it sent post-haste to Mecca. Today, a conservative value of the gift would be about ten million rupees.
Imperial wars also brought treasures to the royal jewel box. When the Moghul forces invaded his domain during the early part of Shahjehan’s reign, the King of Golconda found it advisable to make a peace offering. He sent 200 caskets of jewels to placate the Emperor. But the unfortunate King did not escape his fate. With avarice kindled at the gift, Shahjehan ordered his troops to advance, and they returned with booty exceeding 300 million rupees in value.
No historian could make a correct estimate of Shahjehan’s wealth of which it was said that it was greater than that of his nearest rivals, the Emperors of France and Persia, put together.
But then, there had to be a place to keep all his booty. One fine morning, the Emperor was told by the Master of the Treasury that it was choking with jewels, and that something had to be done to the strong room to relieve the congestion. The Emperor mused for a while. The problem was finally solved by the creation of the famous Peacock Throne. In the late 17th century when it was made, the Throne was valued at an amount equivalent to 530 million rupees. The Throne was completed after seven years of unceasing labor by the Emperor’s best craftsmen.
The plate and cutlery of Shahjehan’s palace weighed 25 tons of gold and 50 tons of silver, respectively. The mere gold content of the plate would today be worth more than 15 million rupees.
In one of his tributes to Shahjehan, Sir Thomas Roe has remarked that the King of Bijapur sent to the Emperor 36 elephants, two of which were adorned with gold chains weighing 400 pounds. There were 50 horses in the gift with trappings worth five million rupees. All possible care was taken that the precious stones were properly graded according to the exacting imperial specifications. For example, the diamonds were divided into 12 categories while pearls were of 16 varying grades.
The draperies of the palace were valued at ten million rupees, and the furnishings include chinaware to the value of 2,500,000 rupees. All the porcelain was imported from China under a special order from the Emperor and was among the best in the era.
The Moghul Emperors were so particular about chinaware that once when a high-ranking officer of the imperial household broke a matching piece of porcelain dish, Emperor Aurangazeb behaved as roughly as an ordinary housewife. He was on a tour of his domains in South India when the hapless official dropped the fruit dish in the capital, Delhi, about 1000 and odd miles away from the Emperor. The culprit knew full well that his carelessness would bring a halter round his neck and at once dispatched a messenger to China to bring back a similar dish to complete the set. He had hoped that the dish would reach Delhi before the Emperor returned from his tour. Unfortunately for him, the Emperor returned far ahead of the schedule, and in course of time, wanted his favorite fruit dish. The trembling official related the accident, and in view of the fact that arrangements had already been made to get a replacement, the official was temporarily excused and suspended pending arrival of the caravan from China.
But the notorious Central Asian robbers made short work of the messengers and the money they carried for purchase of the chinaware. When the period of grace elapsed and there was no news from China, the irate Emperor gave the official the choice between immediate execution and that of going to China to get the porcelain dish.
The official chose the latter course and began the hazardous journey to Cathay (China). As his whole family was held as hostages by the Emperor, he had to be particularly careful about his life and chose the safe route through the Pamir mountains, the so-called backbone of the world. The ranges of the Pamir tower to a height of about 23000 feet and one can very well imagine the plight of the official. Fortunately, Heaven took pity on him and the story of this official reached the court of the then Persian Emperor. This monarch ordered his Grand Wazier to look in the royal Persian cupboards to find whether there was any porcelain dish to match the one for which the official was searching. Happily, such a piece was found, and the Persian Emperor ordered that a gift of this porcelain dish be made to the official. But the poor man was so much broken down in health from the rigors of the journey that he died en route by the time deliverance came.
Emperor Shahjehan did not keep all his treasures in one place. They were divided in varying proportions and were kept in fortresses in different parts of the empire. There were seven of these treasure forts, besides the capital of Delhi. They were Gwalior, Marwar, Lahore, Rantambher, Asirgarh, Rohstsagar, and of course, Agra. The Lahore fort contained the maximum quantity of bullion, while Agra, as the Emperor’s favorite citadel, held most of the jewels.
A comparison with monarchs of the present century puts Shahjehan in a very favorable light. The wealth of the British Sovereign is estimated at about 170 million dollars. But at a time when the money value was at least six times greater than that of the present era, Shahjehan’s treasury must have held billions of rupees worth of valuables.
The last Nizam of Hyderabad in India, who was a remote descendant of the Moghul dynasty, had treasure and jewelry which it was almost impossible to sell for want of buyers. What can one do with mats oven with priceless pearls and shirts studded with diamonds? He had a paperweight, the famous Jacob diamond, a treasure of 150 carats, the rock-bottom price of which was about 150 lakh rupees.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, India was ruled by the Emperors of the Moghul Dynasty. Of them, six were the most powerful and notable. They were: Babar, Humayun, Akbar, Jehangir, Shahjahan and Aurangzeb. With the death of the last Emperor, the dynasty began disintegrating.
It was during the reign of the last three Emperors that the wealth of the Moghuls was at its peak. Historians have been unable as yet to determine exactly how much the Moghul treasure was worth as some of it was looted by subsequent rulers of India.
Fortunately, Emperor Jehangir has left an authoritative account of his treasure and the list still exists. There was bullion in his treasury amounting to seven tons of gold, and 1116 tons of silver. Among precious stones, there were 80 pounds (more than 5,000,000 carats) of uncut diamonds, 100 pounds each of rubies and emeralds, and 600 pounds of pearls. “Of the other less important varieties of precious stones, the quantity is infinite,” says the document.
The royal armory included 2000 swords studded with diamond-encrusted handles, and the court furniture included 103 chairs of solid silver and five of solid gold. For high dignitaries and visiting monarchs, there were better seating arrangements. Five gorgeous thrones, two of gold and three of silver, were set apart for such persons. Emperor Jehangir himself had seven diamond-studded thrones besides the famous Peacock Throne.
Jehangir’s bathtub today, would be worth the ransom of a billionaire. It was seven feet by five feet in dimensions and was decorated with diamonds to relieve the drabness of gold.
His son Shahjehan, the fifth Moghul Emperor who built the world famous Taj Mahal at Agra was a great connoisseur himself. It was said of him that there was no jeweler in the East who could value precious stones better than he could and the emperor had all luck in pursuing his hobby. He had the first choice of the world’s richest diamond mines, the famous Goldconda fields, and only his rejections were allowed to circulate in the market.
Incidentally, until 1726 AD, the major sources of diamonds in the world were the Golconda mines in India. The Pitt, the Regent, and the Kohinoor are a few of the historic diamonds that owe their origin to Golconda.
Sir Thomas Roe, the British Ambassador to Emperor Shahjehan’s Court, knew to his cost that there could no trifling with the Emperor. Sir Thomas had something like the mythical Unicorn’s horn to palm off. Knowing Shahjehan’s weakness for rare treasure, Sir Thomas tried some sales talk with the Emperor saying that he was offering the horn to him only because the Emperor was the person to appreciate its value.
The horn was supposed to have the rare property of neutralizing any poisonous liquid and as such was considered to be a very welcome gift to sovereigns like Shahjehan, whose life was always in constant danger from enemies. He had hoped this would induce the Emperor to pass it at a high price.
But the shrewd Emperor knew that the horn was not worth the price quoted. He merely thanked the Ambassador and dropped the subject with a courteous expression. The diplomat had to find some other gullible purchaser, and finally, it was disposed of at a cheap price to a Dutch captain.
Shahjehan was no hoarder and often gave away fabulous gems as outright gifts. One day, a diamond brighter than the Pole Star came to his hands from the Golconda mines and the bulwark of Islam as Shahjehan like to call himself, decided that this would be a worthy gift to the Prophet’s Mosque at Mecca. He immediately ordered that a gold candelabra weighing 14 pounds be selected, embellished it with the brighter than the Pole Star diamond, and had it sent post-haste to Mecca. Today, a conservative value of the gift would be about ten million rupees.
Imperial wars also brought treasures to the royal jewel box. When the Moghul forces invaded his domain during the early part of Shahjehan’s reign, the King of Golconda found it advisable to make a peace offering. He sent 200 caskets of jewels to placate the Emperor. But the unfortunate King did not escape his fate. With avarice kindled at the gift, Shahjehan ordered his troops to advance, and they returned with booty exceeding 300 million rupees in value.
No historian could make a correct estimate of Shahjehan’s wealth of which it was said that it was greater than that of his nearest rivals, the Emperors of France and Persia, put together.
But then, there had to be a place to keep all his booty. One fine morning, the Emperor was told by the Master of the Treasury that it was choking with jewels, and that something had to be done to the strong room to relieve the congestion. The Emperor mused for a while. The problem was finally solved by the creation of the famous Peacock Throne. In the late 17th century when it was made, the Throne was valued at an amount equivalent to 530 million rupees. The Throne was completed after seven years of unceasing labor by the Emperor’s best craftsmen.
The plate and cutlery of Shahjehan’s palace weighed 25 tons of gold and 50 tons of silver, respectively. The mere gold content of the plate would today be worth more than 15 million rupees.
In one of his tributes to Shahjehan, Sir Thomas Roe has remarked that the King of Bijapur sent to the Emperor 36 elephants, two of which were adorned with gold chains weighing 400 pounds. There were 50 horses in the gift with trappings worth five million rupees. All possible care was taken that the precious stones were properly graded according to the exacting imperial specifications. For example, the diamonds were divided into 12 categories while pearls were of 16 varying grades.
The draperies of the palace were valued at ten million rupees, and the furnishings include chinaware to the value of 2,500,000 rupees. All the porcelain was imported from China under a special order from the Emperor and was among the best in the era.
The Moghul Emperors were so particular about chinaware that once when a high-ranking officer of the imperial household broke a matching piece of porcelain dish, Emperor Aurangazeb behaved as roughly as an ordinary housewife. He was on a tour of his domains in South India when the hapless official dropped the fruit dish in the capital, Delhi, about 1000 and odd miles away from the Emperor. The culprit knew full well that his carelessness would bring a halter round his neck and at once dispatched a messenger to China to bring back a similar dish to complete the set. He had hoped that the dish would reach Delhi before the Emperor returned from his tour. Unfortunately for him, the Emperor returned far ahead of the schedule, and in course of time, wanted his favorite fruit dish. The trembling official related the accident, and in view of the fact that arrangements had already been made to get a replacement, the official was temporarily excused and suspended pending arrival of the caravan from China.
But the notorious Central Asian robbers made short work of the messengers and the money they carried for purchase of the chinaware. When the period of grace elapsed and there was no news from China, the irate Emperor gave the official the choice between immediate execution and that of going to China to get the porcelain dish.
The official chose the latter course and began the hazardous journey to Cathay (China). As his whole family was held as hostages by the Emperor, he had to be particularly careful about his life and chose the safe route through the Pamir mountains, the so-called backbone of the world. The ranges of the Pamir tower to a height of about 23000 feet and one can very well imagine the plight of the official. Fortunately, Heaven took pity on him and the story of this official reached the court of the then Persian Emperor. This monarch ordered his Grand Wazier to look in the royal Persian cupboards to find whether there was any porcelain dish to match the one for which the official was searching. Happily, such a piece was found, and the Persian Emperor ordered that a gift of this porcelain dish be made to the official. But the poor man was so much broken down in health from the rigors of the journey that he died en route by the time deliverance came.
Emperor Shahjehan did not keep all his treasures in one place. They were divided in varying proportions and were kept in fortresses in different parts of the empire. There were seven of these treasure forts, besides the capital of Delhi. They were Gwalior, Marwar, Lahore, Rantambher, Asirgarh, Rohstsagar, and of course, Agra. The Lahore fort contained the maximum quantity of bullion, while Agra, as the Emperor’s favorite citadel, held most of the jewels.
A comparison with monarchs of the present century puts Shahjehan in a very favorable light. The wealth of the British Sovereign is estimated at about 170 million dollars. But at a time when the money value was at least six times greater than that of the present era, Shahjehan’s treasury must have held billions of rupees worth of valuables.
The last Nizam of Hyderabad in India, who was a remote descendant of the Moghul dynasty, had treasure and jewelry which it was almost impossible to sell for want of buyers. What can one do with mats oven with priceless pearls and shirts studded with diamonds? He had a paperweight, the famous Jacob diamond, a treasure of 150 carats, the rock-bottom price of which was about 150 lakh rupees.
Quartz Crystals
(via National Geographic Magazine) Quartz Crystals vibrate when electricity is applied. Thin plates of the mineral, vibrating at precise rates, keep radio transmitters on proper frequencies. Such crystals, tuned to different frequencies, separate simultaneous calls on the same telephone channel. Twisting or squeezing quartz produces an electric current.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
The Great Dictator
Memorable quote (s) from the movie:
A Jewish Barber (Charles Chaplin): I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite! Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up Hannah! The clouds are lifting! The sun is breaking through! We are coming out of the darkness into the light! We are coming into a new world; a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed, and brutality. Look up, Hannah! The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow! Into the light of hope, into the future! The glorious future, that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up!
Mr. Jaeckel (Maurice Moscovitch): Hannah, did you hear that?
Hannah (Paulette Goddard): Listen...
A Jewish Barber (Charles Chaplin): I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite! Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up Hannah! The clouds are lifting! The sun is breaking through! We are coming out of the darkness into the light! We are coming into a new world; a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed, and brutality. Look up, Hannah! The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow! Into the light of hope, into the future! The glorious future, that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up!
Mr. Jaeckel (Maurice Moscovitch): Hannah, did you hear that?
Hannah (Paulette Goddard): Listen...
Liberian Diamonds
The European Union has lifted its embargo on Liberian diamonds, after the UN Security Council became satisfied that the trade in the so-called blood diamonds had been stemmed.
What Is The First Known Piece Of Gold Jewelry?
(via Commodity Online) Rediff writes:
The earliest gold jewelry dates from the Sumer civilization in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Iraq around 3,000 BC. A major archeological find of early jewelry was in the Royal tombs of Ur, in Mesopotamia, dated to around 2,600 BC where gold articles made by lost wax casting included a wild ass on the rein ring of a chariot. Copper and bronze inlaid with gold also date to this period, demonstrating the craft skills in metalworking that existed. A beautifully modeled bull cast in gold dating to 2,300 BC was found in the Caucasus in Eastern Europe. In Egypt, gold jewelry and other artifacts have been found in Pharoah's tombs dating to around 1500 BC and later.
The earliest gold jewelry dates from the Sumer civilization in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Iraq around 3,000 BC. A major archeological find of early jewelry was in the Royal tombs of Ur, in Mesopotamia, dated to around 2,600 BC where gold articles made by lost wax casting included a wild ass on the rein ring of a chariot. Copper and bronze inlaid with gold also date to this period, demonstrating the craft skills in metalworking that existed. A beautifully modeled bull cast in gold dating to 2,300 BC was found in the Caucasus in Eastern Europe. In Egypt, gold jewelry and other artifacts have been found in Pharoah's tombs dating to around 1500 BC and later.
Looking Back At the Future
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the lack of liquidity in the diamond industry, bankruptcies, lack of success in the development and financing of branded diamonds + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=26653
How To Identify Lechleitner Synthetic Hydrothermal Emerald
Lechleitner emerald-coated beryl (Emerita - first marketed in 1960 by Austrian Johann Lechleitner in 1960, Austria). Produced hydrothermally by growing a coating of synthetic emerald over an already faceted specimen of natural colorless or pale colored beryl.
Detection
- Crazed effect in overcoat layer with cracks intersecting at 90°.
- Generally poor polish (repolishing may cause bald patches); some small back facets left unpolished to enhance depth of color.
- Dark rim of overgrowth area (best seen when stone immersed methylene iodide).
- Overgrowth area may fluoresce (weak to moderate red (LW & SW).
- Depending on the type of beryl used for the core (e.g., pale pink beryl or aquamarine), S.G. and inclusions noted might be wrong for emerald.
Lechleitner sandwich
Composite of natural or synthetic colorless beryl with overgrowth of dark green synthetic emerald. The sandwich type was first produced in 1964. Seed plate is of natural or synthetic beryl upon which a plate of emerald is grown. This may be subsequently enlarged by growing on synthetic colorless beryl. Multiple sandwiches have also been produced.
Detection
-Magnification: typical hydrothermal inclusions (and physical constants)
- Structure is only exhibited when viewed from the side or when immersed in a suitable liquid.
- Nail-like growth tubes may be seen streaming away from the seed crystal.
Lechleitner types
- Type 1
Thin hydrothermal synthetic emerald skin grown on a faceted natural colorless beryl seed. The skin displays a characteristic checkerboard-like appearance of narrow cracks. Thickness of the overgrowth varies from one facet to another, resulting in obvious differences in the depth of color on different facets. Natural inclusions may be found in the seed.
- Type 2
Sandwich-like consisting of a thin slice of natural colorless beryl surrounded by hydrothermal synthetic emerald. The colorless seed generally is found at the girdle and runs parallel to the table. Inclusions are the same as in type 3 & 4.
- Type 3 & 4
Full hydrothermal synthetic, featuring nails-like, unidentified tiny black and red specks, straight color zoning, etc.
The stones are rare. They are found only in a few gemological schools and gem research laboratories for study purposes.
Detection
- Crazed effect in overcoat layer with cracks intersecting at 90°.
- Generally poor polish (repolishing may cause bald patches); some small back facets left unpolished to enhance depth of color.
- Dark rim of overgrowth area (best seen when stone immersed methylene iodide).
- Overgrowth area may fluoresce (weak to moderate red (LW & SW).
- Depending on the type of beryl used for the core (e.g., pale pink beryl or aquamarine), S.G. and inclusions noted might be wrong for emerald.
Lechleitner sandwich
Composite of natural or synthetic colorless beryl with overgrowth of dark green synthetic emerald. The sandwich type was first produced in 1964. Seed plate is of natural or synthetic beryl upon which a plate of emerald is grown. This may be subsequently enlarged by growing on synthetic colorless beryl. Multiple sandwiches have also been produced.
Detection
-Magnification: typical hydrothermal inclusions (and physical constants)
- Structure is only exhibited when viewed from the side or when immersed in a suitable liquid.
- Nail-like growth tubes may be seen streaming away from the seed crystal.
Lechleitner types
- Type 1
Thin hydrothermal synthetic emerald skin grown on a faceted natural colorless beryl seed. The skin displays a characteristic checkerboard-like appearance of narrow cracks. Thickness of the overgrowth varies from one facet to another, resulting in obvious differences in the depth of color on different facets. Natural inclusions may be found in the seed.
- Type 2
Sandwich-like consisting of a thin slice of natural colorless beryl surrounded by hydrothermal synthetic emerald. The colorless seed generally is found at the girdle and runs parallel to the table. Inclusions are the same as in type 3 & 4.
- Type 3 & 4
Full hydrothermal synthetic, featuring nails-like, unidentified tiny black and red specks, straight color zoning, etc.
The stones are rare. They are found only in a few gemological schools and gem research laboratories for study purposes.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Jewelry Information Center Launches Vlogs
The Jewelry Information Center (JIC) has launched a series of video blogs (vlogs) on its website www.jic.org to reach out to manufacturing and retail members + educate consumers in a simple format.
Which Are The Famous Films About Gold?
- Goldfinger
- The Italian Job
- The Maltese Falcon
- The Lavender Hill Mob.
- The Italian Job
- The Maltese Falcon
- The Lavender Hill Mob.
Tax Amnesty: Veni, Vidi, Vici
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the concept of inventory revaluation introduced by the Diamond High Council (HRD) and the Belgian government + the accounting practices applied in the diamond sector between second world war and 1995 + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=26738
How Doctors Think
Most physicians already have in mind two or three possible diagnoses within minutes of meeting a patient. Jerome Groopman writes about the concept of cognitive dimension of clinical decision-making—the process by which doctors interpret their patients’ symptoms and weigh test results in order to arrive at a diagnosis and a plan of treatment @ http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/01/29/070129fa_fact_groopman
It is interesting to analyze the similarity of clinical decision making by doctors with gem identification. The experts have a sweet way of describing the process. Gem identification is a logical process of deduction or alternatively of elimination. The gemologist performs a series of observations and tests upon a particular stone and with each test will eliminate some of the possible identities of that stone. Finally through step-by-step testing only one identity will fit the stone in question. This is the end point of the exercise, to identify an unknown material in terms of its mineralogical group, species and variety.
It is interesting to analyze the similarity of clinical decision making by doctors with gem identification. The experts have a sweet way of describing the process. Gem identification is a logical process of deduction or alternatively of elimination. The gemologist performs a series of observations and tests upon a particular stone and with each test will eliminate some of the possible identities of that stone. Finally through step-by-step testing only one identity will fit the stone in question. This is the end point of the exercise, to identify an unknown material in terms of its mineralogical group, species and variety.
How To Identify Lechleitner Synthetic Ruby
The veteran Austrian crystal grower Johann Lechleitner is the genius behind the production of synthetic corundum in a variety of colors by the flux process. The experimentation began in 1983. As with Knischka, Lechleitner uses seeds as a focus for growth. His production can be divided into two types depending on the type of seed used.
- Type 1
Growth on Verneuil seeds. These are grown in a variety of colors (red, pink, orange, blue, yellow, green and colorless) with the color of the seed usually matching that of the overgrowth. Inclusions are characteristic of both the flux method of growth (reminiscent of Kashan and Chatham synthetics) and of the Verneuil seed (gas bubbles, curved striae and color banding). This is a characteristic and easily recognized assemblage of inclusions.
- Type 2
Growth on natural corundum seeds. This type of Lechleitner synthetic requires much closer attention. The synthetic overgrowth will adopt the crystal habit of the seed underneath and reproduce growth structures identical to the natural material (i.e. an overgrowth on a Thai ruby seed will produce a tabular crystal of identical habit to the natural crystal). Repeated twinning found in the seed will continue out into the overgrowth.
Inclusions in the seed portion can easily confuse the eye, especially if the identification is hasty. Features typical of flux-growth corundums should be seen in the overgrowth. The best method of detecting type 2 corundums would seem to be with immersion in high RI liquid, but even with this technique it may be difficult to see the boundary between the seed and the overgrowth (this should be present as a narrow colorless layer at the junction). Unfortunately, the growth process seems to use such high temperatures that the surface of the seed may be actively dissolved by the flux, making the junction between seed and overgrowth harder to detect.
The cutting process may also remove much of the overgrowth, in which case the inclusions within the seed would be more noticeable than the flux inclusions left in the vestiges of the seed. One consequence of using a natural seed will be the difference in fluorescence between the two 'components' of the stone. Under longwave ultraviolet light the natural seed will glow a much weaker red than the overgrowth, which will fluoresce bright red.
The stones are rare. You may find the specimens only at a few gemological schools, gem research laboratories and among private collectors.
- Type 1
Growth on Verneuil seeds. These are grown in a variety of colors (red, pink, orange, blue, yellow, green and colorless) with the color of the seed usually matching that of the overgrowth. Inclusions are characteristic of both the flux method of growth (reminiscent of Kashan and Chatham synthetics) and of the Verneuil seed (gas bubbles, curved striae and color banding). This is a characteristic and easily recognized assemblage of inclusions.
- Type 2
Growth on natural corundum seeds. This type of Lechleitner synthetic requires much closer attention. The synthetic overgrowth will adopt the crystal habit of the seed underneath and reproduce growth structures identical to the natural material (i.e. an overgrowth on a Thai ruby seed will produce a tabular crystal of identical habit to the natural crystal). Repeated twinning found in the seed will continue out into the overgrowth.
Inclusions in the seed portion can easily confuse the eye, especially if the identification is hasty. Features typical of flux-growth corundums should be seen in the overgrowth. The best method of detecting type 2 corundums would seem to be with immersion in high RI liquid, but even with this technique it may be difficult to see the boundary between the seed and the overgrowth (this should be present as a narrow colorless layer at the junction). Unfortunately, the growth process seems to use such high temperatures that the surface of the seed may be actively dissolved by the flux, making the junction between seed and overgrowth harder to detect.
The cutting process may also remove much of the overgrowth, in which case the inclusions within the seed would be more noticeable than the flux inclusions left in the vestiges of the seed. One consequence of using a natural seed will be the difference in fluorescence between the two 'components' of the stone. Under longwave ultraviolet light the natural seed will glow a much weaker red than the overgrowth, which will fluoresce bright red.
The stones are rare. You may find the specimens only at a few gemological schools, gem research laboratories and among private collectors.
Monday, June 25, 2007
China's Gemstone Market Booms
Chen Nan Yang writes about the total size of the jewelry, colored stones including jade market @ http://www.colored-stone.com/stories/mar07/china.cfm
The Naked Face
Malcolm Gladwell writes about reading people's thought by looking at them + Paul Ekman's techniques + Facial Action Coding System @ http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_08_05_a_face.htm
The concept might be useful in the gem and jewelry trade where you meet ninety five five's (ninety five percent bluffs + 5 percent truth) a lot + with Facial Action Coding System you may be able to weed out the crooks.
The concept might be useful in the gem and jewelry trade where you meet ninety five five's (ninety five percent bluffs + 5 percent truth) a lot + with Facial Action Coding System you may be able to weed out the crooks.
White Moonstone Simulant
Heat treatment causes some of the alumina to crystallize out as corundum, which causes a diffuse reflection effect in the form of a moonstone-like sheen. The imitation moonstone synthetic spinel features a mirror-like coating on the back of the cabochon. The schiller-like effect is caused by exsolution of excess alumina which produces multitudes of tiny needles and can even produce star phenomena. The material is rare.
Russia: In Search of a Future Without De Beers
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the fate of Supplier of Choice + the Russian influence + Kremlin's control over the diamond business through federal agencies + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=26759
Sintered Cobalt Rich Blue Spinel
This has been produced (1954) as a lapis lazuli imitation. The material is sintered under heat and pressure from spinel powder + suitable coloring matter. Flecks of gold or gold-colored metal are included to imitate pyrite.
For detection, magnification is the best. Look at the granular structure and also check under Chelsea Color Filter. Under the Chelsea Color Filter the material appears red while natural lapis lazuli tend to appear dull red/brown. Also look for the cobalt spectrum.
For detection, magnification is the best. Look at the granular structure and also check under Chelsea Color Filter. Under the Chelsea Color Filter the material appears red while natural lapis lazuli tend to appear dull red/brown. Also look for the cobalt spectrum.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Make Money Doing What You Love
An interesting perspective on new ways of making money and enjoying what you love.
Rediff writes:
Answer this honestly: Do you work because you have to? Or because you want to? The majority of us would, reluctantly, have to plump for the former. However, an increasing number of Indians are finding the perfect balance on the work-life ratio concept by converting a passion into a paying proposition. It's not easy, but look at it this way - you don't need to work ever again.
All fun and games
Like Vishal Gondal, 30. Hooked onto computer games since a very early age, gaming became a full-blown obsession by the time he was in his teens. One day, when he was barely 20, he walked into the Pepsi corporate office in Mumbai and persuaded their head honcho to check out a game he had developed. It involved shooting down simulations of bitter competitor Coke's cola cans. "It was music to their ears," Gondal grins.
The young entrepreneur sold the game to Pepsi for Rs 60,000, and went on to create games for brand names like Colgate, Kellogg's and Hindustan Lever. In 1999, the Kargil war prompted him and a handful of associates to come up with a computer game, where the objective was to shoot down enemy soldiers. The game, called I Love India, was a huge hit. He then launched Indiagames, now a 350-people company with offices in Mumbai, Beijing and Los Angeles and a 2006 turnover of $5 million.
Sounds like a fairy tale? The happy ending - not that the success story's over - perhaps had something to do with the founder's complete belief in his idea. "There was no real market research or business vision behind the venture," says Gondal. "I launched Indiagames simply because it was what I loved."
After the initial tunnel vision, though, the entrepreneur has shown exemplary business sense. After venture capitalists bought into the idea, funding Indiagames with Rs 3.5 crore (Rs 35 million), Gondal diversified into mobile game publishing, game distribution in India and online, on-demand gaming.
At the same time, Gondal retains his childlike enthusiasm for gaming. "From the very beginning, I believed that if you are passionate about your dream, the money would follow. Even today, I play all day at office and then play some more when I get home on my XBox and Nintendo game consoles."
The sound of Rock
If Gondal's family once despaired of a son who flunked his B.Com finals, people even today would find it incredible that the six-member Parikrama can make a living out of music that is not Bollywood. One of the biggest English rock band in India, however, prefers to call their occupation "a hobby that pays well".
Says bassist-turned-keyboardist Subir Malik, 36, who formed the band back in 1991: "We have dedicated our entire lives to rock music. I told the band in 1991 that this is one thing I would never compromise on. So even today, we do what we love - play rock and roll - and on our own terms."
Parikrama's first paid gig was at Father Agnels School, New Delhi, on Independence Day in 1991, for which they were promised Rs 500. "But the organisers really liked what we did and gave us Rs 500 each," says Malik. Since then, the band has only gotten bigger as rock music in India grew in popularity. Parikrama now earns around Rs 200,000 per concert and most band-members nurture music-related jobs to ensure they "don't turn into Indipop artistes for want of money". Guitarist Sonam Sherpa, for instance, runs the Parikrama School of Music in Delhi, while others have launched studios and artist management set-ups.
"The going is not as difficult now as it was during our initial years. Careers in rock music are more feasible now, with the genre winning the patronage of pub-owners and event-organisers," says Malik. "Today, there are a million bands and they're all playing good music. I have never seen so much talent in my entire career!"
So does running a band cost the earth? Surprisingly, no. The band's overheads are minimal since the organisers pick up the tab for most of the costs. And things will only get better, as Malik says: "We're going to celebrate our 16th anniversary in the UK. We have been invited by Rod Smallwood (rock group Iron Maiden's legendary manager) to play nine shows in the UK, including the 3-day Download Festival. After that, you can be sure we'll hike our fees."
Soul secrets
But money isn't the only objective for hobby-hunters; pure altruism, too, can be a driving force. Take Sajid Peerbhoy, 62-year-old veteran of the advertising industry and a spiritual teacher. The man who started Speer Communications (later taken over by Ogilvy & Mather) in 1979 is today known as 'Karmajyoti' by his disciples.
Peerbhoy's spiritual awakening began after he met a Sufi spiritual guru in 1969. Though drawn instantly to Sufism, he had to keep it a secret since "other people could not know about it". The corporate life and Sufism, he says, just didn't mix.
For close to 30 years, Peerbhoy disguised his spiritual leanings with the trappings of the life of an advertising bigwig. Eleven years ago, however, he sold Speer to O&M and devoted himself and all his savings to helping individuals. At his ashram Nyasa in Alibaug, near Mumbai, he teaches meditation and self-awareness techniques to a corporate clientele and individual disciples.
Because the residential programme is entirely free of cost, Peerbhoy realised his savings would run out before his students would. But, so far, voluntary donations and corporate fees have taken care of the monthly expenses, which run to anywhere between Rs 20,000 and Rs 30,000.
"If it hadn't been for the donations," says Peerbhoy, "every month would have been a struggle."
"But I've never had a fraction of a moment's doubt about my decision to quit advertising," says the ad guru-turned-soul guru. "People once mocked me, but my sense of fulfilment came from showing people a better way of life."
For Peerbhoy, the sense of 'giving back' far outweighs any monetary loss he might have made.
Food for thought
There's soul food and then there is, well, sinfully good food. As with Gondal or even Parikrama, money was never the motivation for Madhu Menon's decision to quit a seven-year career in IT for a leap into the unknown of the restauranting business.
"All I knew was that Bangalore, my base, needed a good, affordable Asian cuisine restaurant, and that I, as a chef, could deliver," says Menon, 31.
But the computer science graduate was also aware that the lack of professional training could be a huge handicap. "There was no way I could acquire the skills and knowledge required to run a restaurant in a short time. I think one of the best decisions I made was to hire an experienced and knowledgeable manager. After all, a good businessman must also be able to hire smart people."
Menon's timing was important as well. He launched Shiok Far-Eastern Cuisine while he was in his 20s, knowing that he would be able to take and bear higher risks at that point than at any later stage in life. "Though we never borrowed money from banks, we had a Rs 500,000 overdraft facility that we used frequently in the initial year-and-a-half," says the geek-turned-chef. "Now I'm about a year away from breaking even."
Walk the wild side
Maybe Menon's lack of entrepreneurial experience proved a handicap. But T.G. 'Tiger' Ramesh broke even in his new venture, Cicada Resorts, within a matter of months. After all, each entrepreneur has a different story.
The big idea struck Ramesh, 41, during a trip to Africa. "I realised that eco-tourism could help protect the environment in many ways. So, in May 2005, I left India's first remote IT infrastructure management company, which I had helped set up, to launch Cicada Resorts."
With $2 million from investors like Phaneesh Murthy of PM Ventures and H B Jairaj of the HRB Group, Ramesh set forth to involve the local community in resort operations on the banks of the Kabini river in the Nagarhole National Park, 220 km from Bangalore. Local involvement, he believes, will promote the local economy and reduce their dependence - and consequent pressure - on the forest.
With Cicada Resorts attracting 700 guests a month, Ramesh is dreaming of investing an additional $13 million on expansion. "Budgets aren't a problem. But adequate loss buffers are essential. A simple oversight can cost time and money a start-up can't afford," he points out. And the pay-off? "The biggest satisfaction is that I go on work to the forest instead of going on vacation."
There are two ways to have fun at what you do. One is to find something and derive pleasure from it. The other and, perhaps, easier option is to take something that gives you pleasure and commit your career to it. The really important thing is clarity of thought and the willingness to forgo the comfort of a monthly cheque.
Word of caution Some words of caution from Laura A. Parkin, executive director, National Entrepreneurship Network, Wadhwani Foundation:
Understand what kind of business you want to go in for. For example, if you are thinking of converting your love for cooking into a business, do you see yourself working part-time, perhaps by opening a catering service? Or, do you see yourself investing 18-hour days to build a large business, such as a chain of restaurants? It's important to consider your vision for life - not just business.
One works on hobbies because one loves to spend time at the endeavour, not because one is trying to meet a customer's needs. One needs to be careful to ensure that there is, indeed, a market for one's product.
A good idea is to minimise investment while trying to determine whether other people like your services. Adjust your investment to match your success and your choice of lifestyle. In other words, don't judge whether your hobby is a good business simply by your own love for your endeavours - other people will have to love it for you have a business.
More info @ http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/jun/20job.htm
Rediff writes:
Answer this honestly: Do you work because you have to? Or because you want to? The majority of us would, reluctantly, have to plump for the former. However, an increasing number of Indians are finding the perfect balance on the work-life ratio concept by converting a passion into a paying proposition. It's not easy, but look at it this way - you don't need to work ever again.
All fun and games
Like Vishal Gondal, 30. Hooked onto computer games since a very early age, gaming became a full-blown obsession by the time he was in his teens. One day, when he was barely 20, he walked into the Pepsi corporate office in Mumbai and persuaded their head honcho to check out a game he had developed. It involved shooting down simulations of bitter competitor Coke's cola cans. "It was music to their ears," Gondal grins.
The young entrepreneur sold the game to Pepsi for Rs 60,000, and went on to create games for brand names like Colgate, Kellogg's and Hindustan Lever. In 1999, the Kargil war prompted him and a handful of associates to come up with a computer game, where the objective was to shoot down enemy soldiers. The game, called I Love India, was a huge hit. He then launched Indiagames, now a 350-people company with offices in Mumbai, Beijing and Los Angeles and a 2006 turnover of $5 million.
Sounds like a fairy tale? The happy ending - not that the success story's over - perhaps had something to do with the founder's complete belief in his idea. "There was no real market research or business vision behind the venture," says Gondal. "I launched Indiagames simply because it was what I loved."
After the initial tunnel vision, though, the entrepreneur has shown exemplary business sense. After venture capitalists bought into the idea, funding Indiagames with Rs 3.5 crore (Rs 35 million), Gondal diversified into mobile game publishing, game distribution in India and online, on-demand gaming.
At the same time, Gondal retains his childlike enthusiasm for gaming. "From the very beginning, I believed that if you are passionate about your dream, the money would follow. Even today, I play all day at office and then play some more when I get home on my XBox and Nintendo game consoles."
The sound of Rock
If Gondal's family once despaired of a son who flunked his B.Com finals, people even today would find it incredible that the six-member Parikrama can make a living out of music that is not Bollywood. One of the biggest English rock band in India, however, prefers to call their occupation "a hobby that pays well".
Says bassist-turned-keyboardist Subir Malik, 36, who formed the band back in 1991: "We have dedicated our entire lives to rock music. I told the band in 1991 that this is one thing I would never compromise on. So even today, we do what we love - play rock and roll - and on our own terms."
Parikrama's first paid gig was at Father Agnels School, New Delhi, on Independence Day in 1991, for which they were promised Rs 500. "But the organisers really liked what we did and gave us Rs 500 each," says Malik. Since then, the band has only gotten bigger as rock music in India grew in popularity. Parikrama now earns around Rs 200,000 per concert and most band-members nurture music-related jobs to ensure they "don't turn into Indipop artistes for want of money". Guitarist Sonam Sherpa, for instance, runs the Parikrama School of Music in Delhi, while others have launched studios and artist management set-ups.
"The going is not as difficult now as it was during our initial years. Careers in rock music are more feasible now, with the genre winning the patronage of pub-owners and event-organisers," says Malik. "Today, there are a million bands and they're all playing good music. I have never seen so much talent in my entire career!"
So does running a band cost the earth? Surprisingly, no. The band's overheads are minimal since the organisers pick up the tab for most of the costs. And things will only get better, as Malik says: "We're going to celebrate our 16th anniversary in the UK. We have been invited by Rod Smallwood (rock group Iron Maiden's legendary manager) to play nine shows in the UK, including the 3-day Download Festival. After that, you can be sure we'll hike our fees."
Soul secrets
But money isn't the only objective for hobby-hunters; pure altruism, too, can be a driving force. Take Sajid Peerbhoy, 62-year-old veteran of the advertising industry and a spiritual teacher. The man who started Speer Communications (later taken over by Ogilvy & Mather) in 1979 is today known as 'Karmajyoti' by his disciples.
Peerbhoy's spiritual awakening began after he met a Sufi spiritual guru in 1969. Though drawn instantly to Sufism, he had to keep it a secret since "other people could not know about it". The corporate life and Sufism, he says, just didn't mix.
For close to 30 years, Peerbhoy disguised his spiritual leanings with the trappings of the life of an advertising bigwig. Eleven years ago, however, he sold Speer to O&M and devoted himself and all his savings to helping individuals. At his ashram Nyasa in Alibaug, near Mumbai, he teaches meditation and self-awareness techniques to a corporate clientele and individual disciples.
Because the residential programme is entirely free of cost, Peerbhoy realised his savings would run out before his students would. But, so far, voluntary donations and corporate fees have taken care of the monthly expenses, which run to anywhere between Rs 20,000 and Rs 30,000.
"If it hadn't been for the donations," says Peerbhoy, "every month would have been a struggle."
"But I've never had a fraction of a moment's doubt about my decision to quit advertising," says the ad guru-turned-soul guru. "People once mocked me, but my sense of fulfilment came from showing people a better way of life."
For Peerbhoy, the sense of 'giving back' far outweighs any monetary loss he might have made.
Food for thought
There's soul food and then there is, well, sinfully good food. As with Gondal or even Parikrama, money was never the motivation for Madhu Menon's decision to quit a seven-year career in IT for a leap into the unknown of the restauranting business.
"All I knew was that Bangalore, my base, needed a good, affordable Asian cuisine restaurant, and that I, as a chef, could deliver," says Menon, 31.
But the computer science graduate was also aware that the lack of professional training could be a huge handicap. "There was no way I could acquire the skills and knowledge required to run a restaurant in a short time. I think one of the best decisions I made was to hire an experienced and knowledgeable manager. After all, a good businessman must also be able to hire smart people."
Menon's timing was important as well. He launched Shiok Far-Eastern Cuisine while he was in his 20s, knowing that he would be able to take and bear higher risks at that point than at any later stage in life. "Though we never borrowed money from banks, we had a Rs 500,000 overdraft facility that we used frequently in the initial year-and-a-half," says the geek-turned-chef. "Now I'm about a year away from breaking even."
Walk the wild side
Maybe Menon's lack of entrepreneurial experience proved a handicap. But T.G. 'Tiger' Ramesh broke even in his new venture, Cicada Resorts, within a matter of months. After all, each entrepreneur has a different story.
The big idea struck Ramesh, 41, during a trip to Africa. "I realised that eco-tourism could help protect the environment in many ways. So, in May 2005, I left India's first remote IT infrastructure management company, which I had helped set up, to launch Cicada Resorts."
With $2 million from investors like Phaneesh Murthy of PM Ventures and H B Jairaj of the HRB Group, Ramesh set forth to involve the local community in resort operations on the banks of the Kabini river in the Nagarhole National Park, 220 km from Bangalore. Local involvement, he believes, will promote the local economy and reduce their dependence - and consequent pressure - on the forest.
With Cicada Resorts attracting 700 guests a month, Ramesh is dreaming of investing an additional $13 million on expansion. "Budgets aren't a problem. But adequate loss buffers are essential. A simple oversight can cost time and money a start-up can't afford," he points out. And the pay-off? "The biggest satisfaction is that I go on work to the forest instead of going on vacation."
There are two ways to have fun at what you do. One is to find something and derive pleasure from it. The other and, perhaps, easier option is to take something that gives you pleasure and commit your career to it. The really important thing is clarity of thought and the willingness to forgo the comfort of a monthly cheque.
Word of caution Some words of caution from Laura A. Parkin, executive director, National Entrepreneurship Network, Wadhwani Foundation:
Understand what kind of business you want to go in for. For example, if you are thinking of converting your love for cooking into a business, do you see yourself working part-time, perhaps by opening a catering service? Or, do you see yourself investing 18-hour days to build a large business, such as a chain of restaurants? It's important to consider your vision for life - not just business.
One works on hobbies because one loves to spend time at the endeavour, not because one is trying to meet a customer's needs. One needs to be careful to ensure that there is, indeed, a market for one's product.
A good idea is to minimise investment while trying to determine whether other people like your services. Adjust your investment to match your success and your choice of lifestyle. In other words, don't judge whether your hobby is a good business simply by your own love for your endeavours - other people will have to love it for you have a business.
More info @ http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/jun/20job.htm
My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the regulators who enforce anti-money laundering laws in Antwerp and New York + the Monstrey Worldwide Services courier case + the diamantaires who profited from the fraud perpetrated by the courier companies + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=26921
The Ghost Map
(via Emergic) Rajesh Jain writes:
Jason Kottke wrote in a review of the book on his blog:
The Ghost Map is a book about:
- a bacterium
- the human body
- a geographical map
- a man
- a working friendship
- a household
- a city government
- a neighborhood
- a waste management system1
- an epidemic
- a city
- human civilization
You hooked yet? Well, you should be. As the narrative unfolds around the 1854 London cholera epidemic, author Steven Johnson weaves all of these social, geographical, and biological structures/webs/networks into a scientific parable for the contemporary world. The book is at its best when it zooms among these different scales in a Powers of Ten-like fashion (something Johnson calls The Long Zoom), demonstrating the interplay between them: the way the geography of a neighborhood affected the spread of a virus, how ideas spreading within a social context are like an epidemic, or the comparison between the organism of the city and the geography of a bacterial colony within the human colon. None of this is surprising if you've read anything about emergence, complexity, or social scale invariance, but Johnson effectively demonstrates how tightly coupled the development of (as well as our understanding of) viral epidemics and large cities were across all of these scales.
The New York Times wrote in a review:
There’s a great story here, one of the signal episodes in the history of medical science, and Johnson recounts it well. It centers, figuratively and literally, on the infamous Broad Street pump. That pump, which was public, free and previously considered a safe source of drinking water, drew from a well beneath Golden Square, home to some of London’s poorest and most overcrowded people. In the last week of August 1854, many residents of Golden Square suddenly took sick and began dying. Their symptoms included upset stomach, vomiting, gut cramps, diarrhea and racking thirst. Whatever the cause, it was fast — fast to kill (sometimes within 12 hours of onset) and fast in spreading to new victims. “Hundreds of residents had been seized by the disease within a few hours of one another, in many cases entire families, left to tend for themselves in dark, suffocating rooms,” Johnson writes. Seventy fatalities occurred in a 24-hour period, most within five square blocks, and hundreds more people were in danger. “You could see the dead being wheeled down the street by the cartload.”
Johnson goes beyond the immediate details of the 1854 epidemic to consider such related matters as the history of toilets, the upgrading of London’s sewer system, the importance of population density for a disease that travels in human excrement, and the positive as well as negative aspects of urbanization itself. Never before Victorian London, Johnson reminds us, had 2.4 million primates of any species lived together within a 30-mile perimeter.
By solving the cholera mystery, Johnson asserts, John Snow and Henry Whitehead helped make the world safe for big cities. And cities are “where the action is” (he really does use that phrase, alas), being “centers of opportunity, tolerance, wealth creation, social networking, health, population control and creativity.”
A final word from Fred Wilson:
Woven into the story is a textbook on cholera, microbes, biology, society, urbanization, epidemics, sewers and cesspools, and much more.
It is the way I love to learn—by stories that mean something as opposed to dry textbooks or lectures that put me to sleep.
Useful link:
www.theghostmap.com
If you are fascinated by technology and its impact on society, you should read this book.
Jason Kottke wrote in a review of the book on his blog:
The Ghost Map is a book about:
- a bacterium
- the human body
- a geographical map
- a man
- a working friendship
- a household
- a city government
- a neighborhood
- a waste management system1
- an epidemic
- a city
- human civilization
You hooked yet? Well, you should be. As the narrative unfolds around the 1854 London cholera epidemic, author Steven Johnson weaves all of these social, geographical, and biological structures/webs/networks into a scientific parable for the contemporary world. The book is at its best when it zooms among these different scales in a Powers of Ten-like fashion (something Johnson calls The Long Zoom), demonstrating the interplay between them: the way the geography of a neighborhood affected the spread of a virus, how ideas spreading within a social context are like an epidemic, or the comparison between the organism of the city and the geography of a bacterial colony within the human colon. None of this is surprising if you've read anything about emergence, complexity, or social scale invariance, but Johnson effectively demonstrates how tightly coupled the development of (as well as our understanding of) viral epidemics and large cities were across all of these scales.
The New York Times wrote in a review:
There’s a great story here, one of the signal episodes in the history of medical science, and Johnson recounts it well. It centers, figuratively and literally, on the infamous Broad Street pump. That pump, which was public, free and previously considered a safe source of drinking water, drew from a well beneath Golden Square, home to some of London’s poorest and most overcrowded people. In the last week of August 1854, many residents of Golden Square suddenly took sick and began dying. Their symptoms included upset stomach, vomiting, gut cramps, diarrhea and racking thirst. Whatever the cause, it was fast — fast to kill (sometimes within 12 hours of onset) and fast in spreading to new victims. “Hundreds of residents had been seized by the disease within a few hours of one another, in many cases entire families, left to tend for themselves in dark, suffocating rooms,” Johnson writes. Seventy fatalities occurred in a 24-hour period, most within five square blocks, and hundreds more people were in danger. “You could see the dead being wheeled down the street by the cartload.”
Johnson goes beyond the immediate details of the 1854 epidemic to consider such related matters as the history of toilets, the upgrading of London’s sewer system, the importance of population density for a disease that travels in human excrement, and the positive as well as negative aspects of urbanization itself. Never before Victorian London, Johnson reminds us, had 2.4 million primates of any species lived together within a 30-mile perimeter.
By solving the cholera mystery, Johnson asserts, John Snow and Henry Whitehead helped make the world safe for big cities. And cities are “where the action is” (he really does use that phrase, alas), being “centers of opportunity, tolerance, wealth creation, social networking, health, population control and creativity.”
A final word from Fred Wilson:
Woven into the story is a textbook on cholera, microbes, biology, society, urbanization, epidemics, sewers and cesspools, and much more.
It is the way I love to learn—by stories that mean something as opposed to dry textbooks or lectures that put me to sleep.
Useful link:
www.theghostmap.com
If you are fascinated by technology and its impact on society, you should read this book.
Common Opal
Common opal refers to opal which shows no play of color. There are many different varieties, but few are ever seen in jewelry and are cut mostly for the sake of collectors.
- Cachalong opal
This variety is very porous, bluish white in color and similar in appearance to porcelain.
- Chrysocolla in opal
A blue material with finely scattered chrysocolla which gives it its color.
- Geyserite opal
A porous glassy opal which forms near hot springs and geysers.
- Girasol opal
A type of opal which is almost transparent and which shows a moving billowy light effect. The body color is milky white or very light tones of other colors.
- Hyalite opal
A transparent colorless, white or gray variety with a glassy appearance.
- Hydropane opal
This variety is light colored and usually opaque. It is extremely porous and will stick to the tongue. When immersed in water it shows play of color and becomes transparent.
- Jasper opal
An opaque reddish brown opal which resembles jasper.
- Liver opal
A variety which is opaque and gray to brown in color.
- Menilite opal
An opaque gray to brown opal with a concretionary structure.
- Moss opal
A white to brownish variety which contains dendritic inclusions.
- Potch opal
Common opal of any color.
- Prase opal
A translucent to opaque yellowish green or green variety which is similar in appearance to chrysoprase or jade.
- Resin opals
A transparent to opaque yellowish or brownish variety which is similar in appearance to resins.
- Rose opal
A translucent to opaque pink opal.
- Tabasheer opal
A variety of common opal which has formed in the joints of bamboo.
- Tripoli opal
Fine-grained, powdery masses of opal. It is often used a polishing compound.
- Vermilion
An opaque, red variety of common opal.
- Cachalong opal
This variety is very porous, bluish white in color and similar in appearance to porcelain.
- Chrysocolla in opal
A blue material with finely scattered chrysocolla which gives it its color.
- Geyserite opal
A porous glassy opal which forms near hot springs and geysers.
- Girasol opal
A type of opal which is almost transparent and which shows a moving billowy light effect. The body color is milky white or very light tones of other colors.
- Hyalite opal
A transparent colorless, white or gray variety with a glassy appearance.
- Hydropane opal
This variety is light colored and usually opaque. It is extremely porous and will stick to the tongue. When immersed in water it shows play of color and becomes transparent.
- Jasper opal
An opaque reddish brown opal which resembles jasper.
- Liver opal
A variety which is opaque and gray to brown in color.
- Menilite opal
An opaque gray to brown opal with a concretionary structure.
- Moss opal
A white to brownish variety which contains dendritic inclusions.
- Potch opal
Common opal of any color.
- Prase opal
A translucent to opaque yellowish green or green variety which is similar in appearance to chrysoprase or jade.
- Resin opals
A transparent to opaque yellowish or brownish variety which is similar in appearance to resins.
- Rose opal
A translucent to opaque pink opal.
- Tabasheer opal
A variety of common opal which has formed in the joints of bamboo.
- Tripoli opal
Fine-grained, powdery masses of opal. It is often used a polishing compound.
- Vermilion
An opaque, red variety of common opal.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Importance Of Inclusions
Edward Gubelin and John Koivula are considered god fathers of inclusion studies + their views should be an inspiring note (s) for newcomers in the field of inclusions studies.
Edward Gubelin / John Koivula writes:
From the tiny grains of beach sand the pebbles under out feet…to the glittering gemstones found decorating museums worldwide…..they all have something in common. They have a story to tell. The story of earth formation.
Through the microscopes this story unfolds as the kaleidoscopic world of gemstone inclusions comes to life. Solid crystal inclusions, glowing under polarized light, blink and change color as their host is turned in the field of view. Trapped in voids of crystallization called negative crystals, gas bubbles, propelled by thermally generated convection currents, shrink, swell, and even disappear as they dance about in small volumes of liquid, millions or even billions of years old. These solid and fluid inclusions, together with such additional internal features as twinning, cleavage, fracture, zoned growth and strain, like the components of a complex puzzle, help inclusionists to piece together a gemstone’s life history.
The study of gemstone inclusions is a fascinating and highly educational tangent in the field of gemology. A great deal of information on the paragenetic birth of a host gem can be learned from a single microscopic inclusion. Often times, to a trained eye, an internal inclusion pattern will yield valuable information on the physical and chemical environment of the host at the time of its growth. This will lead in turn to a greater knowledge of that particular type of gemstone deposit, and other localities at which the host has been found. Information on gemstone environments gleaned from the study of inclusions may lead eventually to the discovery of new gem deposits.
In many cases, inclusions in certain gemstones from particular localities are characteristic for that gemstone and locality. Natural and synthetic stones can often be identified by their characteristic inclusions. Many possess inclusions common only to them. If these inclusions are recognized the gem can be identified and often times, if natural, even the locality may be determined.
Mineral formational sequences at a particular locality may also be learned from a study of the inclusions found in the gems from that locality. Thank to research work on crystal and fluid inclusions, one can for instance exactly identify the inner and outer generational paragenesis of quartz from alpine clefts, of emeralds of hydrothermal origin from Colombia, and of metamorphic rubies from Mogok in Burma.
Since the advent of synthetic materials in the gemstone market, inclusions have been playing a major role in the field of gemstone identification. This role is becoming increasingly important as new and better synthetics, simulants and treatments are discovered, commercially developed and placed on the market. However, in spite of their importance, many gemologists still consider inclusions as undesirable flaws, and do not recognize the true beauty of mineral inclusions or the important information they provide.
In the world of gemology, thousands of dollars may hand in the balance where the identity of an inclusion pattern as to natural or synthetic—or even as to its source—is the only deciding factor. A knowledge of inclusions is vital in the jewelry industry today.
The gemologists of the future will be greatly dependant on a very strong knowledge of inclusions. As the synthetic materials become more sophisticated, and the laboratories find that they can duplicate nature very closely, the microscope will become the gemologist’s first line of defence, and a sound working knowledge of the various types of inclusions in gems will be of utmost importance.
Edward Gubelin / John Koivula writes:
From the tiny grains of beach sand the pebbles under out feet…to the glittering gemstones found decorating museums worldwide…..they all have something in common. They have a story to tell. The story of earth formation.
Through the microscopes this story unfolds as the kaleidoscopic world of gemstone inclusions comes to life. Solid crystal inclusions, glowing under polarized light, blink and change color as their host is turned in the field of view. Trapped in voids of crystallization called negative crystals, gas bubbles, propelled by thermally generated convection currents, shrink, swell, and even disappear as they dance about in small volumes of liquid, millions or even billions of years old. These solid and fluid inclusions, together with such additional internal features as twinning, cleavage, fracture, zoned growth and strain, like the components of a complex puzzle, help inclusionists to piece together a gemstone’s life history.
The study of gemstone inclusions is a fascinating and highly educational tangent in the field of gemology. A great deal of information on the paragenetic birth of a host gem can be learned from a single microscopic inclusion. Often times, to a trained eye, an internal inclusion pattern will yield valuable information on the physical and chemical environment of the host at the time of its growth. This will lead in turn to a greater knowledge of that particular type of gemstone deposit, and other localities at which the host has been found. Information on gemstone environments gleaned from the study of inclusions may lead eventually to the discovery of new gem deposits.
In many cases, inclusions in certain gemstones from particular localities are characteristic for that gemstone and locality. Natural and synthetic stones can often be identified by their characteristic inclusions. Many possess inclusions common only to them. If these inclusions are recognized the gem can be identified and often times, if natural, even the locality may be determined.
Mineral formational sequences at a particular locality may also be learned from a study of the inclusions found in the gems from that locality. Thank to research work on crystal and fluid inclusions, one can for instance exactly identify the inner and outer generational paragenesis of quartz from alpine clefts, of emeralds of hydrothermal origin from Colombia, and of metamorphic rubies from Mogok in Burma.
Since the advent of synthetic materials in the gemstone market, inclusions have been playing a major role in the field of gemstone identification. This role is becoming increasingly important as new and better synthetics, simulants and treatments are discovered, commercially developed and placed on the market. However, in spite of their importance, many gemologists still consider inclusions as undesirable flaws, and do not recognize the true beauty of mineral inclusions or the important information they provide.
In the world of gemology, thousands of dollars may hand in the balance where the identity of an inclusion pattern as to natural or synthetic—or even as to its source—is the only deciding factor. A knowledge of inclusions is vital in the jewelry industry today.
The gemologists of the future will be greatly dependant on a very strong knowledge of inclusions. As the synthetic materials become more sophisticated, and the laboratories find that they can duplicate nature very closely, the microscope will become the gemologist’s first line of defence, and a sound working knowledge of the various types of inclusions in gems will be of utmost importance.
Will Diamdel Become A Mini-Enron?
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about a potential Enron-type situations at Diamdel + behind the scene actors at De Beers + Mark Colao + revision of policy decisions at De Beers + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
Everything Is Miscellaneous
(via Emergic) Rajesh Jain writes:
Cory Doctorow wrote in a review of the book:
David Weinberger's "Everything is Miscellaneous" is the kind of book that binds together innumerable miscellaneous threads and makes something new, coherent, and incontrovertible out of them. Weinberger's thesis is this: historically, we've divided the world into categories, topics, and hierarchies because physical objects need to be in one place or another, they can't be in all the places they might belong. Computers and the Internet turn this on its head: because a computer can "put things" in as many categories as they need to be in, because individuals can classify knowledge, tasks, and objects idiosyncratically, the hierarchy is revealed for what it always was, a convenient expedient masquerading as the True Shape of the Universe.
It's a powerful idea: from org charts to science, from music to retail theory, from government to education, every field of human endeavor is tinged with hierarchy, and every hierarchy is under assault from the Internet. One impact of this change is that it reveals the biases lurking underneath the editorial carvery of our systems. From the Dewey Decimal system's laughable clunkers (mentalist bunkum gets its own category, but Islam has to share a decimal with a couple competing "Eastern" faiths) to the Britannica's paring away at "old" biographies to make way for the new, Weinberger makes a compelling case for a new kind of knowledge that more faithfully represents the messy, glorious hairball of the real world. ... Weinberger's conversational style, excellent examples, and extensive legwork (the places he visits and people he interviews can best be described as wonderfully miscellaneous) give this the hallmarks of an instant classic. And unlike many business/tech books, whose simple thesis could be stated in a single New Yorker article, but which are nevertheless expanded to book-length for commercial reasons, every chapter in Everything is Miscellaneous brings new insight to the subject. This is a hell of a book.
Here is an excerpt from the book's prologue:
-The alternative universe exists. Every day, more of our life is lived there. It’s called the digital world.
-Instead of atoms that take up room, it’s made of bits.
-Instead of making us walk long aisles, in the digital world everything is only a few clicks away.
-Instead of having to be the same way for all people, it can instantly rearrange itself for each person and each person’s current task.
-Instead of being limited by space and operational simplicity in the number of items it can stock, the digital world can include every item and variation the buyers at Staples could possibly want.
-Instead of items being placed in one area of the store, or occasionally in two, they can be classified in every different category in which users might conceivably expect to find them.
-Instead of living in the neat, ordered shelves we find in the Prototype Labs, items can be jumbled digitally and sorted out only when and how a user wants to look for them.
Those differences are significant. But they’re just the starting point. For something much larger is at stake than how we lay out our stores. The physical limitations that silently guide the organization of an office supply store also guide how we organize our businesses, our government, our schools. They have guided—and limited—how we organize knowledge itself.
From management structures to encyclopedias, to the courses of study we put our children through, to the way we decide what’s worth believing, we have organized our ideas with principles designed for use in a world limited by the laws of physics.
Suppose that now, for the first time in history, we are able to arrange our concepts without the silent limitations of the physical. How might our ideas, organizations, and knowledge itself change? ... As we invent new principles of organization that make sense in a world of knowledge freed from physical constraints, information doesn’t just want to be free. It wants to be miscellaneous.
I liked it.
Cory Doctorow wrote in a review of the book:
David Weinberger's "Everything is Miscellaneous" is the kind of book that binds together innumerable miscellaneous threads and makes something new, coherent, and incontrovertible out of them. Weinberger's thesis is this: historically, we've divided the world into categories, topics, and hierarchies because physical objects need to be in one place or another, they can't be in all the places they might belong. Computers and the Internet turn this on its head: because a computer can "put things" in as many categories as they need to be in, because individuals can classify knowledge, tasks, and objects idiosyncratically, the hierarchy is revealed for what it always was, a convenient expedient masquerading as the True Shape of the Universe.
It's a powerful idea: from org charts to science, from music to retail theory, from government to education, every field of human endeavor is tinged with hierarchy, and every hierarchy is under assault from the Internet. One impact of this change is that it reveals the biases lurking underneath the editorial carvery of our systems. From the Dewey Decimal system's laughable clunkers (mentalist bunkum gets its own category, but Islam has to share a decimal with a couple competing "Eastern" faiths) to the Britannica's paring away at "old" biographies to make way for the new, Weinberger makes a compelling case for a new kind of knowledge that more faithfully represents the messy, glorious hairball of the real world. ... Weinberger's conversational style, excellent examples, and extensive legwork (the places he visits and people he interviews can best be described as wonderfully miscellaneous) give this the hallmarks of an instant classic. And unlike many business/tech books, whose simple thesis could be stated in a single New Yorker article, but which are nevertheless expanded to book-length for commercial reasons, every chapter in Everything is Miscellaneous brings new insight to the subject. This is a hell of a book.
Here is an excerpt from the book's prologue:
-The alternative universe exists. Every day, more of our life is lived there. It’s called the digital world.
-Instead of atoms that take up room, it’s made of bits.
-Instead of making us walk long aisles, in the digital world everything is only a few clicks away.
-Instead of having to be the same way for all people, it can instantly rearrange itself for each person and each person’s current task.
-Instead of being limited by space and operational simplicity in the number of items it can stock, the digital world can include every item and variation the buyers at Staples could possibly want.
-Instead of items being placed in one area of the store, or occasionally in two, they can be classified in every different category in which users might conceivably expect to find them.
-Instead of living in the neat, ordered shelves we find in the Prototype Labs, items can be jumbled digitally and sorted out only when and how a user wants to look for them.
Those differences are significant. But they’re just the starting point. For something much larger is at stake than how we lay out our stores. The physical limitations that silently guide the organization of an office supply store also guide how we organize our businesses, our government, our schools. They have guided—and limited—how we organize knowledge itself.
From management structures to encyclopedias, to the courses of study we put our children through, to the way we decide what’s worth believing, we have organized our ideas with principles designed for use in a world limited by the laws of physics.
Suppose that now, for the first time in history, we are able to arrange our concepts without the silent limitations of the physical. How might our ideas, organizations, and knowledge itself change? ... As we invent new principles of organization that make sense in a world of knowledge freed from physical constraints, information doesn’t just want to be free. It wants to be miscellaneous.
I liked it.
Microscopic Art Fetches Millions
An inspiring story. I wish someone could do the same with gemstone inclusions.
Todd Jatras writes :
ABC News has a great video interview with British micro-artist Willard Wigan, who uses a high-powered microscope and claims he has to slow his heart down in order to work between beats, creating the world's smallest sculptures. Wigan uses tiny homemade tools and paints with “a hair plucked from a fly’s back.” Check out works of his such the eye-of-a-needle Wizard of Oz scene (pictured left), dolls the size of a human blood cell and Charlie Chaplin balanced on a human eyelash. Wigan turned to micro art as a young child humiliated at school because of learning disabilities and says that he still can’t read or write. A major collection of his work recently sold for $20 million.
More info @ http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/06/microscopic-art.html
Todd Jatras writes :
ABC News has a great video interview with British micro-artist Willard Wigan, who uses a high-powered microscope and claims he has to slow his heart down in order to work between beats, creating the world's smallest sculptures. Wigan uses tiny homemade tools and paints with “a hair plucked from a fly’s back.” Check out works of his such the eye-of-a-needle Wizard of Oz scene (pictured left), dolls the size of a human blood cell and Charlie Chaplin balanced on a human eyelash. Wigan turned to micro art as a young child humiliated at school because of learning disabilities and says that he still can’t read or write. A major collection of his work recently sold for $20 million.
More info @ http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/06/microscopic-art.html
Friday, June 22, 2007
Opal Star Triplet
Star opals also exist and are similar to the cat’s eye opals. This is not true asterism, but instead results from fault planes within the opal. Two kinds of stars are seen—three-rayed stars and six-pointed stars. The material is used in the making of triplets and comes from Idaho (USA).
U.S. Tax Officials: Biting Without Teeth...
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about diamond industry specific anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing legislation (AML/CFT) + the practical difficulties in the implementation + U.S government's lack of skills, manpower, expertise and the tools to audit the diamond and jewelry industry + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=27001
The Spot Method
For normal use with the refractometer, the stone being tested should have a well-polished flat facet. In 1948, Lester Brown developed a technique which enables the gemologist to make refractive index readings on cabochons or stones with extremely small facets, which up until that time was not possible. The technique is known as the spot method or distant vision technique and works as follows:
- Remove the eyepiece and use white light.
- Put a very small drop of liquid onto the center of the hemisphere. Very gently place the stone onto the drop and then examine the scale.
- If the drop outline covers more than two or three scale divisions it is too large and the reading will not be accurate. The size of the spot should be reduced by picking up the stone, wiping the liquid off the stone, and putting it back down on the remaining amount of liquid still on the hemisphere.
- When the spot is no longer than three scale divisions, the head should be moved up and down the scale. The spot will go from dark to light as you move your head down the scale. The point should be found where the spot appears exactly half light and half dark. This is where the reading is made.
- Sometimes the spot changes so quickly from dark to light that the half position can not be seen. If it is dark at 1.58 and light at 1.60, the refractive index can be estimated at about 1.59.
The readings obtained using the spot method may be unclear and hazy. This may be due to the stone being poorly polished. In order to insure that the reading will be as sharp and clear as possible, it is good idea to examine the stone carefully to find the smoothest and best polished area. Then, that area should be put in contact with the hemisphere instead of a dull or scratched area. This will make a big difference in the accuracy of the initial reading. The first thing to do is to remove some liquid to sharpen the division. If the reading is still unclear then a rough estimate must be made, keeping in mind that it will only be accurate to plus or minus a few scale divisions.
- Remove the eyepiece and use white light.
- Put a very small drop of liquid onto the center of the hemisphere. Very gently place the stone onto the drop and then examine the scale.
- If the drop outline covers more than two or three scale divisions it is too large and the reading will not be accurate. The size of the spot should be reduced by picking up the stone, wiping the liquid off the stone, and putting it back down on the remaining amount of liquid still on the hemisphere.
- When the spot is no longer than three scale divisions, the head should be moved up and down the scale. The spot will go from dark to light as you move your head down the scale. The point should be found where the spot appears exactly half light and half dark. This is where the reading is made.
- Sometimes the spot changes so quickly from dark to light that the half position can not be seen. If it is dark at 1.58 and light at 1.60, the refractive index can be estimated at about 1.59.
The readings obtained using the spot method may be unclear and hazy. This may be due to the stone being poorly polished. In order to insure that the reading will be as sharp and clear as possible, it is good idea to examine the stone carefully to find the smoothest and best polished area. Then, that area should be put in contact with the hemisphere instead of a dull or scratched area. This will make a big difference in the accuracy of the initial reading. The first thing to do is to remove some liquid to sharpen the division. If the reading is still unclear then a rough estimate must be made, keeping in mind that it will only be accurate to plus or minus a few scale divisions.
Everything Is Miscellaneous
This concept may work wonders in the gem and jewelry industry if executed appropriately.
(via Emergic) Rajesh Jain writes:
I have followed David Weinberger's blog for a long time. So, it was natural to want to read his new book “Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder.” David's two previous books include “The Cluetrain Manifesto” (as co-author) and “Small Pieces Loosely Joined.”
From the book's inside flap:
Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demanded it--but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous.
In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children’s teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry. Finally, he shows how by "going miscellaneous," anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life.
From A to Z, Everything Is Miscellaneous will completely reshape the way you think--and what you know--about the world.
This is what David wrote in an essay on Amazon:
As businesses go miscellaneous, information gets chopped into smaller and smaller pieces. But it also escapes its leash--adding to a pile that can be sorted and arranged by anyone with a Web browser and a Net connection. In fact, information exhibits bird-like "flocking behavior," joining with other information that adds value to it, creating swarms that help customers and, ultimately, the businesses from which the information initially escaped.
For example, Wize.com is a customer review site founded in 2005 by entrepreneur Doug Baker. The site provides reviews for everything from computers and MP3 players to coffee makers and baby strollers. But why do we need another place for reviews? If you’re using the Web to research what digital camera to buy for your father-in-law, you probably feel there are far too many sites out there already. By the time you have scrolled through one store’s customer reviews for each candidate camera and then cross-referenced the positive and the negative with the expert reviews at each of your bookmarked consumer magazines, you have to start the process again just to remember what people said. Wize in fact aims at exactly that problem. It pulls together reviews from many outside sources and aggregates them into three piles: user reviews, expert reviews (with links to the online publications), and the general "buzz." (For shoppers looking for a quick read on a product, Wize assigns an overall ranking.) When Wize reports that 97 percent of users love the Nikon D200 camera, it includes links to the online stores where the user reviews are posted, so customers are driven back to the businesses to spend their money.
Wize...[makes] money by selling advertising, but their value is in the way their sites aggregate the miscellaneous--letting lots of independent sources flock together, all in one place. We’re seeing the same trend in industry after industry, including music, travel, and the news media. Information gets released into the wild (sometimes against a company’s will), where it joins up with other information, and the act of aggregating adds value. Companies lose some control, but they gain market presence and smarter customers. The companies that are succeeding in the new digital skies are the ones that allow their customers to add their own information and the aggregators to mix it up, because whether or not information wants to be free, it sure wants to flock.
(via Emergic) Rajesh Jain writes:
I have followed David Weinberger's blog for a long time. So, it was natural to want to read his new book “Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder.” David's two previous books include “The Cluetrain Manifesto” (as co-author) and “Small Pieces Loosely Joined.”
From the book's inside flap:
Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demanded it--but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous.
In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children’s teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry. Finally, he shows how by "going miscellaneous," anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life.
From A to Z, Everything Is Miscellaneous will completely reshape the way you think--and what you know--about the world.
This is what David wrote in an essay on Amazon:
As businesses go miscellaneous, information gets chopped into smaller and smaller pieces. But it also escapes its leash--adding to a pile that can be sorted and arranged by anyone with a Web browser and a Net connection. In fact, information exhibits bird-like "flocking behavior," joining with other information that adds value to it, creating swarms that help customers and, ultimately, the businesses from which the information initially escaped.
For example, Wize.com is a customer review site founded in 2005 by entrepreneur Doug Baker. The site provides reviews for everything from computers and MP3 players to coffee makers and baby strollers. But why do we need another place for reviews? If you’re using the Web to research what digital camera to buy for your father-in-law, you probably feel there are far too many sites out there already. By the time you have scrolled through one store’s customer reviews for each candidate camera and then cross-referenced the positive and the negative with the expert reviews at each of your bookmarked consumer magazines, you have to start the process again just to remember what people said. Wize in fact aims at exactly that problem. It pulls together reviews from many outside sources and aggregates them into three piles: user reviews, expert reviews (with links to the online publications), and the general "buzz." (For shoppers looking for a quick read on a product, Wize assigns an overall ranking.) When Wize reports that 97 percent of users love the Nikon D200 camera, it includes links to the online stores where the user reviews are posted, so customers are driven back to the businesses to spend their money.
Wize...[makes] money by selling advertising, but their value is in the way their sites aggregate the miscellaneous--letting lots of independent sources flock together, all in one place. We’re seeing the same trend in industry after industry, including music, travel, and the news media. Information gets released into the wild (sometimes against a company’s will), where it joins up with other information, and the act of aggregating adds value. Companies lose some control, but they gain market presence and smarter customers. The companies that are succeeding in the new digital skies are the ones that allow their customers to add their own information and the aggregators to mix it up, because whether or not information wants to be free, it sure wants to flock.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Opal Cat’s Eye Triplet
Cat’s eye opals are not chatoyant in the ordinary sense of the word. Instead the eye is simply a single streak of color across the stone due to parallel fault planes within the opal. The material is normally made into triplets as the quartz dome magnifies the effect.
The New Friends Of De Beers
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the perception of De Beer's Chairman/Managing Director by the local establishment press + the chain of events + the new concept of State Diamond Trader + the new way of doing business + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=27042
US$10m For A Rock In A Bay
I have known David Glickman for nearly two decades, and he is a unique + one-of-a-kind gem dealer in Bangkok, Thailand. He has a good sense of humor; I would call him the Woody Allen of the gem and jewelry business. I wish him all the best of luck finding a buyer for his island.
(via AP) Nation writes:
If you have ever wanted to own a piece of San Francisco Bay, now is your chance. Red Rock, the only privately owned island in the bay, is up for sale. But it is well beyond most pocketbooks.
David Glickman, a Bangkok-based gems dealer and attorney, wants US$10 million (Bt346 million) for the 5.8-acre, uninhabited island in the shadow of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
"It's time to sell. I'm not going to live much longer. I'm almost 78. My wife is Thai, highly educated, and I'd like to leave her in good finances," Glickman said.
Red Rock Island, which gets its name from the reddish-brown color of its soil, was privately purchased in the 1920s. After a few owners, Glickman, then practicing law in San Francisco, bought it sight unseen in 1964 for $49,500.
It is located about 13 kilometers north of San Francisco's famed Fisherman's Wharf at a point where the San Francisco, Marin and Contra Costa counties converge.
"At the time, I thought I'd sell it. The island has a good spot for a marina, and it's in the bay, so the marina would be useful," he said. "But each time I thought I was going to sell it, something happened to make it worth more money."
Settled for good in Thailand, Glickman has so far refused to drop the asking price or consider donating it for conservation purposes.
More info @ http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/06/20/headlines/headlines_30037353.php
(via AP) Nation writes:
If you have ever wanted to own a piece of San Francisco Bay, now is your chance. Red Rock, the only privately owned island in the bay, is up for sale. But it is well beyond most pocketbooks.
David Glickman, a Bangkok-based gems dealer and attorney, wants US$10 million (Bt346 million) for the 5.8-acre, uninhabited island in the shadow of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
"It's time to sell. I'm not going to live much longer. I'm almost 78. My wife is Thai, highly educated, and I'd like to leave her in good finances," Glickman said.
Red Rock Island, which gets its name from the reddish-brown color of its soil, was privately purchased in the 1920s. After a few owners, Glickman, then practicing law in San Francisco, bought it sight unseen in 1964 for $49,500.
It is located about 13 kilometers north of San Francisco's famed Fisherman's Wharf at a point where the San Francisco, Marin and Contra Costa counties converge.
"At the time, I thought I'd sell it. The island has a good spot for a marina, and it's in the bay, so the marina would be useful," he said. "But each time I thought I was going to sell it, something happened to make it worth more money."
Settled for good in Thailand, Glickman has so far refused to drop the asking price or consider donating it for conservation purposes.
More info @ http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/06/20/headlines/headlines_30037353.php
The Dhandho Investor
I liked the book.
(via Emergic) Rajesh Jain writes:
I attended a talk by Mohnish Pabrai a few years ago in Mumbai. He spoke about his philosophy of investing, which has been heavily influenced by Warren Buffet. But there were also some unique perspectives that he had. Now, Mohnish has written a book that every investor and entrepreneur must read: “The Dhandho Investor.” The subtitle “The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns” could as easily have been “Heads I win, Tails I don't lose much.”
From the book's inside flap:
All investors are told that if you want to earn high rates of returns, you must take on greater risk. Of course, the groundbreaking value investing strategies of Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger have shown that it is indeed possible to keep risk to a minimum while still making a reasonable profit. The Dhandho method takes their successful approach to investing one step further and shows how you can actually maximize rewards while minimizing risk.
Dhandho (pronounced dhun-doe), literally translated, means "endeavors that create wealth." In The Dhandho Investor, Mohnish Pabrai demonstrates how the powerful Dhandho capital allocation framework of India's business-savvy Patels can be successfully applied and replicated by individual value investors in the stock market. The Patels, a small ethnic group from India, first began arriving in the United States in the 1970s as refugees with little education or capital.
Today, they own over $40 billion in motel assets in the United States, pay over $725 million a year in taxes, and employ nearly a million people. How did this small, impoverished group come out of nowhere and end up accumulating such vast resources? The answer lies in their low-risk, high-return approach to business: Dhandho. This book will show you how to use that same technique to generate high returns in the stock market.
Pabrai's hedge funds, Pabrai Investment Funds, have outperformed all of the major indices and over 99% of other managed funds. $100,000 invested with Pabrai in 1999 was worth over $659,000 by 2006—an annualized return of over 28% after all fees and expenses. In this book, Pabrai distills the methods of Buffett, Graham, and Munger into a user-friendly approach applicable to individual investors. Combining their legendary investing wisdom with the business acumen of the Patels, Pabrai lays out the Dhandho framework in an easy-to-use format that will help any investor significantly improve on their results and soundly beat the markets—as well as most professionals.
BloggingStocks writes in a review:
The key concept to glean from this book is the difference between uncertainty and risk. According to Pabrai, most investors don't understand the difference. Risk means the chance of a loss of capital. Uncertainty is the range of different outcomes. So a stock may have high uncertainty but may not be risky, if no one knows what will happen but the worst case scenario would not results in a huge loss. According to Pabrai, these investments provide the greatest opportunities for investors.
The Dhandho Investor is pretty lean for an investment book --183 pages with fairly large type. Consequently, it's short on specifics. You won't really learn about how to analyze stocks. But that's fine. There are hundreds of books for that. But Monish Pabrai has presented a compelling way of looking at investing and decision-making in general, and reading this book will likely benefit any investor.
Here is an outline of Mohnish Pabrai's Dhandho Framework which he discusses in detail in the book:
- Invest in Existing Businesses
- Invest in Simple Businesses
- Invest in Distressed Businesses in Distressed Industries
- Invest in Businesses with Durable Models
- Few Bets, Big Bets, Infrequent Bets
- Fixate on Arbitrage
- Margin of Safety - Always
- Invest in Low-Risk, High-Uncertainty Businesses
- Invest in the Copycats rather than the Innovators
(via Emergic) Rajesh Jain writes:
I attended a talk by Mohnish Pabrai a few years ago in Mumbai. He spoke about his philosophy of investing, which has been heavily influenced by Warren Buffet. But there were also some unique perspectives that he had. Now, Mohnish has written a book that every investor and entrepreneur must read: “The Dhandho Investor.” The subtitle “The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns” could as easily have been “Heads I win, Tails I don't lose much.”
From the book's inside flap:
All investors are told that if you want to earn high rates of returns, you must take on greater risk. Of course, the groundbreaking value investing strategies of Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger have shown that it is indeed possible to keep risk to a minimum while still making a reasonable profit. The Dhandho method takes their successful approach to investing one step further and shows how you can actually maximize rewards while minimizing risk.
Dhandho (pronounced dhun-doe), literally translated, means "endeavors that create wealth." In The Dhandho Investor, Mohnish Pabrai demonstrates how the powerful Dhandho capital allocation framework of India's business-savvy Patels can be successfully applied and replicated by individual value investors in the stock market. The Patels, a small ethnic group from India, first began arriving in the United States in the 1970s as refugees with little education or capital.
Today, they own over $40 billion in motel assets in the United States, pay over $725 million a year in taxes, and employ nearly a million people. How did this small, impoverished group come out of nowhere and end up accumulating such vast resources? The answer lies in their low-risk, high-return approach to business: Dhandho. This book will show you how to use that same technique to generate high returns in the stock market.
Pabrai's hedge funds, Pabrai Investment Funds, have outperformed all of the major indices and over 99% of other managed funds. $100,000 invested with Pabrai in 1999 was worth over $659,000 by 2006—an annualized return of over 28% after all fees and expenses. In this book, Pabrai distills the methods of Buffett, Graham, and Munger into a user-friendly approach applicable to individual investors. Combining their legendary investing wisdom with the business acumen of the Patels, Pabrai lays out the Dhandho framework in an easy-to-use format that will help any investor significantly improve on their results and soundly beat the markets—as well as most professionals.
BloggingStocks writes in a review:
The key concept to glean from this book is the difference between uncertainty and risk. According to Pabrai, most investors don't understand the difference. Risk means the chance of a loss of capital. Uncertainty is the range of different outcomes. So a stock may have high uncertainty but may not be risky, if no one knows what will happen but the worst case scenario would not results in a huge loss. According to Pabrai, these investments provide the greatest opportunities for investors.
The Dhandho Investor is pretty lean for an investment book --183 pages with fairly large type. Consequently, it's short on specifics. You won't really learn about how to analyze stocks. But that's fine. There are hundreds of books for that. But Monish Pabrai has presented a compelling way of looking at investing and decision-making in general, and reading this book will likely benefit any investor.
Here is an outline of Mohnish Pabrai's Dhandho Framework which he discusses in detail in the book:
- Invest in Existing Businesses
- Invest in Simple Businesses
- Invest in Distressed Businesses in Distressed Industries
- Invest in Businesses with Durable Models
- Few Bets, Big Bets, Infrequent Bets
- Fixate on Arbitrage
- Margin of Safety - Always
- Invest in Low-Risk, High-Uncertainty Businesses
- Invest in the Copycats rather than the Innovators
Tips For Online Privacy
(via Livemint) Reuters writes:
Here are 10 ways to keep personal information secure when online:
Favour common sense over technological solutions. Keep personal documents safe, preferably in a locked drawer. Shred bank statements, credit card slips and bills before throwing them away.
If it’s too good to be true, it is. Never open spam messages. Delete emails offering cash, free gifts or stock tips. Millions of spam messages are sent every day in an attempt to defraud computer users.
Basic prevention helps. Protect your computer against identity theft. Install security software to combat viruses, spyware and spam and keep it updated.
Know enough about your firewall, the barrier between the public Internet and a personal computer, to know when it is working and when it isn’t. Don’t worry about the geeky complexity of it all, just know it’s operating.
Beware of phishing, where criminals trick people into revealing personal or financial details, often by sending emails purporting to be from a bank. Never casually reply to requests for your personal financial details.
Keep your private email addresses secure. Consider using different email accounts for shopping, banking, friends and work. There are many free account providers.
Do not use the same password for different sites. Choose passwords with a mix of letters, numbers and symbols. Don’t use obvious passwords, such as your first name or “123456” and don’t write them down. To make it easier to remember, choose a basic root word and then rotate numbers.
Make online payments safely. Never enter a card number unless there is a padlock in the Web browser’s frame, rather than the Web page. The Web address should begin with https—the extra “s” stands for “secure”. Consider reserving one credit card for Web use or signing up for a separate online payment service such as PayPal.
Secure your wireless network at home and be wary when using public access points. Encrypt the connection to scramble communications over the network. Turn off the wireless network when you’re not using it.
Treat your laptop like cash—never leave it in a locked car or turn your back while using it in a public place. The same holds true for your cellphone: Lock your phone (and any passwords you keep on it) when not using it.
More info @ http://www.livemint.com/2007/06/20002638/Tips-for-online-privacy.html
Here are 10 ways to keep personal information secure when online:
Favour common sense over technological solutions. Keep personal documents safe, preferably in a locked drawer. Shred bank statements, credit card slips and bills before throwing them away.
If it’s too good to be true, it is. Never open spam messages. Delete emails offering cash, free gifts or stock tips. Millions of spam messages are sent every day in an attempt to defraud computer users.
Basic prevention helps. Protect your computer against identity theft. Install security software to combat viruses, spyware and spam and keep it updated.
Know enough about your firewall, the barrier between the public Internet and a personal computer, to know when it is working and when it isn’t. Don’t worry about the geeky complexity of it all, just know it’s operating.
Beware of phishing, where criminals trick people into revealing personal or financial details, often by sending emails purporting to be from a bank. Never casually reply to requests for your personal financial details.
Keep your private email addresses secure. Consider using different email accounts for shopping, banking, friends and work. There are many free account providers.
Do not use the same password for different sites. Choose passwords with a mix of letters, numbers and symbols. Don’t use obvious passwords, such as your first name or “123456” and don’t write them down. To make it easier to remember, choose a basic root word and then rotate numbers.
Make online payments safely. Never enter a card number unless there is a padlock in the Web browser’s frame, rather than the Web page. The Web address should begin with https—the extra “s” stands for “secure”. Consider reserving one credit card for Web use or signing up for a separate online payment service such as PayPal.
Secure your wireless network at home and be wary when using public access points. Encrypt the connection to scramble communications over the network. Turn off the wireless network when you’re not using it.
Treat your laptop like cash—never leave it in a locked car or turn your back while using it in a public place. The same holds true for your cellphone: Lock your phone (and any passwords you keep on it) when not using it.
More info @ http://www.livemint.com/2007/06/20002638/Tips-for-online-privacy.html
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Patch Adams
Memorable quote (s) from the movie:
Hunter Patch Adams (Robin Williams): All of life is a coming home. Salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us. All the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home. It's hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days in the driving snow; you don't even know you're walking in circles. The heaviness of your legs in the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind. How small you can feel, and how far away home can be. Home. The dictionary defines it as both a place of origin and a goal or destination. And the storm? The storm was all in my mind. Or as the poet Dante put it: In the middle of the journey of my life, I found myself in a dark wood, for I had lost the right path. Eventually I would find the right path, but in the most unlikely place.
Hunter Patch Adams (Robin Williams): All of life is a coming home. Salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us. All the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home. It's hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days in the driving snow; you don't even know you're walking in circles. The heaviness of your legs in the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind. How small you can feel, and how far away home can be. Home. The dictionary defines it as both a place of origin and a goal or destination. And the storm? The storm was all in my mind. Or as the poet Dante put it: In the middle of the journey of my life, I found myself in a dark wood, for I had lost the right path. Eventually I would find the right path, but in the most unlikely place.
Andean Opals
Blue and greenish blue opals from Peru have been on the market for more than three decades, but today there are also pink opals available that look like angel-skin corals.
Sunset Quartz
Here is an interesting story from Brazil. A vein of milky white quartz with yellow orange areas is marketed as sunset quartz.
Diamonds Homecoming In Botswana
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about The Republic of Botswana + its Diamond Independence Day, some 35 years after diamonds were discovered in the country + its new status as the largest diamond producer of the world by 2009 + the largest distributor of rough diamonds @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=27083
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