Fools, Show-offs, And Trophy Hunters

Milton Esterow writes about art thieves in Western Europe + ethnically oriented Balkan bandits + Irish travelers + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1963

Art thieves aren't any different from gem and jewelry thieves. The differences lie in their operating system (s). Gemstones and jewelry are portable, if lucky, easy to liquidate, while paintings require extensive network (s) + the barter culture in certain territories makes it even more complicated.

Study Cites Money Laundering By U.S. Diamond Jewelry Retailers

Chaim Even-Zohar writes about Professor John Zdanowicz's views on money laundering (one of America’s top authorities on detecting trade-based money laundering) + analysis and determining abnormal prices + the countries involved + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=25674

Best Bling

Hitha Prabhakar writes about anonymous private individuals searching for the world’s most perfect stones (via diamond suppliers, jewelry houses and auction houses, relying on phone calls and word of mouth) + other viewpoints @ http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/09/rare-expensive-diamonds-forbeslife-cx_hp_0209diamonds.html

Odontolite

Chemistry: Fossilized bones and teeth of pre-historic vertebrates; stained blue by vivianite.
Crystal system: Amorphous; may show features of tooth and bone structure.
Color: Opaque; blue, greenish blue.
Hardness: 5
Cleavage: -
Specific gravity: 3 – 3.15
Refractive index: 1.57 – 1.63 variable
Luster: -
Dispersion: -
Dichroism: -
Occurrence: Miocene sediments of Simorre near Auch, France; also associated with fossilized remains of Siberian mammoths.

Notes
Also known as ‘bone turquoise’; imitated by staining calcined teeth with copper sulphate solution (SG: 1.8; RI:1.54; similar to bone or ivory).

Common Opal

The reason why play-of-color is absent in common opal could be due to:

- variation in sphere size (s).

- non-spherical.

- the spheres may be of identical size (s) but disordered.

- the spheres may be too large or too small to cause diffraction.

Manga’s Homer And Walt Disney All In One

Malcolm Jones writes about Osamu Tezuka + his action-filled idea-driven graphic novel concepts @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19996088/site/newsweek/page/0/

Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform From Those Who Don't.

Good Books: (via Emergic) Here is what Ram Charan’s site says about the book:

How often have you heard someone with a commanding presence deliver a bold vision that turned out to be nothing more than rhetoric and hot air? All too often we mistake the appearance of leadership for the real deal. Without a doubt, intelligence, vision, and the ability to communicate are important. But something big is missing: the know-how of running a business, the capacity to take it in the right direction, do the right things, make the right decisions, deliver results, and leave the people and the business better off than they were before.

For well over four decades, Ram Charan has been learning in the most visceral way the underlying reasons why leaders succeed and fail. As one of the most influential advisors to top management teams of leading companies around the world, he has had a front-row seat to observe the cause and effect of leadership practices and behaviors.

Ram Charan's insight into the real content of leadership provides you with the eight fundamental skills needed for success in the twenty-first century:

- Positioning (and when necessary, repositioning) your business by zeroing in on the central idea that meets customer needs and makes money.

- Connecting the dots by pinpointing patterns of external change ahead of others.

- Shaping the way people work together by leading the social system of your business.

- Judging people by getting to the truth of a person.

- Molding high-energy, high-powered, high-ego people into a working team of leaders in which they equal more than the sum of their parts.

- Knowing the destination where you want to take your business by developing goals that balance what the business can become with what it can realistically achieve.

- Setting laser-sharp priorities that become the road map for meeting your goals.

- Dealing creatively and positively with societal pressures that go beyond the economic value creation activities of your business.

Know-How is the missing link of leadership. By Showing how the eight know-hows link to, interact with, and reinforce personal and psychological traits, Ram Charan provides a holistic and innovative portrait of successful leaders of the twenty-first century.

In my view, it's all about continual change + business models become obselete with time because of the fleeting business landscape + repositioning requires insight, read-through skills, near flawless imagination + the concept of personality traits and know-hows may morph into a new concept + the expanding global economy will bring in more surprises and new models.

Freud Portrait Breaks Art Record

BBC writes about the general trend for contemporary art going up in value @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6225168.stm

Did Diamdel Lose The Alexkor Production – Or Just Give It Away?

Chaim Even-Zohar writes about Diamdel South Africa’s dramatic loss of the Alexkor (state-owned) mine/its diamond production + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=25716

India, China To Equal US Jewellery Market

Commodity Online writes about the global gem and jewelry market + the status of India and China by 2015 @ http://www.commodityonline.com/newnews.php?id=1961

King Of Bling

Susan Adams writes about Laurence Graff, the most exclusive diamond merchant, the new Harry Winston, the branding genius + other viewpoints @ http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0813/084.html

Meerschaum

(Sepiolite)
Chemistry: Hydrated magnesium silicate
Crystal system: Orthorhombic; microcrystalline; an intermediate mixture of a fine fibrous material and an amorphous substance of the same composition.
Color: Opaque.
Hardness: 2 – 2.5
Cleavage: -
Specific gravity: 2; very porous (when dry it will float in water)
Refractive index: 1.53 mean.
Luster: Earthy
Dispersion: -
Dichroism: -
Occurrence: Alluvial deposits; Greece, Spain, USA, Morocco.

Notes
Soft white and very porous, stains readily (can float); meerschaum from the German word meaning ‘sea foam’; sepiolite from the Greek meaning ‘cuttlefish’; alteration product of serpentine and magnesite; fluorescence: bright blue (long wave); carvings, pipes.

Charles Thomas Munger

"It is not given to human beings to have such talent that they can just know everything about everything all the time. But it is given to human beings who work hard at it – who look and sift the world for a mispriced bet – that they can occasionally find one. And the wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have odds. And the rest of the time, they don't. It's just that simple."

A priceless advice.

The Marketing Gurus

Good Books: (via Emergic) The Marketing Gurus by Chris Murray is a collection of summaries of some of the best marketing books. It’s a good concept; one can get a flavor of the best recent ideas in marketing.

Here is a review from Publishers Weekly (via Amazon):
As the editor of Soundview Executive Book Summaries, which distills business books into 5,000-word recaps, Murray offers 17 such summaries of marketing books published in the last 15 years. It's arguably a narrow range for the best "of all time" even with big names like Regis McKenna and Sergio Zyman on board. Each book summary begins with a quick summation, often making redundant the introductions written especially for the collection. And though the condensed versions manage to extract the key ideas from each text, some authors fare better than others. Faith Popcorn's unique voice survives compression, for example, much better than Seth Godin's does. The selected books are sequenced to suggest a broader argument that runs from connecting with customers to marketing in the 21st century, but the actual connections between the various works are largely unstated. Unless you're completely new to marketing research, chances are you've come across at least one of these books already, but Soundview's summaries are a good introduction for those with no background.

This is what the book description says:
Since 1978, Soundview Executive Book Summaries has offered its subscribers condensed versions of the best business books published each year. Soundview’s summaries have won it acclaim as the definitive selection service for sophisticated business book readers.

For the first time ever, Soundview is bringing together summaries of seventeen essential marketing classics in a single volume. The Marketing Gurus distills thousands of pages into fewer than three hundred, making it ideal for busy professionals, students, and anyone curious about how marketing has evolved.

I think it's an excellent introduction for beginners so that they are able to revisit and distill some of the recent marketing ideas.

Optical Delusions

Hilarie M. Sheets writes about Tim Eitel's monumental canvases + the psychological tenor of the contemporary-looking figures + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2154

The New Emirate On The Schelde

Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the concept of offshore economies + competition among the key players like Belgium, Dubai, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Israel promising the nomadic tribe of tax exiles with exotic global capital conveniences + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp?TextSearch=&KeyMatch=0&id=25748

Lazurite

Chemistry: Isomorphous combination hauynite and sodalite.
Crystal system: Cubic; rarely dodecahedral or compact masses in aggregate.
Color: dark blue or greenish blue
Hardness: 5.5
Cleavage: Imperfect: dodecahedral.
Specific gravity: 2.7 – 2.9
Refractive index: 1.50 mean
Luster: Dull to greasy.
Dispersion: -
Dichroism: -
Occurrence: In limestones as a result of contact metamorphism.

Notes
Lapis lazuli is a complex aggregate of hauynite, sodalite, noselite and lazurite; inclusions: pyrite, calcite.

Billie Holiday

'No two people on earth are alike, it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.'

In Russia, Red Art Turning To Green

David Holley writes about the new trend (s) in Russia (where the rich are paying top prices for paintings of Socialist realism) + other viewpoints @ http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/columnone/la-fg-sovart23apr23,1,6865553.story

The Strategy Paradox

Good Books: (via Emergic) Michael Raynor's The Strategy Paradox via an interview with the author of AlwaysOn.

Here are a few more excerpts from the AlwaysOn interview by Guy Kawasaki:

Question: Why can’t companies predict the future better?
Answer: Companies might be able to predict the future better than they can now, but for me the question is whether they will ever be able to predict the relevant future accurately enough for the purposes of strategic planning, and so avoid, or at least mitigate, the strategy paradox. I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon for some deep, structural reasons.

For example, randomness. Prediction requires the identification of a pattern that repeats, because a pattern is what allows you to use what has happened to infer what will happen next. Randomness is the enemy of pattern-based prediction because randomness means that there is no pattern, no way to use the past to predict the future.

Question: What’s the proper role in strategy formation for each level in a hierarchy?
Answer: I’ve found that it helps to think about strategy in two halves: the commitments that all successful strategies entail, and the uncertainties attendant to those commitments. Commitments and uncertainties are only half the answer. The rest of the solution lies in calibrating the focus of each level of the hierarchy to the uncertainties it faces. It is common sense if not common practice that the more senior levels of a hierarchy should be focused on longer time horizons. What hasn’t been as widely recognized is that with longer time horizons come greater levels of uncertainty, and strategic uncertainty in particular. This fact has some profound implications for how each level in an organization should act.

Question: How does your answer change with respect to a start-up?
Answer: Start-ups tend to be enormously resource constrained. Typically they are not able to devote money and time to the problems of strategic uncertainty. As a result, start-ups tend to be bet the farm propositions: high risk, with the potential of high reward. Such firms don’t manage strategic risk, they accept it.

I am in a start-up mode; perhaps, in the coming weeks, months + years ahead I will have more to share so that I am able to see the fruits of my vision, commitment + surprises (as I learn more) + strategies may also teach you something more: the highest probability of extreme success may also bring the highest probability of extreme failure.