The Hidden Transparency

Chaim Even-Zohar writes about supplier of choice contracts + DTC's problems communicating with the sightholders @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp

Subjectivity In Gemology

How true! In a way gemology is a magic blend of subjectivity + objectivity + the expert who knows how to connect with the world makes all the difference in a day. Can anyone express the allure, fineness, attraction and glamor in alpha numerical notation? I doubt it.

Ronald Ringsrud (Ronald Ringsrud Co, California) writes:

The analytical mind cannot encapsulate the full experience of viewing a beautiful gem. The detailed objective perceptions of the intellect are supplemented by another style of perception—that of subjective perception. It is holistic and devoid of the mental activity of analysis.

Connoisseurs of gems develop the ability, during a lifetime of viewing fine gems, to go beyond the boundaries of the intellect and witness the glorious aesthetics that a fine gemstone has to offer. From a physiological standpoint, this could be called shifting from brain activity dominated by the left hemisphere (responsible for analysis and discrimination) to that of the right hemisphere (contextual and nonverbal functions).

Gemology’s fullest expression as a discipline is exemplified when both objective and subjective approaches are used. Therefore, physics, optics, and chemistry are taught in gemological institutes alongside history, romance, and folklore. The work of gemologists Dr Edward Gubelin expressed not only objective science but also subjectivity; gemstone certificates from his laboratory had the usual page of objective determinations for the gemstone, but also a page of subjective description outlining the beauty, uniqueness, rarity of the gem.

Dr Gubelin went to encourage work in the use of poetry to describe gemstone aesthetics, which, in an industry sustained by the romancing sale of gemstones, should be recognized as worthy of the highest endeavor.

Fredrick Kunz decried the arbitrary alteration of the birthstone chart by an association of jewelers in 1912. He recognized the multicultural reality that gemstones are special to people born on certain months. Modern understanding of an ancient eastern astrological system sheds new light on this. Practitioners of traditional Asian medicine prescribed gems not only as talismans but also as pharmaceuticals.

Gemology is perhaps more suited to address subjectivity than other sciences simply because its focus, gemstones, involves the complete expressions of the highest subjective qualities: allure, fineness, attraction, glamour, and charm. The role of subjectivity in gemology is interdisciplinary and should elevate our expectations of future gemologists and gemstone dealers.

Three Days Of The Condor

Memorable quote (s) from the movie:

Kathy (Faye Dunaway): You... you have a lot of very fine qualities. But...

Joe Turner (Robert Redford): What fine qualities?

Kathy (Faye Dunaway): You have good eyes. Not kind, but they don't lie, and they don't look away much, and they don't miss anything. I could use eyes like that.

Joe Turner (Robert Redford): But you're overdue in Vermont. Is he a tough guy?

Kathy (Faye Dunaway): He's pretty tough.

Joe Turner (Robert Redford): What will he do?

Kathy (Faye Dunaway): Understand, probably.

Joe Turner (Robert Redford): Boy. That is tough.

Wine Pirates

I think the colored stone and diamond industry should learn a lot from the wine industry. Though subjective, they do have grading standard (s) that's understood worldwide + the identification of fake wines via high tech, user-friendly gadgets should be a wake up call for the gem and jewelry industry.

Bottle Tech Aims To Foil Wine Pirates
Michelle Locke (AP) writes:

At Colgin Cellars, a kiss is not just a kiss.

For years, vintner Ann Colgin has sealed bottles of her sought-after wine headed for auction with a bright-red lipsticked kiss on the label, a charming, and undeniably personal, certificate of authenticity.

But with concerns growing about counterfeiters, she and other Napa Valley vintners are turning to high-tech fraud prevention so customers can feel confident they're taking home genuine wine.

Colgin, who hasn't yet had someone attempt to fake her wine and hopes to keep it that way, recently signed a deal with Eastman Kodak Co. on a system that employs invisible markers added to inks and other packaging components.

"Our wine is essentially a luxury good and I do believe that these rare and collectible luxury goods are targets," said Colgin, whose ultra-premium wines can fetch hundreds of dollars a bottle at auction.

With the new system, buyers at auctions and other secondary markets can ask the winery to scan their labels if they have any doubts, although the measures are primarily intended to put off counterfeiters.

It's hard to gauge how wide a problem counterfeits are in the U.S. wine industry, which according to a recent industry commissioned study pumps $162 billion a year into the economy, including grape-growing, tourism and other related impacts.

Wine Spectator magazine has reported that some experts believe as much as 5 percent of wines sold in secondary markets such as auctions may be counterfeit, although others consider that figure too high.

Unlike CD and DVD counterfeiting, wine piracy hasn't become a noticeable drain on the industry yet, so U.S. vintners are acting defensively.

There have been cases of counterfeit wines reported in Europe and China, and this spring there were reports that federal authorities in New York were investigating whether counterfeits were passed off as rare vintages, including some said to be part of Thomas Jefferson's collection. According to a lawsuit believed to have partly prompted the investigation, five bottles of wine — including four said to be owned by Jefferson — sold for $500,000.

Regardless of how many phony pinots are out there, it seems clear that interest in preventing fraud has spiked as new technology has become available, said Daniel Welty, marketing manager for Petaluma-based John Henry Packaging, which prints labels for wineries as well as other clients.

"It's more of a case the tools are becoming more available to combat the problem," he said. Anti-fraud measures being explored include tamper-proof seals, radio-frequency identification chips sunk into corks and using inks that only show up under special lights.

The Kodak technology used by Colgin and three other high-end Napa wineries involves putting proprietary markers, which Kodak will describe only as a "forensically undetectable material" into things such as printing inks, varnishes, paper, etc. that can only be detected by a Kodak handheld reader, also proprietary, which incorporates laser technology.

The idea is to come up with something easy to use and hard to detect, meaning it's that much harder for counterfeiters to figure out and copy, said Steve Powell, general manager and director for Security Solutions, Kodak's Graphic Communications Group.

The John Henry packaging company is using technology developed by Hewlett-Packard Co. to develop multicolored codes or graphics into labels. Colors and character combinations can be constantly changed to thwart copycats, Welty said.

The codes can be microprinted, so they're visible only with magnification, or in type that can be easily read.

"It's really cool. It's really simple, and nobody can know what the next codes are," he said. Fine wine can be expensive straight from the shelf, but when it comes to charity affairs, such as the Napa Valley annual wine auction going on this week, prices can go sky high.

Last year's high bid was $1.05 million for five large-format bottles of Staglin Family Vineyard Meritage blend, along with a trip to France. Like Colgin, the Staglins haven't run across fakes so far, but they decided to take a preemptive step and use the Kodak system on large bottles that are likely to end up being traded, said Garen Staglin.

"We want to be sure that we can give our customers the assurance of the integrity of our brand and label after we spent so much time and effort to try to accomplish what we've done over the years," he said.

In San Francisco, Jerome Zech, CEO of WineBid.com, which had $22.5 million in sales last year, doesn't think wine fraud is prevalent.

But with some high-end wines starting at $500 a bottle for pre-release prices, he's all for the industry's move toward anti-counterfeiting measures. "It'll help them and it'll help us as well."

WineBid's officials authenticate wine by only dealing with people they trust and checking bottles against a vast database, Zech said. If something seems off, "we just don't even question whether or not we would put it on our site. We would just reject the bottle."

So when someone showed up with two bottles of a famous French wine — and the glass was different for each bottle, "We go, Are you joking? Where did you get these things," Zech said. "He had some story, and we just said, "Sorry."

More info @ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070606/ap_on_bi_ge/genuine_wine

Amethyst Mining In Zambia

Here is an insider's view on amethyst mining in Zambia. Amethyst is found worldwide, but new localities can be always full of surprises.

Bjorn Anckar (European Union Mining Sector Diversification Programme, Lusaka, Zambia) writes:

One of the world’s largest producers of amethyst is Republic of Zambia in south-central Africa. Amethyst mining takes place in several parts of the country, but only three localities have any significance in the gem trade. The most important occurrence is the Mapatizya mining area in the Kalomo District of southern Zambia. Amethyst has been mined here since its discovery in the late 1950s. At present there are about 60 registered mining plots but only about 10 can be considered active producers. Currently, there is one large operator and a few moderate-scale operations. There are also a number of small scale mining operations as well as an abundance of artisanal miners and illegal diggers. About 5000 people have settled in the immediate area and depend on amethyst mining for their livelihood. The local climate is very arid, and agriculture is at the subsistence level or lower. The poverty of the area is striking.

Amethyst mining by the large and moderate scale operators is accomplished in open pits using bulldozers and excavators. Small scale operators dig pits and tunnels using only picks and shovels. Processing is very labor intensive, and includes washing, sorting, cobbing, sawing and final sizing/grading of large amounts of mineral material.

Production in Zambia over the last decade averaged about 1000 tonnes of amethyst annually. The vast majority of this production is low grade and mostly exported to China for carving and bead making. A small portion of the total production constitutes facet grade with a vivid purple Siberian hue. Faceted amethyst from Zambia ranges from melee to >50 carats. Heat treatment is not performed, as the material turns an unattractive grayish green. Frequent bush fires and intense sunlight in the area have turned all surface exposed amethyst veins to this color.

Amethyst mines are also located in central Zambia, in Chief Kaindu’s area north-northwest of Mumbwa. The area is most noted for its production of specimens of attractive amethyst druses; some are quite large and weigh several tones. The crystals are generally large, ranging from 2 to 13cm. One locality, the Lombwa mine, produces material that shows patchy portions of distinct citrine and amethyst, but the two colors tend to blend and the material is difficult to cut into attractive pieces of ametrine.

A vast area with several amethyst mines is located along the border of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, between Solwezi and Mwinilunga in northwestern Zambia. The material is often very clear but tends to be pale and is mainly exported to China for carving and bead making. Amethyst from this area responds well to heating, and a large portion of the production is treated to citrine. The Chafukuma mine is considered the producer of the best quality amethyst in this area.

More On The Black Swan Concept

(via Emergic) The ideas behind Mediocristan and Extremistan in Nassim Taleb’s “The BlackSwan” are worth exploring in more depth. Chetan Parikh has reproduced a table from the book which explains the differences between Mediocristan and Extremistan.

The Portfolio wrote:
N.N.T., who lives in New York and has taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, previously traded derivatives on Wall Street. The academics who drive him to tears are the ones who have explained—or misexplained—his old profession. They think that markets are from Mediocristan when in fact they inhabit Extremistan.

Say what? Mediocristan is the terrain of the ordinary, the part of the world that conforms to the bell curve. It answers to statistics and knowable probabilities. Height resides in Mediocristan. You may find one 7-footer on your block, almost certainly not two. Experience (and biology) enable us to frame the odds. Weight is also from Mediocristan. Pick any 1,000 people and their average weight will be close to that of the general population (even if you include the world’s fattest person). Personal wealth, however, is from Extremistan. For instance, the average wealth of 1,000 people will be very different if one of those people is Bill Gates.

This distinction is potent. In Extremistan, past events are a faulty guide to projecting the future. Gates may be the world’s richest person, but it isn’t unthinkable that someday, someone (at Google, perhaps?) will be twice as rich. Wars also reside in Extremistan. Prior to World War II, the planet had never experienced a conflict as terrible. Then we did. Suppose you frequent a pond. Day after day you see swans—always white. Naturally (but incorrectly) you presume that all swans are white. World War II was a black swan—horrific and unpredictable.

The Financial Times added:
Taleb claims that there are too many extreme events in securities markets for such markets to be located in Mediocristan. The black swan of October 1987, when the Dow Jones index fell by about 20 per cent, was the first trigger for his personal reassessment. The event was simply outside the realms of possibility in classical statistics. Taleb would first substitute power laws and the mathematics of extreme statistics for the reassurance of normal distributions. But this still gives more credence to economists and financial analysts than he allows. Probabilities can be defined and predictions made only if the events that are the subject of the probabilities and predictions can be described. Donald Rumsfeld distinguished known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Statistics, old and new, deal with known unknowns. Taleb’s world is determined by unknown unknowns - black swans.

No one, he says, could have predicted the invention of the wheel or measured the probability that the wheel would be invented, because if you could do either of these things you would already have invented the wheel. The invention of the wheel was a black swan.

Arlene Goldbard went further:
Taleb argues convincingly that we treat far too much of our reality as if it were Mediocristan when in fact much of it often behaves like Extremistan, where there are occasional “black swans” (his name for the unexpected event and the title of his most recent book) among the white. So, for example, out of the many thousands of books, films and recordings released each year, a small number will account for the largest part of sales, and it is not possible to predict with certainty which of the many works released will find black swan-style success (or failure). Indeed, in any endeavor susceptible to notable, unpredictable exceptions, no amount of examining the past will enable us to foretell the future.What’s going on here? Taleb discusses many factors contributing to our tendency to see our world as Mediocristan. There is the fact that our brains evolved long ago to deal with a world with many fewer variables, much less organized information, and a vastly smaller number of theories to explain them. The more complex any given situation, the larger number of examples you need to understand what is happening there. For instance, sampling the sales of a few dozen published books each year won’t tell you much about the prospects of the thousands of others not sampled. It’s just as likely as not that your sample would include one or more black swans—unexpectedly huge winners or losers—so anything you might conclude based on it would not be generalizable to the rest.

The Shipping News

Memorable quote (s) from the movie:

Billy (Gordon Pinsent): It's finding the center of your story, the beating heart of it, that's what makes a reporter. You have to start by making up some headlines. You know: short, punchy, dramatic headlines. Now, have a look, what do you see? Tell me the headline.

Quoyle (Kevin Spacey): Horizon Fills With Dark Clouds?

Billy (Gordon Pinsent): Imminent Storm Threatens Village.

Quoyle (Kevin Spacey): But what if no storm comes?

Billy (Gordon Pinsent): Village Spared From Deadly Storm.

The 4-Hour Workweek

(via Emergic) The book by Timothy Ferriss promises:

- How to outsource your life and do whatever you want for a year, only to return to a bank account 50% larger than before you left.

- How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs.

- How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of little-known European economists.

- How to train your boss to value performance over presence, or kill your job (or company) if it's beyond repair.

- How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”.

- What automated cash-flow "muses" are and how to create one in 2-4 weeks.

- How to cultivate selective ignorance—and create time—with a low-information diet.

- Management secrets of Remote Control CEOs.

- The crucial difference between absolute and relative income.

- How to get free housing worldwide and airfare at 50-80% off.

- How to fill the void and creating meaning after removing work and the office.