Diamonds Are Bullshit

Diamonds Are Bullshit, article.

"American males enter adulthood through a peculiar rite of passage - they spend most of their savings on a shiny piece of rock. They could invest the money in assets that will compound over time and someday provide a nest egg. Instead, they trade that money for a diamond ring, which isn’t much of an asset at all. As soon as you leave the jeweler with a diamond, it loses over 50% of its value. Americans exchange diamond rings as part of the engagement process, because in 1938 De Beers decided that they would like us to. Prior to a stunningly successful marketing campaign 1938, Americans occasionally exchanged engagement rings, but wasn’t a pervasive occurrence. Not only is the demand for diamonds a marketing invention, but diamonds aren’t actually that rare. Only by carefully restricting the supply has De Beers kept the price of a diamond high."

Ivor Tymchak said:
A great article, however, he forgot to mention the recent development of manufactured diamonds that makes the situation even crazier. I wrote about it years ago.

A thought experiment gives us a clue: Say we made diamond rings from factories, which nobody could tell from the slavery-produced ones, and told people what they were, and sold them at 20% of the price? Would anybody buy them? Nooo! And most of them would not stop buying the "real" ones either.
Which tells us: they know they are only buying status. And 2: they will rather buy very expensive status symbols than they will have food on the table. 

Being able to kick sand in their neighbor's face is more important to people than an easy life. 

Taking landscape photos

Here is a nice article for relative beginners about how to photograph landscapes.

Sun up, sun down

Here are two nice Danish songs, one about the sun rising, one about the sun going down.

Happiness is

"You can't imagine how happy it makes a man to see a woman like you. Just to look at her." 

-- Once Upon A Time In the West


----
I was never a big western fan, but that one is one outstanding film.

"On a Chinese Highway"

... is one of of my favorite obscure Danish songs. To be honest I did not think that there would be very much of the kind. But it turns out there is, and rather better than many would expect. (Download slide show.)

Third-longest span in the world. (I think Denmark has no. 1.)

Can Google decide Truth?

Google is making a lot of people nervous by studying possible ways of ranking links by the truthfulness of the sites linked to.

It's just a study, and would be too wildly controversial to be likely to be implemented. But it makes me think:

Who would decide what is true?
Who and how would they decide if it's true that there is a god? Or isn't one? Or is many?

Even more earthly facts may change radically. Just consider this: if this was done, and if it also was done a hundred years ago, how different wouldn't the results be!
There are innumerable things which then were believed broadly to be Facts, which turned out not to be, or which we simply decided we no longer believed was so. Even the most learned scientists disagree wildly about the most basic things. And since it continually has been so in history, it surely is still so, we have not suddenly become omniscient that I have noticed.
And if a superpower like Google back then had put its might behind all those things believed to be facts, how many of them would we have been able to revise?

Books in a strap

It is clear that until just a few generations ago, it was a universal standard in schools, from elementary to university, for everybody to carry their books around in straps, instead of in a bag.

Few people had too much money, and I'll bet books were not exactly cheap items since real mass production of binding was not standard yet... so why subject your books to bumps and the weather? Any old fabric back would be better than straps, and a leather bag would be tops.
Any ideas?

Dictation Oddity

I'm having some odd problems with phone/tablet dictation this week.
The oddest was right now:
I dictated:
"Maybe I'm at the wrong address?"
The iPad wrote:
"Maybe I'm a little hung over."

Huh??

"Awesome" II, the sequel

Many of the best of these clips are not derring-dos.


(Heh, sneaky how some sneak a hot bod into the middle of the movie to get a preview which attracts attention, though it has nothing to do with the rest of the video.)

Mike J on the Six Plus

Mike Johnston of The Online Photographer (my favorite blog) has been rather snarky about phone cameras, with some justification. But they get better every year, and he just got in iPhone Six Plus, here is his impression, along with interesting thoughts about what a cell really is.

(Oh, it's one more minute of my fifteen, Mike says I helped him to decide between the normal iPhone 6 and the Plus, with the latter being the clear winner to my mind.)

"People are awesome"

[Thanks to Henry]

Update:
Russ pointed to this. I don't know how many cuts and tricks were incorporated, but it def is entertaining.

Hermit crabs line up in order of size to swap and upgrade shells with one another

Hermit crabs line up in order of size to swap and upgrade shells with one another.
Bert found this amazing video. It's astounding, the things that happen in nature.