There Is No Cat

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Monday, October 21, 2002

Hardest surface known

When I asked Laura to marry me, I also asked her if she would consider something other than a diamond for her engagement ring. She's got a lovely ruby on her finger. I find the diamond trade revolting, with a history of guerilla groups in places like Angola and Sierra Leone, for example, financing brutal wars with diamond mining. Then there's the fact that diamonds' prices are artifically inflated thanks to the marketing efforts of the DeBeers diamond cartel, the leaders of which can't enter the United States for fear of being arrested for their efforts at controlling the diamond market. I don't buy all that bull about how you should spend two months' salary for a diamond, and you shouldn't either. It's not a tradition; it's a creation of DeBeers' marketing department. Now, an article in The Observer gives an even better reason for avoiding diamonds: Al Qaeda is deeply engaged in the diamond trade, changing much of their assets from cash into easy-to-smuggle diamonds. Buy a diamond, finance a terror attack. No thanks.

Posted at 12:40 AM

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Note: I’m tired of clearing the spam from my comments, so comments are no longer accepted.

I have moissanite in my engagement ring -- I liked the look, it's much cheaper and the fact that the stones are only naturally found in meteorites appealed to our fannish natures.

www.howstuffworks.com/moissanite.htm

Posted by Anita Rowland at 2:40 AM, October 21, 2002 [Link]

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This site is copyright © 2002-2024, Ralph Brandi.

What do you mean there is no cat?

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

- Albert Einstein, explaining radio


There used to be a cat

[ photo of Mischief, a black and white cat ]

Mischief, 1988 - December 20, 2003

[ photo of Sylvester, a black and white cat ]

Sylvester (the Dorito Fiend), who died at Thanksgiving, 2000.


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