On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 05:52:14PM -0300, Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto wrote:
>
> ET: Why do people kill each other and go to wars over this "diamond"
> substance? What is it for?
>
> Me: Well, aside from its industrial applications, people want it for the
> precise reason that it is hard to get. If its abundance increased, people
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> would cease using it.
>
> ET: WTF!?Diamond is *perceived* to be hard to get. In fact, diamond is a very abundant stone. It is so abundant that if DeBeers did not have a stranglehold on the world's diamond production, it would probably be considered only semi-precious. There was an interesting article in IEEE Spectrum (or maybe another IEEE magazine, though not a journal or scholarly pub) a couple of years ago about two different guys developing different methods for lab production of diamonds. In both cases the diamonds were *indistinguishable* from natural diamonds. This scared the crap out of DeBeers. One was "pressured" to sell out to DeBeers. The other had more than one attempt on his life. (Take a guess at who was probably behind that?) Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez http://people.connexer.com/~roberto http://www.connexer.com
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