The bridal-industrial complex

This article is more than two decades old, but I still enjoy re-reading it every year or so. When it was first written, cubic zirconia has only appeared on the jewelry market a few years earlier, having been launched by the Swarovski company. Swarovski is best known for lead-crystal beads and tchotchkes in the US, but has a more upmarket reputation in Europe for fine costume jewelry. (I'll spare everyone my extended back-and-forth about whether "fine costume jewelry" is a contradiction in terms-- it may be well-made and pretty, but the materials have no particular intrinsic value... but then again, how much true intrinsic value does anything really have if it can't directly keep you sheltered, fed, and watered? Though if you can persuade someone to trade you a cow for your useless lump of soft yellow metal....) Since then, I expect their patents have run out, so that now everyone and his dog can use Swarovski's industrial process to churn out CZ. Also, synthetic diamonds can now be made in significant sizes and quantities.

All of which boils down to no particular point on my part, except that on this reading, I particularly enjoyed the observation on "eternity rings" that "older American women received a ring of miniature diamonds because of the needs of a South African corporation to accommodate the Soviet Union."

Ah, love.

Dhimma dharma (chameleon optional)

Dan Simmons has become unstuck in time. He's always such a cheerful happy fellow. A short browse through Wikipedia suggests that while Simmons doesn't directly cite Bat Ye'or, she seems to be a key proponent of the concepts he's discussing. While I don't think I've ever heard of her before, I'm not surprised to see the laudatory quote from Victor Davis Hanson.

In a vaguely similar vein, I've finally read Mary Gentle's Grunts, which I can only describe as LOTR via Quentin Tarantino. (The protagonists are essentially Uruk-Hai.) I'm not sure I actually *liked* it, but it was certainly different from yer standard Extruded Fantasy Product.

As a complete tangent, the sun has actually been out for a few hours today, at least so far. We'll see how long this lasts.

Demographics stuff

I'd remembered seeing this marketing breakdown of the US population a while back, and was poking through it again when it occurred to me that similar analyses must've been done for other countries as well. They do have a parallel list for Canada and I suspect some similar info for Puerto Rico, but I haven't yet found similar charts for the rest of the world.

Inspired by the birthday meme:

1.) List five famous people who share your mother's maiden name.
2.) If your social security number were a nine-digit zip code, where in the US would it be?
3.) How many decimal places of pi do you have to go to reach exactly the same 20-digit sequence as your credit card number and expiration date?
4.) What is your PayPal account password?

(Still grumpy. Need more tea. Grump.)