This year's winners of the Ig Nobel prizes are a bumper crop of wild and crazy SCIENCE!, featuring sword-swallowing, knuckle-cracking, benefits of cow-naming, pregnant women NOT tipping over, a household use for giant panda poop (take that, Packham), diamonds made from tequila, a brassiere that can be used as TWO gas masks, "Ireland's Worst Driver", Icelandic banks, Zimbabwean currency, and a 'Peace Prize' earned by hitting people over the heads with beer bottles (and comparing the effects of empty vs. full bottles) (related inquiry)
posted by wendell on Oct 2, 2009 - 23 comments

Everyone knows hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds. So how do you extend this to more than four suits? Stars are a natural choice, although they sort of ruin the red/black symmetry. You could appeal to gaming history by making a six-suited deck with crowns and anchors. Or you could just double everything and come up with a whole four extra suits.
posted by wanderingmind on May 3, 2008 - 31 comments

Rocks 'n' Diamonds for some Friday puzzle-game fun. Described as "in the tradition of" Boulderdash and Sokoban, it's actually a superset of both, and you can waste tons of time playing all the old familiar levels or tons of others. (It's a quick download, for linux/os x/the other thing.)
posted by Wolfdog on Mar 28, 2008 - 12 comments

DeBeers to pay out $295 million in a class action lawsuit for price fixing. If you purchaced any diamond between January 1, 1994 and March 31, 2006, here's how to get your cut.
posted by jpdoane on Jan 24, 2008 - 92 comments

First a goose, then Sigourney and now really old diamonds. A diamond field in Northern Ontario, Canada has turned up a 1.5 Carat diamond from what is believed to be the world's oldest diamond deposit at 2.697 billion years old. The diamonds were found, of all places, just 12 kilometers from the small town of Wawa, Ontario (www.wawa.cc) - previously famous for being home to the world's biggest goose and filming location of the 2006 film Snow Cake starring Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver.
posted by empatterson on Apr 20, 2007 - 37 comments

About a week ago a man walked into a high security vault in Antwerp during normal business hours, loaded up with 24 kilograms of diamonds, and walked out with them. He wasn't named "Carlos Hector Flomenbaum". Police have no idea who he is or where he is, and a $2 million reward has been offered for tips on his whereabouts. Anyone seen Robert Wagner around recently?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste on Mar 13, 2007 - 44 comments

The giant spiraling hole in the ground near Mirny, Russia in Siberia is perhaps the world's largest open pit diamond mine. More giant holes.
posted by Burhanistan on Mar 12, 2007 - 48 comments

The Bushmen get to go home! "Lady" Tonge said they were "holding the government of Botswana to ransom" by having the gall to keep on living. Others recognized genocide for what it is. They used the internet to tell us how much they wanted to go home and now, in one of those few moments where something goes right, they can go home.
posted by jefgodesky on Dec 14, 2006 - 8 comments

Crater of Diamonds State Park Interested in obtaining diamonds but feeling troubled by the diamond business? Head over to Arkansas and dig your own damned diamonds.
posted by Burhanistan on Dec 11, 2006 - 24 comments

The Diamond Age has arrived, but no one will admit it. Experts chafe at the mass-production of diamonds. The leading gem analysts refuse to rate them. Duh. "If we could succeed, at a small expenditure of labour, in converting carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks." Capital, Karl Marx (previously)
posted by anotherpanacea on Jul 10, 2006 - 96 comments

Finally, the real reason Brad Pitts is in Africa - he's using a Zeppelin to look for diamonds. Celebrity colonialism indeed!
posted by Jos Bleau on Jun 7, 2006 - 23 comments

DeBeers is selling 26% of its mining operations to a South African "black empowerment" holding company. The new company's shareholders include DeBeers mines' local employees and pensioners and trusts benefiting disadvantaged groups. Its chairman has been a prominent figure in the ANC and the National Union of Mineworkers. Seems pretty cool, even if DeBeers is only doing it because South Africa's Mining Charter says they have to.
posted by thirteenkiller on Nov 8, 2005 - 37 comments

Famous Diamonds [Tripod page, but a really good one]
posted by Pseudoephedrine on Sep 7, 2004 - 9 comments

Mass-produced diamonds Two startups are threatening the De Beers diamond monopoly. They plan to use the money they make from their mass-produced diamonds to "reshape the computing industry". Interesting stuff.
posted by pizzasub on Aug 13, 2003 - 52 comments

Chalmers Johnson is an provocative proponent of the American Empire theory, indeed. Here are excerpts from his Blow Back: The Cost And Consequences of American Empire

I heard Johnson interviewed on Episode II, War And Conflict In The Post-Cold War, Post-9/11 Era of The Whole Wide World

The Cold War and its central conflict - the physical and ideological battles between the United States, the Soviet Union and their proxy states - imposed a certain logic and consistency on the world. Take that away and add the bloody wars in the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East in the ‘90s as well as the terror attacks and warnings of more recent times and you get a very confused picture of a world at war. Is this breaking storm in Iraq about oil, democracy, freedom, empire, culture, water, diamonds, modernizing Islam or nation building in the Middle East? Some, one or all of these things?

It was an excellent program and well worth your listen, either by RA now or mp3 later. (From listening to the radio)
posted by y2karl on Mar 13, 2003 - 15 comments

The Diamond Age begins. Research scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison have bound DNA to circuits using a thin film of diamond as a bridge. Pathogens detected by the DNA, trigger it to send an electrical signal via the diamond medium to the circuit. [MORE]
posted by yonderboy on Dec 14, 2002 - 7 comments

South African mining giant begins providing triple coctail for HIV treatment. Something optimistic for a Friday post: AngloGold along with DeBeers is offering its employees HIV Triple cocktail treatment for free. With almost 30% of some of these companies' workforce affected with the HIV virus, is this an example of merging corporate and social interests or is this a sign of honest corporate citizenship?
posted by phyrewerx on Nov 15, 2002 - 18 comments

Diamonds , a symbol of love for a large part of this century. Yet there is an underlying monopoly who have socially engineered the whole entire idea that a "Diamond is Forever". Does your notion of a diamond change knowing that a consortium is ensuring that their Monopoly is Forever?
posted by mutantdisco! on Aug 14, 2002 - 105 comments

Most Valuable Object in the World The Supreme Purple Star - as it is being called - is a deep purple diamond, turning to crimson when rotated in the light. Diamonds come in a rainbow of colors and are called "fancies" in the trade. Some are beautiful, others less so. This one is the only one of it's kind, and has been pronounced "priceless". The speculation, of course, is that the owner is looking to sell it.
posted by Irontom on Jun 17, 2002 - 20 comments

World's biggest diamond robbery foiled. Yeah, this could have been serious, but it's straight out of The Thomas Crown Affair. Break through the Dome's gates with a JCB, sneak into the vault, escape on a powerboat. It's almost a pity that the Sweeney was there to foil it.
posted by holgate on Nov 7, 2000 - 6 comments

Now you can be sure your diamond is pure. Wouldn't want it tainted with any revolution or nothin...
posted by Steven Den Beste on Sep 22, 2000 - 15 comments