Monthly Archives: July 2004

compare and contrast: eric clapton and lindsay buckingham

By chuq | Published July 31, 2004

in the last few weeks, laurie and I have gone to two concerts at HP Pavillion: fleetwood mac, and last night, Eric Clapton (opened by Robert Randolph and the Family band).

I’ll talk about both in more detail when I have a few spare moments (soon, soon), but coming home from the concert, laurie and I were talking about the differences in the two concerts…

Now, I admit I really like Buckingham as a guitar player (I just wish he wouldn’t sing, which explains a good part of my love/hate relationship with Fleetwood Mac).

But to explain how I feel about Buckingham vs. Clapton, here’s the best I can come up with. I believe, if I put the time and energy really trying to get good at guitar, I could become a decent cover for Buckingham.

But Clapton? I could practice every minute of my life for the rest of my life, and I’d never be qualified to carry his gear. But I’d love to get my hands on a couple of those guitars, just for a few minutes…

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diamonds are forever… Not

By chuq | Published July 22, 2004

interesting piece at Marginal Revolution on Diamonds, and the state of the market — and the growing loss of dominance by the De beer’s cartel.

I’m a bit of a jewel geek, and as it turns out, one of the books I listened to on the trip to LA this last week was Diamonds: a journey to heart of an obsession by Matthew Hart.

On the same subject, with a lot more background info (like, why is it the De Beers cartel, when there are no de Beers involved?) and even more info on how the market is changing, and some interesting background on blood diamonds (diamonds funding various insurgencies in africa), and the growth of the canadian sources (which I’m very interested in, and try to use when I can)

there’s an added issue in the diamond market: tehre are now labs that are claiming (and I’ve heard some in the business say they’re correct) that they can create lab diamonds that are indistinguishable from natural ones without expensive equipment; loupes and scopes won’t do. Where this is likely to nail the diamond market is the low end: people like myself and laurie won’t buy lab stones or enhanced stones (knowingly) — but if the typical customer at Zales can buy a 50 point natural diamond or a 2 carat lab diamond for the same price, what do you think they’ll do?

of course. and once the GOOD lab stones start rolling into the low end of the market, it’ll drop prices and affect everything. There are already places where non-treated stones are limited to collectors and geeks, where irradiation or heat treating is common — when that hits the diamond market, watch out…

collector-caliber stones will still see their value maintained; if you expect your average stones or low-end or moderate jewelry class stuff to maintain value or go up, you’re crazy… (if I were investing in diamonds, which I think only idiots would anyway, I’d be investing in high quality certified canadian stones, where the provenance away from the blood diamonds and their natural status would make them less risky…but if I were investing in this stuff at all, it’d be in other gems, not diamonds, or jewelry with high-quality stones in it…)

update: here’s a link to the original piece in the economist. and now Adam Curry chimes in.

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