[tt] NYT: Fake Gems, Genuine Appeal

[Premise Checker]

Fake Gems, Genuine Appeal
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/technology/21online.html
[More What's Online articles included.]

By DAN MITCHELL

MANUFACTURED diamonds have become "as pure and nearly as big as the
finest specimens hauled out of the ground," Ulrich Boser reports in
Smithsonian magazine (smithsonianmag.com). This has profound
implications for a number of industries, but producers of "natural
diamonds," the magazine reports, "are less enthusiastic."

To visit the headquarters of Apollo Diamond, Mr. Boser had to meet
his ride at a fast-food restaurant outside Boston that he was not
allowed to name in his article. Apollo "is about as secretive as a
Soviet-era spy agency," he wrote. "Its address isn't published." he
added. "The public relations staff wouldn't give me directions.
Instead, an Apollo representative picks me up at this exurban strip
mall and drives me in her black luxury car whose make I am not
allowed to name along roads that I am not allowed to describe as
twisty, not that they necessarily were."

The security is understandable. Bryant Linares, Apollo's chief
executive, told Mr. Boser that a man had approached him from behind
at a conference a few years ago and warned him that, as Mr. Boser
put it, "someone from a natural diamond company just might put a
bullet in his head."

The problem for the producers is that even though diamonds are not
all that rare, people believe they are, so their price is
substantially inflated.

Once people realize that manufactured diamonds are indistinguishable
from the real thing, he said, that could change.

But it is their very ordinariness that could make either natural or
manufactured diamonds highly valuable to industry. Diamonds "have
the potential to dramatically change technology, perhaps becoming as
significant as steel or silicon in electronics and computing," Mr.
Boser writes.

That might make them less appealing for engagement rings. But for
those who believe that there is something about the beauty of
diamonds that gives them appeal, the factory-made stones could fit
the bill.

Mr. Boser said he took a sample from Apollo to Virgil Ghita, a
jeweler in downtown Boston, who peered at the stone through his
loupe.

"He lowers the loupe and looks at me for a moment," Mr. Boser
writes. "Then he studies the stone again, pursing his brow. He
sighs. 'There's no way to tell that it's lab-created,' " he said.

OIL SPECULATION Are speculators to blame for the spike in oil
prices? The question has been under debate for months. Andrew
Leonard writes at Salon's How the World Works blog that the answer
is yes and no (salon.com).

Speculators are surely behind short-term moves in oil prices, both
up and down. "But," Mr. Leonard writes, "behind that backdrop of
speculative froth" the real numbers "aren't encouraging."

Demand is falling in the United States and Europe, but rising
elsewhere, particularly in China and India. And although supplies
are rising, that is only because of OPEC. Non-OPEC production is
actually down.

What is unknown, Mr. Leonard writes, is how much power OPEC can
wield. It could be that OPEC is "facing the same cold realities of
depleting resources that the non-OPEC world is slamming into."

If so, regulating the speculators might not help in the long run.

HEALTHY SMOKES "We asked sports champions," declared a magazine ad
for Camel cigarettes in 1935. Camels, the sports champions
responded, not only give you energy, but also "healthy nerves," as
the Olympic swimmer Stubby Kruger put it. "I smoke a great deal," he
said, "and Camels don't ever ruffle my nerves."

That and dozens of other cigarette ads making equally absurd claims
can be found in all their vintage glory at the Gallery of Graphic
Design (graphic-design.tjs-labs.com). DAN MITCHELL

E-mail: whatsonline at nytimes.com