Dear Serena, You made what, something like $6.5 million in 2009 and some $28 million over the course of your career Do you think that gives you the right to throw a tantrum on the court?
Well now that the worst scientific scandal of our generation has been exposed, I can finally stop worrying about melting ice caps and concentrate on getting prepared for cooler temperatures.
And how better to get prepared but with a warm wrap coat.
While I am not a "climate scientist" I do believe that since I can breathe, sit upright and interact with my environment I am nearing that vaunted title.
One of the biggest mistakes we can make here is to begin rationalizing what the motives were of the perpetrators. We have a lot of evidence that something particularly awful in Anglia was Afoot but as soon as we begin creating frameworks for what may or may not have been in their minds, we create an environment of excusal.
We do know that for the past 15 years this gang of greenies have been collecting data, massaging it and building a message. That coveted data repository is the source of their authority, and if audited it could either define the extent of the lie or the extent of their veracity.But, oops! The dog ate their data! Now what do we do? How do we audit their model? Under rigorus scientific scrutiny, if you've lost your models traceability then you have nothing, nada, bupkus, nil, nada, zero, zippo.
So they may be able to weasel out of culpability, but without the benchmark there is no way things can proceed because there is no basis for agreement. Can you say "back to square zero"?
My point is this: whether or not they open their present day data model to scrutiny, without any way to link it to the actual raw measurements it is of zero value. Just a jumble of numbers that some people say might contain an answer. Like the statement in the hitch-hikers guide to the universe, the magic number is forty two. Unfortunately the results say fifty-four.
Personally, I think the entire climate science world needs to be upended and shaken hard and this provides a great opportunity to do it.
and
"An easy explanation of what ClimateGate means,
ClimateGate emails and computer programs were taken from a main server at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. It is not known if this was a theft or the actions of a whistleblower, disgusted with what the lead scientists at CRU were doing.
ClimateGate exposed the cabal of 20 – 30 scientists (not just at CRU) that peer reviewed each others papers, strong-armed scientific journals to only print their views, and then sat on the IPCC panels as authors judging which published studies go into the IPCC final reports. This is why they always keep shouting “peer reviewed studies, peer reviewed studies, peer reviewed studies”. They owned the peer review process.
ClimateGate exposed that this small group has been adding positive corrections to the raw global temperature data, inflating the amount of published temperature rise over the last 50 years. Both CRU in the UK and NASA-GISS in the US add these biases. At CRU, the programmers did not even know what and why some corrections were added every month. Only since satellite monitoring for comparison have the amounts of biasing leveled off.
ClimateGate exposed the leaders of this cabal instructing each other to delete emails, data files, and data analysis programs ahead of already filed Freedom Of Information Act requests for raw data and computer codes, clearly a crime.
ClimateGate exposed the “trick” about the Hockey stick figure and other studies that performed proxy construction of past temperatures. After all, reconstruction of the last 1,000 years of climate is the first step in predicting the future with super computer programs as explained below:
Everything about all 21 super computer programs used by the IPCC to determine future global warming rely on best-determined past sensitivities to solar and volcanic effects (climate forcings) from the proxy temperature record.
1. The elimination of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age (the handle of the hockey stick) was necessary so that past solar effects could be minimized, thereby allowing almost all of the warming in the last 75 years to be blamed on Greenhouse Gasses. Raw data (like tree-ring thickness, radioisotope of mud layers in a lake bottom, ice core analyses, etc.) are used as a proxy for reconstruction of the temperature record for 1000 AD to 1960 AD. To ensure desired results, statistical manipulation of the raw data and selecting only supporting data, cherry-picking, was suspected and later proved.
2. The slope of long-term 10-year running average global temperature using thermometers from 1900 to present (the blade of the hockey stick) was maximized with the sloppy gridding code, Urban Heat Island effects, hiding the declines, and even fabricating data (documented in the leaked source code comments revealed with ClimateGate). This ensured that the Greenhouse Gas effect coefficient in all 21 of the super computers was maximized, and that maximizes the temperature result at year 2100 based on Greenhouse Gas increases. This thermometer data was used to replace the tree ring-divergence after 1960 and plot this over the climate history data of (1) above giving the false impression that the reconstructed 1000 AD to 1960 AD results are more accurate than they are.
3. Because tuning of the super computer programs uses back casting, the computer outputs could always replicate the 20th Century (by design); therefore it was assumed that the models had almost everything in them. Because of (1) and (2) above, nearly all climate change predicted by the models was due to CO2 and positive feedbacks and hardly any of the climate change was for other reasons like solar, understood or not.
4. Over the years, when better numbers for volcanic effects, black carbon, aerosols, land use, ocean and atmospheric multi-decadal cycles, etc. became available, it appears that CRU made revisions to refit the back cast, but could hardly understand what the code was doing due to previous correction factor fudging and outright fabricating, as documented in the released code as part of ClimateGate.
5. After the IPCC averages the 21 super computer outputs of future projected warming (anywhere from 2-degrees to 7-degrees, not very precise), that output is used to predict all manner of catastrophes. (Fires, floods, droughts, blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, insects, extinctions, diseases, civil wars, cats & dogs sleeping together, etc.)"
This seems to be an accurate assessment of what happened. Should we be surprised that the models have failed to predict the last ten years? What's scary is that they models could have been half right, because of dumb luck.
If this assessment is correct, the World has been had by an epic conspiracy. If so, the hockey stick is at the center of this, which implicates Michael Mann. What did Al Gore know and when did he know it?
The theory of man-made global warming was perpetuated by those with an agenda
Jewelry has the distinction of being one of the few luxury goods that has both a high end and a low end, in the way that a private jet does not. The high end of course is the private client and auction business and the low end is the retail chain store business like Zales and Kay Jewelers.
On the high end: I really don't know how to describe the high end other than tremendous. Take this month's Sotheby's Geneva Magnificent Jewelry Auction for example
They are rare, beautiful, valuable and a girl's best friend but traditionally diamonds haven't really been considered an asset class in their own right. Diamonds do not have the "safe haven" status of gold, and their prices are more volatile than the precious metal. While spot gold has gained around 25% in value this year, diamond prices have fallen by at least 10%, in line with the poor performance of the luxury industry, according to U.S.-based IDEX Online Diamond Prices, which tracks global asking prices for polished diamonds.
While respected authorities in the jewelry business advise against buying diamonds for investments David Bennett, Geneva-based chairman of jewelry for Europe and the Middle East at Sotheby's, says: "Like art, we would not advise someone to buy diamonds for investment purposes. People should buy diamonds for the joy of wearing them." we've still got the growing demand for tangible assets and portfolio diversification has led to the launch of a number of diamond investment funds this year, which believe they can achieve double-digit returns for investors.
Have a few extra dollars in your bank account? Here are some investment options: KPR Capital launched a Cayman Islands-domiciled open-ended investment diamond fund with a minimum buy in of $250,000. Alfa Capital, the Russian investment group, launched a diamond investment fund with a minimum investment of €1m and an estimated yield of 15% to 17%. Emotional Assets Fund was launched, investing in a number of assets from fine art and rare stamps to diamonds and diamond jewelry. The fund is targeting a growth rate of 15% per annum with a minimum investment of £100,000. Dazzling Capital, a London-based company investing directly in period jewelry, also opened its doors this month, co-founded by former Christie's auctioneer Humphrey Butler. The company, which accepts a minimum investment of £10,000 with an estimated return on investment of 11%
Names like Emotional Assets Fund and Dazzling Capital certainly sound contrived especially when we know that white diamonds are not rare, they are scarce due to controlled distribution, yet returns have gone up because sales at the high end are off the charts. But given that diamonds will bring an 11-15% return, why would you buy into a fund when you can just buy actual diamonds and get the pleasure of wearing your investment?
I'm dubious about buying diamonds, individually or in funds, unless they are rare and colored (fancy) "If you want to buy diamonds for investment purposes, they should be big and fancy (colorful)," says Holly Midwinter-Porter, a gemologist at U.K. jeweler Boodles. "Red and green are the rarest, and unlike white, man-made diamonds, are finite as they are only found in one or two areas in the world." She says returns on rare diamonds can enjoy double digit growth a year, and their portability makes them more appealing than gold or art to some investors. And if you are looking for a big red diamond I have one for sale.
But I do think that buying period diamond jewelry, like the emerald set in this photo, is an intriguing investment.
Another option for investors is the vintage diamond jewelry market -- considered capable of more lucrative returns because of the added value of provenance. Mr. Butler brokered a $4.5 million deal with the Louvre in 2004 for an antique emerald and diamond necklace and ear rings by Nitot, presented as a wedding present by Emperor Napoleon to his second empress, Marie Louise of Austria. The owners had bought it for a fraction of the sale price 10 years before.
With fine vintage jewelry, intrinsic value + provenance = return on investment.
So I will be interested to see the results of tomorrows Sotheby's London sale of
After last year's horrendous holiday season, and the subsequent some 1,500 retail jewelry stores that went out of business, the big corporate chains such as Kay Jewelers and Zales are hoping for an increase in same store sales due to less overall competition.
Akron Ohio based Signet, which owns Kay and Jared, sees the demise in the industry as an opportunity. "Our balance sheet puts us in a stronger position competitively," Terry Burman, chief executive of Signet Jewelers Ltd., said in an interview.
In the current quarter, which includes the holidays, Wall Street analysts estimates Signet will post a 2% increase in sales at stores open at least a year. Last year, Signet's fourth quarter sales slumped 16% in the U.S. and 9% in the U.K.
I certainly hope that the analysts are correct given
The holiday season is crucial for jewelry chains, many of which record the majority of their sales and up to 100 percent of their profit in the period. Signet, for instance, books 40% of its sales and 70% of its profit in November, December and January, with the bulk of its sales coming in the last two weeks of December.
and
For the fiscal third-quarter ended Oct. 31, Signet, the largest chain jeweler in North America, posted a loss of $7 million, or eight cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of loss of $15.1 million, or 18 cents a share. Results for the company's latest quarter included a $5 million benefit from a change in U.S. vacation policy.
While I can afford an investment in Signet or Zales (versus a diamond fund)
Shares of Zale were up 10%, or 47 cents, to $4.40, while Signet shares were off 56 cents, at $26.32, both in 4 p.m. trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange. I'd still rather not invest in any retail jewelry business that caters to the low end.
My money is on fine vintage jewelry because that is what savvy consumers buy.
And my last word on the subject
London based estate jeweler Humphrey Butler, yes he of Dazzling Capital and the Napoleonic Emeralds, is selling the same set of Tiffany diamond bird brooches for $10,500
Just because I was boasting about having 90 degree weather for Thanksgiving doesn't mean that I don't miss real winter temperatures....especially when the cold calls for something with a little fur. Here are my vintage picks for staying chic and warm and I would wear any one of these suits
1960's Saks Adolphe black wool suit with beaver collar and cuffs $425 at Vintage Swank (Wouldn't you offer no more than $275 given other vintage suits online?)
1950's Hart Schaffner Marx nutmeg wool suit with mink collar $300 at Tresor de Vintage (Don't you love this Mad Men color and 3/4 sleeves which are perfect for kidd gloves?)
1960's Dan Millstein black wool dress with jacket and white mink collar and hem $295 at Couture Allure Vintage (Is it just me or is there something Mrs Santa about this suit?)
While I love baroque music and appreciate vocal acrobatics, I've never been a fan of baroque opera and this season's Tamerlano, composed by Handel in 1734, performed by the LA Opera didn't make me a fan.
There was nothing at all wrong with the performance, and I liked the stark set and modern costumes. But listening to countertenor Bejun Mehta just made me squirm a little. Not that his performance wasn't technically brilliant, it was. It's just that opera is pretty much all about the same thing....some guy wants to nail some girl...who is in love with some other guy, drama ensues, somebody dies and the girl gets the guy she wants. So like with all dramatic stories, there's a hero, a heroine and a heavy.
Well having a countertenor sing the part of the heavy, Tarter emperor Tamerlano, and then having a mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon sing the trouser role part of hero Andronico, was just out of my comfort zone. Just listen to Mehta in the clip that I posted. How can you take a heavy seriously when he sings with a soprano voice that is almost higher than the mezzo-soprano. People, that's just weird.
And then we had Placido Domingo singing the part of Bajazet, the Turkish Sultan who has been conquered by Tamerlano. For me Domingo is a romantic hero in the Verdi or Pucchini mold, with deep emotional range of a brooding latin lover, not a trilling baroque Sultan.
But soprano Sarah Coburn as Asteria sang beautifully and looked like a dream in her confection of wedding gown.
In spite of what the LA times review said, I didn't think that the modern costuming was cliche. The Italian fascist style guards seemed to suit the stark set.
Tamerlano in his chic double vented suit looked hot...I just couldn't find him menacing with his high voice.
Domingo, dressed in rich traditional garb looked appealingly royal. And I loved the maidservants in their little modern black suits, glasses and hair pulled back in tight buns...they could have been out of a Robert Palmer music video.
And so what was my costume?
Well I wore some cute shoes
Note the sparkles.
(oh and I don't have cankles...it's just the angle of the photo)
And I wore my Autumn favorite, a chocolate cashmere sweater with a heavy silk peau de soie skirt, also in matching chocolate brown
As for the bling, I sported a Mexican fire opal and diamond bib style necklace with matching earrings
It's not enough for a company like the LA Opera just to rely on regular opera fans to fill the seats. It's absolutely necessary for it to attract new, and hopefully younger fans.
But it is frigging expensive.
Who would take someone on a date to the Opera and a late dinner when the Opera, with two drinks each during intermission and parking costs $568. Add dinner and the whole evening would be almost $1,000.
I don't think that this art form should be only for the wealthy patrons from Hancock Park, San Marino and Beverly Hills. Don't you agree?
I have much to be thankful for but I am particularly appreciative of the fact that you, my savvy and chic readers, take time out of your busy lives to visit my blog. Thank you. I wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving.
I don't know. It certainly looks possible from the photographic evidence On the other hand, Demi Moore has a rocking hot body in her own right What do you think? And, does it even matter if fashion magazines use body doubles?
I know that I've mentioned before that for the last two seasons Beladora has been providing jewelry for Dancing With The Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba. Well this season Beladora has continued bejewelling Carrie Ann as well as for Samantha Harris.
Here's Samantha in some big bling from a couple of weeks ago looking every bit the goddess. (damn, I want that silver sliver of a dress!) And here is the detail photo with the serious emeralds and diamond earrings and ring and with Art Deco bracelets.
If you are happen to get a chance to see the season finale show tonight, check out Samantha's jewelry.
Oh, and lest you think that this sparkly stuff is just for show, let me say for the record that it is all for sale.
Why do I find myself so busy at this time of year. Sometimes it's as though I'm making up for all of the events I missed earlier in the year. While I find my self more tired than usual when it starts to get dark earlier in the evening, it seems I've got something scheduled almost every every night when I just feel like going home and retiring to my couch with a good book. Does this happen to you too?
But I'm always happy after an event that I didn't choose to go home and just a read a book because I get a chance to get out of my own little world and learn about something new.
Like last week when I went to a lecture by John Stubbs from World Monuments Fund at the Beverly Hills Women's Club. The WMF has been the world's leading independent organization for locating and preserving historical sites since it took an active role of saving the magnificent architecture of Venice from flooding in the 1960s. Since its inception the organization has taken on five core activities, advocacy, education and training, cultural legacy,capacity building and disaster recovery.
Currently, the group is overseeing projects all over the world, from Scott's Hut in Antarctica to the Vernacular Architecture of the Kazakh Steppe in Kazakhstan, from the Walmala Kings Tombs in Uganda to Taliesin West in Arizona. Not only are ancient structures being restored, there is an initiative to save Modernist architecture.
The amount of work that this organization has done in 4o years is just astounding, especially given that they take on multi year and sometimes decades long projects in politically sensitive areas.
There website has an excellent take action page where you can adopt a garuda (ancient sandstone guard sculpture at Angkor) or spread the word through social networking site like facebook and twitter.
Members who want to get more involved can join the group on an upcoming trip to Angkor in February.
One of my world travelling friends has taken the WMF trip to Angkor and loved it.
It certainly does sound enticing except for the fact that I'm not to keen on any kind of travel right now.
Especially after I attended a lecture last night on H1N1 by Dr. Peter Katona, an expert on Bio-Terrorism and all things virus-y that can kill you.
(You see, I like to mix it up a bit...a little cultural heritage with deadly flu viruses)
Dr. Katona's lecture began with a history of the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic which killed some 40 million people world wide. Obviously if the Spanish Flu could be so dangerous in terms of global infection and mortality in the early 20th Century when travel was limited just extrapolate from there what can happen with the H1N1 with travel so easily accessible.
The good news is that huge advances are being made in the way vaccines are being developed, created and distributed and one of these days we should all be able to get he so called swine flu vaccine.
But until I get vaccinated, I'm not so excited about getting on a plane full of coughing and sneezing people....who have no business being on an airplane.
Luckily I can be an armchair traveller with so many interesting travel and expat blogs.
Even after watching several magazine fashion shoots in progress, I'm still impressed with the the coordination it takes to put one of these things together. Yesterday I was at Milk Studio in Hollywood for a cover and fashion shoot with a young movie star for the March issue of a major national magazine.
The studio was impressive with one huge room for the photography
and another huge room for hair, make-up, wardrobe
and a caterer who was making omelette's to order for breakfast and then who came back a couple of hours later with a huge spread for lunch for the talent and crew
Of course there was an additional two tables of jewelry and maybe 50 pairs of shoes and 20 linear feet of outfits hanging on rolling racks.
Since there are large quantities of clothes and accessories for a magazine fashion shoot you never know if your pieces are going to make it into the actual publication.
You just loan the goods and hope for the best.
The talent (who shall remain nameless because we don't want to jinx our chance of getting the cover photo) starred in a major sci fi movie last spring and is coming out in a mega movie next spring, was so very pretty.
And she had an adorable personality.
When you have lived in LA as long as I have you tend to be jaded when it comes to actors and the entire entertainment business
but even with my ho hum attitude, it was hard to take my eyes off of the talent because she was just so pretty.
Women who took the drug flibanserin when it was being tested as an anti-depressant said it didn't help them beat the glums, but did give them "an increase in libido that they liked," John Thorp, one of the investigators analyzing data from three clinical trials of the drug, told AFP.
Lack of desire is the most common sexual problem in women aged 30 to 60, just as erectile dysfunction, for which Viagra is one of a choice of treatments, is the most common sexual disorder among men in the same age bracket, Thorp said.
I'm just curious here, if lack of desire is a common sexual problem in women aged 30-60, what happens after women turn 60?
Do women over 60 all of the sudden get their libido back and become raging sex fiends seducing unsuspecting men over dinner and viagra laced desserts?
But seriously, don't you think that if psychiatrists prescribed more flibanserin and less prozac, women would be less depressed?
Yesterday I told you about the jewelry case at Privilege and, silly me, my post reminded me that this week, there is a givaway at Radar Online too.
You may be asking why these two multi-gemstone necklaces from Beladora2.com are being given away on Radar, instead of on BHB. Well, Radar is a leading celebrity gossip and style website with 4 million hits a month, can I repeat that, 4 million hits a month! and BHB is only my personal blog with my silly little musings and as much as I would like my traffic to be in the millions per month...sadly it isn't.
OK...so there might have been a little shopping done while I was in NY. It was so cold outside that I just might have had to duck into Bloomingdales, Bergdorfs, and quite a few 5th Avenue boutiques, Fendi, Prada, etc., just to keep warm. (And to keep warm I just might have had to buy a pair of flat black boots and something warm and snugly that rhymes with "yearling"...)
But above all the shopping was for business, due diligence if you will, like visiting my estate jewelry dealer friends on 47th Street. And no NY shopping is complete without a walk through of Bergdorfs, at least through the jewelry section on the 1st floor Bergdorf's jewelry department didn't disappoint. (yes, I was that odd woman taking photos of the jewelry cases with my iphone!) I couldn't decide if I loved or hated the Lorraine Schwartz stuff
or does Lorraine Schwartz keep making these rings?
There were the usual high end lines, Verdura, Buccellati, De Grisogono, Van Cleef in it's own boutique and jewelry lines that I've never even heard of....I don't get out much.
But I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of cases of jewelry by Carnet like these multi stone earrings with huge diamond dangles. Michelle Ong, who designs for Carnet, is in my opinion on the level of JAR in Paris and James de Givenchy at Taffin in New York. She is certainly one of the top three jewelry designers in the world in terms of creative use of fine gemstones.
She does really amazing work, like this elongated oval sapphire cabochon ring.
It is a work of art.
And note those black and white earrings in the corner of the photo. They sell for $48,000 at Bergdorfs.
Yeah, Carnet jewelry is expensive, but it is truly stunning.
No matter the season the shopping scene in NY is always energized and fun. Here at home, from Neiman's to Barney's on Wilshire Boulevard, and up and down Rodeo Drive and the Beverly Hills side streets, I never feel that same kind energy as I do in NY, except maybe around the holidays.
Rodeo Drive is being dressed up for Christmas this week and maybe some of that NY shopping spirit will liven up the street.
I'm glad that you got fined $82,500 for your tirade at the US Open
Maybe if you become a regular reader of Amy's Advice Goddess blog 
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