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After word of the Chilean miners' "Pact of Silence" got out, the rumors got to swirling. Now, Mario Sepulveda, an exuberant face of the 33, is breaking the pact to set the record straight. More »
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Ashley Judd managed to piss off both coal miners and golf course developers in a speech last month — and they've responded with topless posters of the actress. More »
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What does a diamond engagement ring mean to you? Love? Money? "Forever?" Over on Nerve, Ken Mondschein posits that diamond engagement rings are "profoundly anti-feminist." The idea that "only a diamond will do" is a relatively recent innovation, he explains. See, diamonds used to be so rare that only the very very wealthy could afford them. That is, until the 1870s. Diamond mines were "discovered" in South Africa, where, "poorly-paid, abominably treated native African workers" unearthed the gems by the ton. Cecil Rhodes, noted for having a famous scholarship named after him (and for believing that Anglo-Saxons are superior to others; he wanted the British Empire to rule every country and once wrote: "I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race") founded De Beers in 1880, and the diamond cartel became the most successful in the world. De Beers controls the supply of diamonds to keep them expensive, but, Mondschein asks, "How [did De Beers] convince the world that an isometric-hexoctahedral crystal lattice allotrope of carbon was something they absolutely needed to buy?" You already know the answer: Marketing. More »
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