The recent news may have been historic. As Emerson noted, while he and his friend Thoreau would read and discuss the ideas of the ages, others would shout loudly about another train derailment, or an uprising in the west, and other events that make the headlines for that day, but will be forgotten soon enough. Some profound things are changing.

Emerson wrote about this with wry wit, about custom being the hobgoblins of little minds.

Each morning I turn the musty and fresh pages of old and new books and magazines for reminders of another quirky fact This can lead nowhere, or can open up yet another view of a previous known known, as some might say. And which becomes so fascinating that you find yourself writing what if, if this event yet comes to be. But is now so outside the loop that you might be taken away with a net with such thoughts.

There are so many examples that I have been studying of great men of history who changed the world in their youth with some massive and brilliant step forward, only to decline in their later years into silly side routes as our modern history now shows.

But if we read how Sir Isaac Newton, who may have been the greatest genius known, along with Michelangelo, Lincoln, Leonardo, Archimedes, Einstein and others we see they all made all their greatest inventions in their youth.

Healthy lifestyles would not recommend that you be downdraft or under a modern aircraft. They are fueled for more power with kerosine, that lamp that gave off smoke into the lungs of grandpa while he tried to read the paper. Mostly, we can now turn on the lights and not ignite a flammable substance into our lives.

Although modern industry, in it's efficient way, can some times do this for us.

The cartoons of American antiques and historical characters come at us daily. We laugh at the slow witted, yet very violent Elmer Fudd, very quick to shoot many times in a volley of violence.

Which somehow some times reminds us of that actual modern day incarnation of President Fudd, our real time chap so trigger happy, the second and lesser President Bush.

To watch the numbers tick on the World Clock, it seems that healthy lifestyles continue to be coming to an end and now we can see. We can count off each second to the tenth power how much the temperature of the earth is increasing. This information from the United Nations, which is gathering information from every weather station on earth mostly now all on line.

The most ancient precious item out of creation, beyond even gold, was a diamond. A princess resplendent in her riches of gemstones and gold, would have a centerpiece that held a diamond to behold. All would gaze in awe, as this diamond of a person glided by, diamonds in her eyes, and splendor all around. And then there those human diamonds, in the east in China was Confucous, who taught of good behavior and obedience to the state, and he did not believe in an after life.

Diamonds are entering the jewelry stores in New York in new ways. Often now, those most famous named stores have a piece of the new action. In this past decade with the extensive additional diamond finds in Australia, and most of all up near where Santa works, diamond mines galore. So now every other major store, it seems is a part owner of one of these new diamond syndicates.

It is wonderful to know you are learning each day. And to follow the new world view weekly magazines, or the daily British television, takes us around the world daily. We had just written about a meeting held last week between three delegates of the new Europe, discussing Kosovo with a delegate each from Russia and Serbia, ethnic Slav cousins. You recall Russian tanks arrived in Belgrade a decade ago.

Diamonds are forever, we know. They are also carbon -lumps of coal- that rose above their station as the Queen might say. They took on heavenly airs,and they combined heat at just the right degree and shot up from the hellish core of mother earth, of the eyes of God, to us. There a diamond finds in abundance in Australia and even more in the north of Canada.

The search for diamonds has, and still is that eternal search for sparkling diamonds that are God's most pristine shafts of carbon that somehow come from the boiling inner hell of the earth. These slivers of coal transform in this amazing upward pressure of heat, and shoot as sparkling diamonds as by magic of God or creation, through cracks in the earth.

The world has a fever, most scientists of diamond minds can agree. Coal for brains want more studies to delay. Mostly we can see: Katrina type weather, hurricane seasons extending and each time more fearsome, spreading drought in some areas, floods unknown in others. And meanwhile we build more coal burning plants that are not yet equipped with existing technology to make the new coal plants burn clean.

The fascinating matter of placing known dates on famous people, and if they are placed in order, you know that the latter person was influenced by the thoughts of the earlier. So for this we will pursue the likely source of the biblical three wise men from the east, and how in their searches and speaking of the wisdom of Buddha, of love and peace and respect for all to achieve a good death and achieve bliss on the way to Nirvana, Heaven, and be with divinity forever.

I am watching an international panel of famous thinkers on the British channel, truly diamond minds. One of the comments of Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame was that leaders self destruct by their own folly: Nixon erasing tapes of a petty theft, Bush junior rashly creating an unneeded inferno that has diminished America. And this had been mentioned on the earlier program that showed people having brain scans while they were shown pictures of them or others in self indulgence, anger, sadness, and joyfully sharing a smile as they help someone.

A diamond of a story going the rounds involving American history tells us more about life aboard ship on that first great and famed naval war vessel of the new America, the mighty USS Constitution. Fondly known as Old Ironside, it became the pride of America at sea, this was a new combat vessel that carried 48,600 gallons of fresh water for a crew of 475 officers and men, which was sufficient to carry them six months of sustained operations at sea.

We know that disciples of Guatama Buddha (560-480 B.C.E.) had found their way north into Tibet east down through Asia and up into China, and west as far as Greece and Egypt by around 520 B.C.E. We have discussed how amazing the arrival of the usual three wise men from the east would bring offerings, and search for others with the eyes of diamonds. This is still the practice in Tibet when the holy leader approaches, and enters death.

Diamonds have always been the jewel in the crown, whether you were the Empress of India and Queen of the entire British Empire. Which is, by the way celebrating 150 years since the 1858 first great bong from the famed bell clock of British Parliament, Big Ben. Another of diamonds in it's way. However, in 1936 the father of Queen Elizabeth began, but did not end his reign as Emperor of India, but rather as mere King George after 1947, upon independence of India and Pakistan.

Diamonds are coal is if touched by the hand of God, on their lightning way up from hell to us. And while we fear, and should, the lightning from above, we do sometimes get to see those ancient moments that still happen from below. We now get to see it on our screens; many types of fiery blasts come down upon, or up out of our good mother Earth, such as volcanoes spewing molten rock down into the sea as villagers flee.

To understand that the vastly expanding economies of China, India, Brazil and others are creating a scramble for resources as diverse as common coal, copper, silver, gold and diamonds, is as natural as the dawn that follows the dark. And for these nations it is indeed a new dawning after centuries of too many people and too few resources to become rich upon.

From Chinese antiques history, the way we speak of carbon depends on which kind we relate to best. Marco Polo did not drag sacks of coal back from China, rather diamonds and gemstones. This was Chinese carbon that had risen above it's station, as my English cousin Sir Frawncis would say, and blossomed into diamonds that enlighten our hearts. Amazing, versatile diamonds which can also on a drill bit, cut through everything else on a construction site.