Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame is an Eagle Scout and he promises to personally fill out and sign his own letter for any Eagle Scout who requests it. It’s a letter with a reminder that becoming an Eagle Scout isn’t a reward of entitlement but a foundation that should be put to good use. This is from his site mikeroweWORKS (audio) that promotes skilled labor.

Last Wednesday, Malia and Sasha Obama came home to find a new swing set on the south lawn of the White House. Rear Adm. Stephen Rochon, Chief Usher, conducted extensive research at the request of the First Lady before the set was chosen, including a trip to Brookings, SD home of Rainbow Play Systems where, according to CEO Greg Foster, “he climbed on the set. He slid down the slide. He swung on the swings.” The selected model has many features: 3 swings, a tire swing, climbing wall, slide, monkey bars, and “penthouse” with bubble windows. Foster and a factory crew came to D.C. to install the set, bringing along a custom picnic table with brass plates engraved with the names of all the Presidents. The last full swing set at the White House belonged to the Kennedy children. I dug up two photos from Corbis of Caroline on that same south lawn: a posed shot of her on the set, and a long lens candid shot. It looks like they had a little treehouse with a slide as well as a jungle gym.

In these difficult times, it is good to know we can still pamper our kitty cats with indulgences such as this Swarovski crystal-encrusted cat flap. I’m pretty sure I can crank one of these out with one of those cell phone bling kits or just a hot glue gun and a trip to the craft store, so maybe this is just the Etsy business I’ve been waiting for.

Jewelry retailers have of course been suffering through months of low demand. The Christmas season was down sharply from previous years. Whitehall Jewelers Inc., Shane Company, Fortunoff, and Robbins Bros. Corp are among the larger retailers who have filed for bankruptcy protection or gone out of business. Zales is closing 115 stores. Online shop Blue Nile is weathering out the storm so far with no debt and $54.5 million in cash. They’re smartly keeping their inventory focused on classics that will sell as couples continue to get engaged and married. Over on the materials side, the price of platinum plunged by half last year, which meant that jewelers who bought inventory when prices were closer to $2000 an ounce, had to take losses selling in the more recent $700-1000 range. Gold, considered a safe haven in a volatile market, has risen, causing a different problem for jewelers who need to buy. DeBeers, who made a huge business of controlling diamond inventory, though new suppliers have halted their monopoly, has taken out a $500 million loan to make it through the downturn. They are also slowing down or halting production at their various mines. The expected demand from the growth of wealth in China and India was curtailed as the recession spread and DeBeers has excess stock to work through.

I’m going to take it easy here for a week or so. Work and sleep need some attention (also a little bit of Puzzle Quest: Galactrix for DS). In the meantime, it’s Girl Scout cookie season and sales are, not surprisingly, down this year, so if you love those Thin Mints and Samoas please buy a box or two. Try the cookie locator from the Little Brownie Bakers to find a location near you.

Old but still good: Curious Expeditions’ lengthy gallery of beautiful libraries. (via Derrick on twitter)

Super cute photos of the Sumatran tiger cub at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo.

Airship Ventures, the company flying zeppelin tours out of Moffett Field in Mountain View, CA is receiving another round of venture capital, $2.5 million to continue building a luxury business which is surviving despite one hour flights costing $495 per person. They’ll have to survive past the novelty phase to be successful. That same money can buy a pretty decent nearby vacation instead.

On January 9th, Hearst Corporation told employees of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that unless a buyer was found in 60 days their paper would no longer be printed. But no one official seems willing to commit to exactly when the “60 days” is up. It’s apparently not 60 calendar days from the announcement. The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild said on Feb 13th that there were no fewer than 33 days, no more than 47 days left. Hearst will only confirm “mid-March.” Which of course has prompted the requisite Ides of March jokes.

There’s a plethora of articles on the completed renovation of Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center (New Yorker, N.Y. Times: architecture, N.Y. Times: acoustics, Bloomberg: noting who paid for naming rights, etc, etc). The most interesting of the lot is the one from the Times back in January where they actually interviewed the musicians (who gushed about the acoustics) and went into music geeky details on the reverberation goals (1.4 to 1.5 seconds), the adjustable stage (three settings), and the fact that subway noise was eliminated not by architecture but by the MTA who actually welded down the train tracks and installed rubber pads (wow).