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).

Bill Niman left Niman Ranch, the natural meat company, in August 2007 after a new management team brought changes he did not agree with. Since then, he’s been raising goats, heritage turkeys, and entirely grass-fed beef. When he was at Niman Ranch his cattle went to “finishing” lots to eat grain before they were slaughtered, a practice that caused Alice Waters to eventually drop his meat in 2002 after 20 years on the menu at Chez Panisse. Now Niman, who doesn’t own the rights to use his name on meat products, has started over with new animals, staying true to his ideals of how animals should be raised. The goats are the risky new addition and he’s hoping they will anchor his comeback. Kim Severson looked into his goat operation in the N.Y. Times last year, noting the taste was like “lamb with a big personality.” An article in Sunday’s S.F. Chronicle goes into more detail on Niman’s battles with the new Niman Ranch owners.

Unlike previous years, no million dollar diamond-encrusted shoes came down the runway at the Academy Awards on Sunday. Designer Stuart Weitzman, who began the publicity stunt in 2002, decided restraint was in order for this economy. But there was still plenty of expensive jewelry on the red carpet.

When Leonard Bernstein wrote the tune to “Somewhere” for West Side Story, the dummy lyric “There goes whatshisname” stood in place until Stephen Sondheim came up with “There’s a place for us.” So says, or actually sings, daughter Jamie Bernstein in a N.Y. Times piece about the No. 2 train of the New York subway which emits the 3 notes that start off the lyric. More specifically, the inverters that convert the third rail’s direct current into alternating current on the train cause the steel to sing out the ascending minor seventh and the descending half-step that make up that bit of the tune. From the Times article that originally investigated the phenomenon back in 2002: “The direct current from the third rail is converted aboard the train to alternating current, and in the process, a catchy tune is unwittingly sung.”