"Karat” describes the gold purity of alloys, used in jewelry, like in gold ring settings. Gold is also found in jewelry items such as necklaces, bracelets, earrings, or watches. This expert on the subject gives a great article about this where you can read it and absorb it, or you can get the cliff's notes right here on my blog. As far as terminology goes, “karat” comes from carob, a type of food seed. This seed was positioned opposite end on a scale in ancient times from the gold jewelry. It would measure up against gold , as far as the story goes, to see how much it weighed. Now adays the meaning is a little bit more different as its a purity, not a raw weight. This expert writer says,

"The term 'karat' is a word used to describe the purity of gold alloys, used commonly in jewelry, such as in a gold ring settings or earrings, bracelets, necklaces and watches."

So finally, to answer the question, “What is the difference between kt and ct?” or “What is the difference between karats and carats?” There is no difference. The "kt." version is more popular in the USA, so they say K or kt. for karats, while the ct. version is more popular elsewhere, everywhere else in the rest of hte world. The higher the caratage the better, meaning more gold purity or density. You can find more information about the topic in this expert article from wikipedia.com. See more at: http://www.chacha.com/question/what-is-the-difference-between-10kt-gold-fill-and-10kt-gold#sthash.YIuWv7qP.dpuf

Are you concerned about blood diamonds? I know that this is definitely a huge concern of mine whenever I look into buying jewelry from a diamond retailer or wholesaler, especially if they make claims such as discount or 30% off or "Valentine's Day Sale" because I get suspicious. For example, how can they have all those diamonds for so cheap? Could it be that they are using blood diamonds that involved children from the wars in West AFrica to make them? Does that last setence even make sense? Are blood diamonds something from the movies or are they real? Well, let me tell you, blood diamonds are in fact very real. They are not just a Leonardo diCaprio imaginary thing like global warming (haha just kidding).

However, the facts about blood diamonds, like many of the liberal agendas in Leonardo's head, may be a little bit exaggerated. For example, I have a girlfriend, and when talking to her I discovered she believes 90-95% of all the diamonds in the world are blood diamonds. This is what people like Leonardo want you to believe; they want to take out an entire industry just to stop the 10-15% that are doing bad things. Well, the actual facts about blood diamonds state that only about 15% of the world's diamonds, at the highest point in time, which was decades ago, were ever coming from "conflict diamond" areas, and now, the numbers are even less. I feel very strongly about this issue, where applicable. It is so atrocious to think of these children being handed AK47s and other assault rifles, instead of being handed air jordan sneakers or nike basketball kicks and being asked to jump out on a basketball court and slam dunk. Instead, they are being asked to jump out there and shoot to kill people. I think they would have much more fun wearing nice clothes, fresh accessories such as neckties, or watches, and buying things from the best online stores such as the freshest gear's .com website which you can find if you google search "the freshest gear." I even grew up in West Africa, so this issue hits home. I remember how impoverished life was out there, and to think, that things could be even worse, that the children have their families killed so young, or they are stripped from their families and they are forced to fight battles. Well, that is just so depressing. To think, your entire family is burned alive before you and then they take you as a prisoner at age 5 and raise you as a soldier to fight for a cause and an army hyou know nothing about? I am so glad I live in America, the USA. Make sure you are buying your diamonds from companies that are certified to not sell any conflict diamonds by organizations like Stop Blood Diamonds.org.

Buying Guide "How to Buy A Diamond Ring" or "How to buy Gold Jewelry" explained here

Give the gift of a diamond ring every single Valentine's Day. A perfect gift for love rekindling on an anniversary or saying hooray we hit yet another Valentine's Day together would be a diamond ring. Take for example this ring from The Freshest Gear and jewelry website. This ring is holds 9 stones, all diamonds, and these are square princess-cut, set into a 14-kt ring with a more yellow shade of gold. You can give this ring is a token of appreciation to your lover, which is a gift saved best only for the most sentimental of relationships; don't give this to a woman you don't plan on spending forever with! Gentleman- also consider, if maybe you got married quickly or too fast, and you rushed the diamond ring purchase, you can always pick a brand new REPLACEMENT diamond band for replacing (upgrading) an old wedding band. Having a 1.00 Karat total diamond weight (tdw), the gold ring as whole, weighs 3 grams. It looks even more dazzling in person. The brilliance, or the color rating, comes in at G/H. G/H is about the very nicest it gets for diamond color, only topped by the DEF range. Here is an excerpt from their site guaranteeing that you will be able to buy with confidence, and they accept returns always:

BUY WITH ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE. I can’t stress this enough. If your diamond or jewel arrives and you are dissatisfied with its appearance or quality craftsmanship, you have a month to return it in mint condition to receive a full refund.

As with all of our jewelry products, we offer a 5-year guarantee with them free of charge. We would never do this if we weren’t one hundred percent certain of our products long lasting quality manufacturing techniques. After liquefying pure gold using scorching temperatures from an open flame, the liquid gold is poured into a vacuum where the wax designs of our high quality jewelry wait to become golden and brilliant. Once the jewelry cools, we have an expert artisan craftsman set the diamond(s) or other jewel(s). We also include an Appraisal with our diamond rings, from a one hundred percent non-affiliated third party expert to assure the authenticity of the precious diamond you are purchasing. one hundred percent non-affiliated third party expert to assure the authenticity of the precious diamond you are purchasing.

The Freshest Gear from http://thefreshestgear.com is a direct wholesale connection that you should check out

valentines day diamonds,valentines day jewelry,b... http://t.co/Qmr1IxHcAP

— Firman_sy4h (@Sy4hFirman) February 2, 2014

Here is an awesome website for those of you interested in wholesale pricing on some of the freshest gear out there for snowboarders, basketball players, football players, and basically anybody who loves brand new Nike and Air Jordan Shoes or if you like rockin fresh diamonds... they have wholesale connections with diamond manufacturers and all kinds of jewelry manufacturers direct, so if you want to buy diamonds direct from a major wholesaler, they have got it going on.

2009 Oscars - Review of Slumdog Millionaire

So recently I finished downloading Slumdog and sat down with a friend to watch it in its entirety: Slumdog Millionaire, winner of 2009's Best Picture Oscar.


The movie was better than average. Not best picture material. I'm not going to give out any spoilers but here's my review. Pros: Slumdog paints a vivid picture of the slums of India and the wars going on between the muslims and hindu's in India which is a realistic ad truly horrifying one. It's a good story- and it's well done. At some points the acting is even great.


Cons: Although this movie isn't "bad," it's just not Best picture material. The plot is never truly edge of your seat suspense, nor are there moments when you smile and say "damn this movie is brilliant" or more than a couple scenes that are shot beautifully and are pleasing to the eye. Some parts are hard to hear because of the accents. I won't say anything about the ending.


But let's put this in perspective by looking at previous Best Picture winners:

2007 No Country for Old Men
2006 The Departed
2005 Crash
2004 Million Dollar Baby
2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2001 A Beautiful Mind
2000 Gladiator
1999 American Beauty

This movie did not have suspense like No Country, humor like Departed, insanely memorable plotline like crash, no acting performance like million dollar baby, no visually spectacular scenes like LOTR:ROTK, and so on, and so on.


This movie is worth seeing, but this year's best picture award was truly botched.


Who would I give it to?
I haven't seen The Reader or Milk yet. Dark Knight was amazing. Gran Turino I believe is a 2010 movie. So I couldn't tell you. All in all it wasn't a strong movie year and I'd like to hear your arguement/feedback for which movie was the best of 2009.