Hurricane Katrina and the Roberts confirmation hearings have forced us to ignore, until now, the joyous news of one of our lovely blockmates. I've written about diamonds before (I'm too lazy to link to the previous post), but I wanted to see if I could find some statistics out there about the number of fake diamonds on peoples' hands. To make a long story short, I couldn't. The zirconium people are good at hiding statistics.

But I found something just as interesting in my search: Wal-Mart, which (along with the TV Networks and Hallmark) almost has the power to alter popular culture on a whim, tells prospective cubic zirconium purchasers, without a hint of irony, that the artificial mineral is April's birthstone. Huh? April's birthstone is the diamond. There's a difference.