Caveat Emptor Blue Agate

This past weekend I had the ignominious distinction of overhearing a Chinese dealer bullshit with an American citizen in the Salt Lake City Gem Faire. A simple-minded white woman asked the Chinese dealer what the beads pictured above were and he responded: "blue agate from Northern China".  A pox upon him and his commercial culture of deception and deceit that is running rampant across the globe and causing so much harm. There is little imagination and innovation coming out of China these days other than newer and more effective ways of selling more and more things of inferior value in a deceptive manner to the rest of the world while destructively exploiting multiple layers of resources across the globe be it mineral or technological or otherwise. The above beads are a very generic white agate with silica rind that could have come from a hundred different places on Earth which beads have been dyed in a most tacky fashion worthy of a tourist trap. For the record: I am in a rather strict boycott of any and all things Chinese. Given how much they dominate in so many areas of industry it is sometimes impossible to observe it but I do what I can. Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).