LIKE that unnecessary third pork pie and the seasonal 9am glass of sherry, darts has become firmly wedged into my ever-increasing list of guilty Yuletide pleasures.

Christmas is a good get-out clause for virtually any out-of-character behaviour that good sense and wise judgement otherwise prevents. Quality Street for breakfast? Well it is Christmas. Port and Irn Bru aperitif? Well it’s only once a year.

That’s why it seems the perfect time of year for a fortnight-long festival of debauchery, or the PDC World Darts Championships as it’s officially known.

The arrow chucking provides me with yet another perfect excuse to brandish the festive “get-out-of-jail” card.

The appalling walk-on music and tacky dancing girls, the wall-to-wall fancy dress and primeval chants of the boisterous, boozed-up hordes. It assaults the senses like nothing else in sport.

The Alexandra Palace may have been created as a place of grandeur where the BBC broadcast its first TV transmission. But the splendour of the Ally Pally in late December is no place for finesse or understatement; it is a shrine to the lairy.

The scene can appear quite unsettling, particularly when the punters who have paid good money to attend seem too caught up in chanting to actually watch the on-stage action.

But on New Year’s Day even the crowd, intermittently at least, paid attention. The final pitted 15-time world champion Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor against the remarkable young pretender Michael Van Gerwen.

The darts the Dutchman produced in the first six sets were extraordinary. Utterly machine-like in their repetitive, pinpoint precision.

Suddenly the sport’s greatest-ever looked frail. The only thing that could stop MVG was himself, or more precisely, his mind.

Under the weight of Van Gerwen’s constant heavy scoring, Taylor was on the ropes as he helplessly watched his rival take aim at a double for a decisive 5-2 lead.

But at that moment it happened. The Dutchman fatally allowed himself a momentary glimpse of the winning line and it finished him.

Suddenly the unerring eye grew wayward. Taylor, as great champions of all sports can, spotted his rival’s weakness and exploited it without mercy or pity.

The Power stormed to the finish, and when his tungsten arrowed unerringly into the winning double 16, I surprised myself by bellowing to acclaim a stunning 16th world title.

And then things all went a bit flat. The ultimate point of celebration had also sparked the end of the party and the start of the hangover.

Just as when the Christmas tree comes down, and the dreaded return to work and routine looms, we have to face facts. It couldn’t last for ever. Or could it?

Just six days after the punters went home and the Ally Pally was busily restored to its stately glory, the gaudy, big-shirted circus rolled up in the unlikely surroundings of Surrey for the rival BDO World Darts Championships.

My pompous side would like to think my tastes are too refined for the festive goings-on at Frimley Green and the Alexandra Palace. That I find it all a bit too garish, obvious and outdated.

This is, of course, blatantly untrue. If I was being truly honest with myself, I’d love it.

Suspend reality, sink umpteen beers and join in the queasy larks. After all, it is Christmas.

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UK scientists have developed a cleaning technique that could solve a long-standing puzzle in the field of metrology – how to return the standard kilogram, against which all others are measured, to its original mass.

The base unit of mass, the kilogram, is defined by the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK) – a cylinder of platinum and iridium that was cast in 1879 and stored in a vault in the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris. Around 40 replicas were made and distributed around the world to use as a standard reference to produce weights and standardise mass. But following three periodic verifications, where copies were returned to Paris to check their mass against the original IPK, scientists discovered that their weights are drifting. 

These tiny changes – which are less than 100µg – are thought to be the result of surface chemistry increasing their mass due to atmospheric mercury contamination and the growth of a carbonaceous layer. It is also possible that nitrogen trapped when the prototypes were cast has since leached out.

However, there is another solution on the cards to solve the kilogram’s weight problem. Delegates at the 24th General Conference on Weights and Measures held in 2011 voted for a change in the definition of the kilogram. The idea is to define it in relation to the mass of a silicon atom or in terms of the Planck constant which, as far as experiments have revealed, are fixed.

The switchover is likely to happen in 2014 after more subatomic experiments. This would mean the primary standard would either be a silicon sphere or weight designed for use on a watt balance.

'In addition to platinum and gold alloys we are looking at several other materials with regards to next generation mass standards including nickel alloys, silicon, iridium, stainless steel and tungsten,' says Davidson. So even if the current IPK becomes obsolete, the new UV–ozone cleaning method could still prove useful for keeping the next generation of reference masses stable. 'The cleanliness of the standard is critical, particularly when transferring from air to vacuum where the change in the mass – mainly due to water sorption – will depend on how clean the surface is,' he adds.

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The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act contains provisions for publicly listed companies in the US using minerals sourced from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and surrounding countries – an area familiar to our industry and long-plagued by violent conflict. A conflict that has claimed 5.5 million lives to date.

The minerals identified by law-makers as contributing to the violence are tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold. Provisions 1502-1504 of the Act require companies to exercise due diligence, identifying then declaring (publicly) whether they use raw materials implicated in perpetuating the conflict.

The mining sector in the Great Lakes Region of Africa is artisanal and hundreds of thousands depend on it for their livelihoods. The Dodd-Frank Act does not seek to discourage companies from doing business there, it simply sets a precedent that holds companies to account and encourages them to improve raw material traceability, backed up by regional initiatives like provision of labs equipped to carry out mineral “finger-printing”.

The provisions aim to cultivate an awareness in companies of where raw materials come from and give consumers the opportunity to decide whether to buy products from unregulated sources in DRC (the findings are filed and publicly available on company websites).

There are other benefits too. For the miner, an end to conflict and harassment and better prices for goods – especially if they participate in traceability schemes such as the NGO Pact to trace coltan, or the Washington-based Electronic Industry’s Citizenship Coalition’s chain of custody scheme for conflict-free smelters. It also means an end to a conflict that spills across borders traumatising millions and for for the governments involved tax revenues.

Closer to home in the EU there is activity too. The focus: resource sustainability (ensuring adequate future supply of natural resources) in a globalised world with an ascendant and acquisitive China leading the charge for natural resources globally.

Viewed through this lens these provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act are part ideology, part realpolitik: they’re about levelling the playing field to pressure all companies to consider the implications of sourcing from conflict-affected areas. And should they decide to continue doing business in such places, they get involved with the process of supporting artisanal miners and isolated communities while preventing militias from taxing resource flows. A true win-win.

Initiatives are being developed at industry level by various NGOs. In our industry, no stranger to conflict minerals, the RJC is taking the lead with companies signing up in droves.

The point here is that while it’s currently the concern of the automotive, aerospace, consumer electronics and diversified industrials, the more we do as an industry to address these issues before regulation comes the better we look, the lower the risk of controversy and the better prepared we will be to respond if eventually the jewellery industry is held up to the kind of scrutiny and regulation advanced in Dodd-Frank Articles 1502-1504. The jury may be out on how many of our customers care about such issues, but it would seem the time is rapidly approaching where we – designer, jeweller, gemmologist alike – may be forced to consider these issues in more detail.

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No matter what your level of culinary skill is, or where you live in the U.S., Kitchen Inspire offers the commercial-grade supplies every kitchen and catering company needs. Below are some suggestions for kitchen supply tools to stock up on, or gift to someone special, this holiday season:

Newburg 8 Quart Chafing Dish
Winco makes an eight-quart, full-sized, stainless steel chafing dish with a full food pan (2.5 inches deep), dripless water pan, dome cover and two fuel holders. This chafing dish will be of particular handiness during catering events, keeping your food hot and fresh.

Accusharp 001 Knife Sharpener
Fortune's Accusharp knife sharpener files any double-edged blade -- whether serrated or plain -- and no matter the thickness. The competitive advantage of these sharpeners are their specially formulated, precision-ground and mounted tungsten carbide blades. A sharp knife will ensure clean cuts in your food and allow you to prep your food much quicker than using one that's dull.

Tungsten Carbide Manufacturer & Supplier: Chinatungsten Online - http://www.tungsten-carbide.com.cn
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