AW: [meteorite-list] Lost Opportunities, Onions & Hailstones

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat May 20 10:26:39 2006
Message-ID: <003001c67c19$65135430$4f41fea9_at_name86d88d87e2>

Armando,

"extracted" from an african (synonimous of stupid, between the lines)
country,"

ahem, dear patriot, shall we read between your lines, that the Portuguese
are stupid too?

" In 1998, another meteorite falled, and this time, most of it was sold to
tourists, and dispersed like toys in ebay,...."
".... to resell it at the
prices that we know."

Sorry, but that is silly.
In 1999 the NWA-desert-rush was still to come. On ebay weren't found such a
large number of meteorites yet as today, there were less dealers present
with their pages on internet and there were less collectors than today (who
are still a tiny group).
>From my weekly work I know exactly that most people, although we have now a
good presence of meteorites on internet, aren't aware of meteorites at all,
they do not know, what a meteorite is (or only from Sci-Fi movies), they
have no idea about meteorite prices. Today.
7 years ago the situation was even worse.

Hence that a layman would then have had the idea to sell his cheap souvenir
at a gigantic price elsewhere or even on ebay - observe please even nowadays
the meteorites (or pseudometeorites) offered by non-dealers,
non-IMCA-collectors or by people unknown to the small meteorite community,
how mere the resulting prices are, because the collectors have doubts about
the authenticity,
hence that a tourist, a layman, would have made years ago big cash on ebay
with his Ourique-keychain is truly rubbish!!

To follow your logics -
Australia is placed in the Human Development Index of UN on third place,
then quite civilized, I guess.
If I go here in Munich to a supermarket, there I find offered onions.
Onions from Tazmania. No joke. Those tazmanian onions cost the same as
German onions. Well, the supermarket makes profit in selling these onions
(the in-betweens too) and finally the onions were shipped around half of the
globe. (I guess 400 years ago, one would had erected a monument for such an
onion..).
>From these factors you may conclude, that there must be a huge difference
between the selling price in the Bavarian supermarket and the cash the
Tazmanian onion farmer (HDI ranking place 3, hence not a na?ve native) got
in his hand.
Where is your outcry against the predators and looters of the international
onion mafia!!!

What you should learn. A meteorite dealer/hunter offers a service to the
collector, main service is, that he makes available at all different
meteorites to the collector (and in almost all cases of new finds
automatically to science too for free).
And a meteorite seller has remarkable expenses to bear to be able to do so.
Hey Mike, tell what you spend each year for your trips only!
It isn't that simple, how John Armandoe does imagine.

This was an example chosen from commerce.
But that analogy "limps" as we say here,
because for meteorite there exist no market at all.
Please check the list archive, this issue was discussed a hundred times
here.
Meteorites are so rare, that even with the desert rush of the last years we
are talking about midget quantities and ridiculous monetary volumes, because
meteorites simply are still the rarest items on Earth.
And there is absolutely no demand on Earth for meteorites at all.
Among 6 Billion of people there are worldwide only about 1000 meteorite
collectors, who are the clientele of the handful of professional meteorite
sellers. There is simply no demand. You can find an exotic meteorite type, a
stone of 10kg and you can write 100$/g on the price tag, and that would be
the value you imagine, but it's hypothetical - because then you will need 40
years until the last slice of it will be sold.

So we need another analogy.
Listen, it's not so stupid as it sounds:

In 1983 we had an astonishing hail storm here in Munich.
Hailstones were egg to fist-sized, they fell from sky, they destroyed
thousands of windows and damaged thousands of cars,
so you may take it for a historical event and to the hailstones you could
ascribe a cultural and national meaning.
And of course perhaps some meteorologists may see a certain scientific
relevance in them.
Some people stored some grains for a while in their iceboxes until the next
cleaning, though practically all hailstones melted away in the streets
within a few hours.
Would it have been a scandal, if an international hailstone dealer would
have ripped off the stupid Bavarian natives in buying some hailstones from
them for a bunch of banknotes to resell them to the hailstone collectors?

Stupid analogy? Not at all. Meteorites fall from sky, they are not man made,
they tend to hit things, they do not care about on which country they rain
down (and I guess they fall more equally distributed than hailstones).
You say that I'm sick? Hailstones collectors and dealers? Hey man, ask the
next passer-by in the street, what he thinks and knows about people, who
collect stones, which felt from skies.
I think there are as much people on Earth, who have a big hailstone in their
fridge, as there are people, who do have a meteorite sitting in their show
case.
And you will say: but who the heck would buy hailstones? Well with
meteorites there is no difference.

Now we come back to the scandal. If now suddenly some politicians will
discover, that hailstones are a valuable and important cultural and national
heir and if meteorologists and researchers of the atmosphere suddenly start
to scream, that those hailstones' sellers are criminals, because they see
them going on ebay for a few bucks,
although, by their own, politicians and scientists never felt the urge to
put some hailstones in the fridge,
then you have your scandal.

Hailstones are melting away, if they aren't picked up by hailstones
aficionados. Meteorites rot to dust, if they aren't recovered by meteorite
hunters. That's it.

Now Armando, let's be constructive.
Just go out, hunt the meteorites of Portugal and deliver them to national
institutes.
Let's take the MORP annual fall rate of meteorites and let's take a short
interval of only 1000 years until they are weathered to dust in Portugal,
so there are 4300 meteorites, approx. that number, which were classified
during the whole NWA-rush of the recent 5 years until now,
waiting in Portugal to be recovered by you.
If you'll have found the first 1000, the Ourique case will be nothing else
anymore than a funny episode.

Much success!
Buckleboo!
Martin
 

-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces_at_meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces_at_meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Armando
Afonso
Gesendet: Samstag, 20. Mai 2006 14:12u
An: meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] Lost Opportunities Past and Future was
Some..meteorite finds.

In 1968, an Ataxite of 25 kg falled in Alandroal, not far of the popular
Ourique.
The authorities came imediatly, and confiscated the stone, to store it
temporarily at the local prison.
Days after, it was moved to the national museum, were it was analysed and
where it remains in display today.
This is the meteoritic reference for thousands of portuguese studants.
I still remember, when I was a kid, of the impact it made on me.
I have al the reasons to be convicted, then, that this is the way that this
things have to be done.

In 1998, another meteorite falled, and this time, most of it was sold to
tourists, and dispersed like toys in ebay,
finishing as keychains, glued to a piece of paper, or something.

(This country had better days in some subjects)

Between the 2 episodes, please choose:
In the first case, the stone was studied and saved, to the benefit
(cultivation) of all of us.
This things are cultural obects, yes. In a universal sense.

In the second case, if someone benefited from it, it was the tourists, who
were able to take it from poor people for pocket money, to resell it at the
prices that we know.

If your neighbour does not close the door, it does not means that his tv can
be harvested, or collected, by some "smart" guy, does it?

If the Alandroal meteorite was found today, it would sell for a few bucks,
and would end in someone?s office as a decorative item, like a Campo del
ciello.
That would be a BIG loss to us, naive portuguese natives.
I mean it.

In the book of R. Norton, "rocks from space" it is described how Bob Haag
"extracted" from an african (synonimous of stupid, between the lines)
country, a valuable stone.
That was done after a psychological manoeuver, to take it from the hands of
the museum curator - he exchanged it for the equivalent of the colored
glass beads of "diplomatic procedures" with natives, of other times, ie for
volumous rubish.

This and other similar stories are presented like comedia pieces.

This is a predator attitude, and I think that those persons, principally
their descendents, were abused in their na?vety.

I think that Oman is poorer today than it was a month ago, if you
understand.
Obviously I am going to be called of radical, comunist, or something like
that.
Or that I am only jalous for not having used the oportunity and take the tv
myself. After all the stupid neighbour is sleeping.
He deserves it
A dissertation about the market`s logic is usual, too.

AA

----- Original Message -----
From: "E J" <jonee_at_epix.net>
To: "Armando Afonso" <armandoafonso_at_oniduo.pt>
Cc: <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 5:03 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Lost Opportunities Past and Future was Some
..meteorite finds.


> Armando Afonso wrote:
>>But I blame them as much as you, for a unconcerned approach to the
> subject.
>
> I far more concerned about the subject than one would imagine, and I
> understand how it can offend. I don't think I'll ever get over the
> Tagish Lake Fiasco even if I understand the decisions made. If the
> willing, ready and, competent volunteers had been allowed to assist, a
> lot less of the 99% that sank would be available for study/collections.
> Examples of how not to do it, of course we have the lens of hindsight on
> these matters and even that lens is can produce polarized images. We
> would hope the next example isn't like Park Forrest with the police
> sponsored extortion. I find after the headlines have faded-- so do the
> lessons learned. Looking beyond these examples I will be a voice in the
> wilderness lamenting the lack of planning for such an event as a major
> fall.
>
> There are many impediments to a "working"solution. While you and I
> differ, perhaps, in point of view, but we are probably motivated by more
> in common. For myself, I cannot equate the random fall of a meteorite
> onto any given political jurisdiction as "culturally connected",
> automatically garnering the status of "cultural property". I can
> support the claim a little easier if it is classified as an object of
> "scientific value" and it is timely recovered and curated for science.
> The cultural claim comes across as a guise for ( in your allusion)
> government-sponsored piracy. In some recent similar situations, it was
> a stretch to claim that a skeleton buried 10,000 years before a modern
> tribe roamed a given territory was culturally connected to that
> Johnny-come-lately occupant of said adjacent tribal lands and thus a
> culturally affilated remain that had to be immediately reintered. A
> Florida agency recently moved to virtually eliminate all fossil
> collecting in waterways of the state, where before there was a licensing
> program in place to report and document certain finds. All these
> mentalities tend to quash science rather than promote it.
>
> There can be cooperation after the fact. In the case of the Otzi the
> bronze-aged mummy found by German tourists on the Austrian-Italian
> border, Austria agreed after recovering Otzi he had actually been inside
> Italy and turned over the remains to Italy. If we had to wait for a
> court decision, the body would have long since decayed where it laid.
> The point being there are scientifically important events where the find
> can be properly preserved and the details of ownership sorted out
> afterwards. (I am reminded of the old riddle: If an airplane of
> immigrants crashes on border of Arizona and Colorado which state is
> responsible for burying the survivors, but I digress). Bottomline is
> that both institution and collector will lose out if we don't have a plan.
>
> Some while ago there was a conference, I understand, that promoted the
> cooperation of professional and amateur working together instead of
> trashing each other and missing opportunities(paleo? meteoritical?). If
> anyone remembers this I'd like to know what became of that effort as
> for establishing a protocol or guideline for how they would work
> together. I also recall a private initiative to produce a training
> program leading to certification for credentialing field
> investigators/recovery workers.
>
> Here in the US, the Federal Government; the National Park Service, The
> Forestry Service,and the Department of Defense(DoD)--amongst the larger
> public property holders, have no framework in place to allow the
> recovery of any meteorite fall on public lands. (BLM has a gray-area
> void for anything under 250lbs, Dave Freeman knows more about the
> specifics). Imagine an Allende-sized shower in the Mojave Desert. It
> is a never before studied aromatic, ice laden cometary originating
> meteorite. A rock hound and forest ranger are there when it falls. The
> rock hound being a meteorite central list subscriber empties out his
> beer cooler to make room for as many pieces as he can stuff in it. The
> ranger says "Sorry, no can do!" Imagine the the loss of data while a
> response is contemplated: we form a scientific advisory committee, a
> legislative package to establish a legal framework, approach the Army
> Corps of Engineers, Park Service, California Dept of Natural Resources,
> and Environmental Protection Agency for approvals. It will never occur
> to them while turf-brawling to ask the US Geological Survey or NASA to
> the table as referees.
>
> If you think this is a stretch of the imagination, I did find a fresh
> meteorite on DoD property, going by the book, I left it lay. Some time
> later, I contacted the Smithsonian and they told me I had to bring it to
> them--at my expense. I contacted a nearby University known for its
> meteorite studies program to solicit their attempts to work government
> to government and was told " not my job". I went back to DoD on whose
> land it was on and was told I could come show it to them but it couldn't
> even be picked up for transfer to the Smithsonian. They would have to
> do an Environmental Impact Study and a Decision Paper, before doing so
> much as brushing the sand off it. I wish I were kidding.
>
> Elton
>
>
>
>>
>
>


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Received on Sat 20 May 2006 10:26:32 AM PDT