[meteorite-list] What makes a hammer a hammer?

From: Dave Gheesling <dave_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2009 20:53:24 -0500
Message-ID: <A6FDE1AF278849DF8877CCC3BA960125_at_meteorroom>

Darren, Michael & All,
Semantics are absolutely at play -- and this is a roughly "defined" element
of meteorite collecting at best -- but I'd beg to differ with them being of
concern to "a small subset of what is already a small community of
collectors." Hammers (I think Blood may have introduced this term to the
meteorite world, though Johnny Carson ficticiously used it well prior to
that in Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer to describe a forthcoming
comet strike upon the Earth...p. 78, paperback) are a huge element of the
international collector base, and one need only take a casual glance at
market prices to see this is true. I'm not a hammer collector by any means,
but I've seen repeatedly in educational outreach work that there is a
broader based appeal for such stories. They connect with virtually
everyone, though amino acids in Murchison, while much more interesting to
most of us here, do not. Further, our brains can't easily comprehend an
entry velocity of 20 mps, but a car struck by a rock from space that was
still travelling 200 - 300 mph -- well, everyone gets that. The term
"hammer" has been overused virtually to the point of ridiculous (what makes
them truly interesting -- the main mass hitting the only mailbox ever, or a
small individual striking a piece of railing on a mile-long fence?). For
the term to survive, my sense is that there should be some dilineation
between a Hammer Stone and a Hammer Fall. Sylacauga is a wonderful story,
but the material available to collectors didn't hit Mrs. Hodges on the hip.
Associating all fallen individuals as hammers in conjunction with a single
or few individuals out of 150 kg worth that actually hit something is also a
bit of a stretch. Lastly, to my earlier point re: market pricing, the
argument that not all of them are priced similarly is for the most part
(though certainly not entirely) washed away by a look at respective TKWs.
Two cents worth...
All best,
Dave
www.fallingrocks.com

-----Original Message-----
From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of Darren
Garrison
Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2009 7:40 PM
To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] What makes a hammer a hammer?

On Sat, 3 Jan 2009 16:32:06 -0800 (PST), you wrote:

>Is this simply semantics at play

Yes.

The concern with "hammers" is a small subset of what is already a small
community of collectors.

The only true measure of wherther something is a hammer is the level of
legitness. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdk1gwWH-Cg
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Received on Sat 03 Jan 2009 08:53:24 PM PST