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Re: Collectors
rob-
your assessment is on target. perhaps the poor fellow about whom you spoke
feels encroached upon and is blathering from the fortified bowels of his
ivory tower.
but then, he may be legitimately horrified by the thought of thousands of
unenlightened new collectors who will, in fact, deprive us all by failing
to make their specimens available to researchers.
of course, maybe it's only in the glare of the media that he rails on about
abominable meteorite collectors, yet when the media's lights go down it's
"so, rob...come across anything new for me?"
the researchers with whom i feel the closest kinship are this third
type--the fully functioning in a complex world.
everyone have a good weekend.
darryl
At 02:32 PM 6/19/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>
>I thought you might enjoy hearing about this......
>I've just been slammed on national radio and accused of being a rather bad
>person because I collect meteorites. Luckily, I did manage to get the last
>word at the end of the interview, but Professor X in Glasgow maintains
that by
>making them "collectors items", we are depriving science by "keeping them
from
>scientists".
>This strikes me as a strange opinion from a professional....aren't most of
the
>new finds found by amateurs and then gladly passed to the right institutions
>for analysis? A new find is surely useless anyway, until it's been assessed
>and thoroughly tested by the real experts. I'd have thought that there
must be
>many meteorites that would otherwise be lost forever had it not been for the
>dedication of the amateur meteorite hunter who's prepared to spend days or
>weeks searching often in-hospitable climes.
>
>My little Yorkshire stone will be heading to the NHM in London on Monday
>morning, so why do some professionals give us collectors such a bad press?
>
>Regards,
>Rob Elliott.
>
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