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Re: No Selling At Show

Okay, that's it, enough's enough... we're getting flak from amateur
astronomers now, people who should be on our side and understand our arguments
is just ridiculous. I wonder how many of them would donate "to science", for
free, every gram of a meteorite which landed at their feet tonight? "No...
no... really, I don't want it... here, you take it, no, I don't care how much
it's worth, the important thing is that it gets to be locked away in a lab
until someone's available to study it... "

Yeah, right.

We **really** have to do something to counter this surge of misinformation
about our activities. The simple, basic, inescapable fact is that if we didn't
go out and look for them then the vast majority of meteorites just wouldn't be
found and enjoyed / viewed / studied by anyone, ***anyone*** !!! People look
for fossils. People look for minerals, and gemstones. People look for old
coins, pieces of military memorabilia, all sorts of things, and the majority
of them share their collections with other people. If they didn't go out
looking for these things, investing their own time and money, they would be
left undiscovered, and no-one would see them. They'd be buried under
developments, picked up and used as doorstops or whatever, and would never be
studied or examined.

The "hunters" on this List have, by finding and dealing meteorites, added
enormously to the scientific store of knowledge about them, and have done
NOTHING WRONG. The people who study them haven't got the time or budgets to go
searching for new specimens, and maybe they haven't got the the sheer joyful
enthusiasm of their suppliers either. I wonder just how many "experts" are
actually concerned about us?

Man, anyone would think we were digging bodies out from under the silt which
lies beneath the Titanic or something...

Okay. We need:

* A co-ordinated group response to this particular letter
* An "Information Sheet" which we can send out in response to future attacks,
educating and informing ignorant people of the justification for what we do

... maybe even a...

* List Web Site, with an educational role, to where we can direct the media
and private individuals for basic meteorite information and "our side of the
story".

The Leonids are coming, either this year or next, and even though WE know
people won't have to buy umbrellas to protect themselves from a shower of red
hot stones we are going to be **so** in the firing line when the sky lights up
this or next November 17th that we have to start gathering our own ammunition
now.

I don't mean this to sound confrontational, but I really think we have to stop
sitting on our hands and thinking "Well, they can think that, but we know
better..." and stand up for ourselves. 

... anyone else agree..?

Stuart 

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