[meteorite-list] Nut finds fake meteorite with fake technology!

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 18:50:32 -0500
Message-ID: <027101c7d629$15414230$ac2ee146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Ken, and All,

> I think dowsing has produced some desirable results...

    Dowsing is an old traditional practice, but utterly
worthless, and has been around for thousands of years
in some form or other, plenty of time to determine if
there is any "correct" way to perform it or if it is anything
other than just another "paranormal" flapdoodle. No
controlled study has demonstrated anything but chance
results. In other words, it is an unproven belief.

    This website (and the discussion page that goes with
it) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing demonstrate that
belief is strongest when proof is absent.

    The oldest common form of dowsing is "water witching."
The method is to take a thin, freshly plucked forked branch,
preferably from a willow tree, peel the bark, and grasp it
by the two branching ends, one in each hand. If you have
ever peeled a willow, you know that its sap is very slippery,
and a freshly peeled willow wand is hard to hold on to. In
"theory," this makes the long wand more "responsive" but
less likely to be controlled by the dowser, hence more likely
to be responding to the mysterious "force" that diverts the
stick downwards.

    How such a practice might have come to seem to be valid
is very easy to explain. If you have to pluck a "fresh" willow
wand, it must come from the vicinity where the search for
water is to take place. Willow trees are among the most
"water-craving" of all trees. They are most frequently found
near creeks and streams, but any spot where a willow has
grown to maturity has LOTS of ground water available,
and hence it is a prime candidate site for locating a well. If
you find the willow tree on the property, don't bother to
dowse; just start digging or drilling.

    Dowsing always keeps up with the technology of the day.
First, it's the substitution of metal rods in the early industrial
age, then the addition of electrical jimcrackery in the last
century of so. Dowsing is the ancestor of the many failed
"psychometric" machines, like the famous Hieronymus
Machine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_machine
Yokum's device is identical to the Hieronymus machine,
which you can buy for only $600 here:
http://www.lifetechnology.org/hieronymus.htm
or build your own from these excellent and detailed plans:
http://www.wdjensen123.com/hieronymus/Plans.htm
And, it has been claimed that the Heironymus Machine
will work perfectly well from a carefully hand-made
ink-drawing of the plans, as a symbolic device alone:
http://www.cheniere.org/books/excalibur/another%20kind.htm

    Like any long-held, unproven belief, it is fertile ground
for the charlatan, and has provided a good and stable income
for the raising up of many a household full of little charlatans.
Since the last century, dowsing has often gone by the name of
"psychometry." In this form, it includes dowsing and divination
by pendulums and by physical contact with significant objects.
There are so many varieties of dowsing-descended pseudoscience
that there's not room for all of them here.

    They all have one thing in common: a 100% Bunk content.



Sterling K. Webb
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Newton" <magellon at earthlink.net>
To: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
Cc: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2007 12:21 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Nut finds fake meteorite with fake technology!


Sterling and All,
Calling him a 'dowser' is being 'kind', as I think
dowsing has produced some desirable results,
but I think you are technically correct.

Mr. Yokum listed a batch of suspect meteorites
(on eBay 5-6 years ago) located with said machine .
I contacted him at that time.

Mr. Yokum has a vision and he does not let
little things like facts deter it. He sent a sample to
UCLA and was told it was not a meteorite.
He sent a sample to me and I told him the same.

Chunks purchased by others have appeared on eBay
since then. The most controversial listing was by a List member
that admittedly purchased 500 lbs. The sad part is
I phoned this seller and told him that I had a sample
of the same exact material he was selling and
I told him that it was not a meteorite. He assured me that
his items were different and contained much nickel-iron.
http://home.earthlink.net/~wrongs/auctions/2255992757.htm

This is the follow-up auction that revealed the truth about
the metal content and the character of the seller:
http://home.earthlink.net/~wrongs/auctions/2260392588.htm

A year later, the same seller still claiming "an internal
appearance similar to that of Dronino - a high-nickel-content iron
meteorite" unloaded much more of the same on eBay:
http://home.earthlink.net/~wrongs/auctions/6562295908.pdf

Best,
Ken Newton
http://home.earthlink.net/~magellon/updates.html


Sterling K. Webb wrote:
> Hi, List,
>
> He's a dowser! Gee, I haven't seen or heard of
> a dowser at work for 50 years. Most dowsing was
> for water, though, to find the proper location to dig
> a well. I once lived in a farmhouse property where
> they had a dowser "dowse" for the best well location
> before they built the house.
>
> After the dowser picked the best spot for a well,
> the well-driller set up his rig and commenced. This was
> in an area where wells usually "came in" between 20
> and 30 feet. At 40-odd feet, the driller pointed out that
> they were virtually certain to hit water in the next ten feet,
> so it would actually cost the landowner more to chose
> another drill site and start over with a new well.
>
> They let the drilling continue in the same spot, and
> had the same argument with the driller every ten feet or
> so, until at 87 feet, they hit water at last, at three times
> the average depth for the region (and about five times
> the usual drilling cost).
>
> Now confident that they had a reliable source of
> water, the owners commenced the construction of their
> house at a spot about 25 feet from the well site. They
> began to dig out the basement, but at a depth of only
> 45 INCHES, they hit a "blind spring," which continued
> to flow a respectible stream of water despite all their
> many efforts to shut it down.
>
> When I lived there fifty years later, the spring in
> the basement was still flowing --- out a pipe in the
> concrete floor that carried the spring water down to
> the roadside ditch to drain away, and we drank the
> water from the 87-foot-deep "dowsed" well.
>
> I always thought of that well as a memorial to the
> "efficacy" of dowsing, but $2800 for an electronic
> "dowsing machine" is an truly enterprising fraud. I
> wonder if Yokum's gadget will find water? I will say
> this for the expensive "dowsed" well, though: it was
> really good water.
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse at charter.net>
> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2007 11:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Nut finds fake meteorite with fake
> technology!
>
>
> On Thu, 2 Aug 2007 20:16:57 -0800, you wrote:
>
>
>> Nut or not, I think it's inspiring that a man of that age is off his
>> "rusty
>> dusty" looking around.
>>
>>
>
> With a little research, I see that the guy in the article isn't just some
> old
> fool who fell for the fraudulent technology-- he's the guy selling it. So
> he
> suckered some newspaper reporter into marketing his product for him.
>
> http://geotech.thunting.com/cgi-bin/pages/common/index.pl?page=lrl&file=reports/omnirange/index.dat
>
> http://www.thunting.com/geotech/forums/archive/index.php/t-11590.html
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>
>
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Received on Fri 03 Aug 2007 07:50:32 PM PDT