[meteorite-list] Mike Farmer Eats Moon & Mars Rocks!

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:11:48 -0500
Message-ID: <36DF9463EFC547B182A3C206C89DACA1_at_ATARIENGINE2>

Hi, Marc, List, and all Mars Eaters Everywhere,

The piece is actually a poem in "The Martians,"
a fourth volume or supplement to the Mars Trilogy.
It is in a section entitled "If Wang Wei Lived on Mars
and Other Poems." He eat a piece of Zagami on
March 25, 1996, his 43rd birthday, shortly before
the final drafts of the Trilogy were finished, as a
kind of celebration.

>From the date, it would seem he might have been
one of the first to eat or at least taste Mars, and
since he published about it, he was likely the first
person we heard about doing it. I was, at any rate.
Made me buy a Bessey speck a few years later and
chow down.

Sterling K. Webb
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fries, Marc D (3225)" <marc.d.fries at jpl.nasa.gov>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2009 10:47 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Mike Farmer Eats Moon & Mars Rocks!


The gent who wrote the Red Mars trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson, wrote a
short
appendix to one of the books in the series. The details are a little
sketchy to me now (been a while since I read them), but if I recall
correctly the appendix was titled, ?The First Recorded Instance of
Aerophagy? and was about him sitting on his rooftop looking at Mars
while he
ate a small piece of a martian meteorite. I recall being stunned at the
time, but I wouldn't even blink at such a thing today.

Cheers,
MDF


On 8/16/09 3:18 PM, "Rob McCafferty" <rob_mccafferty at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Nothing unusual about this.
> My first ever meteorite was a 25mg piece of Dhofar 1084. Tasting it
> was one of
> the first things I did.
>
> I don't recal ever having tasted a martian though it is a distinct
> possibility
> and I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the experience.
>
> I can tell you that eucrite tastes like those cinder blocks that they
> use for
> making homes, the really big grey ones....with a little sprinkling of
> iron
> filings on top.
>
> You may be wondering how I know what cinder blocks or iron filings
> taste like
> but I also believe you're intelligent enough to also have guessed the
> answer.
>
> It's a wonder I'm still alive.
>
> Rob
>
> --- On Thu, 8/13/09, Leigh Anne DelRay <leighannedelray at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> From: Leigh Anne DelRay <leighannedelray at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Mike Farmer Eats Moon & Mars Rocks!
>> To: "JoshuaTreeMuseum" <joshuatreemuseum at embarqmail.com>,
>> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>> Date: Thursday, August 13, 2009, 10:32 PM
>> Leigh Anne DelRay Snorts Mars
>> Rocks!!!!!
>>
>> The latest trend:
>>
>> http://www.callistodesigns.com/ebay/snortingmars.jpg
>>
>> Yes that was a real Mars rock, thanks to Mexico Doug!
>>
>>
>> Oh Yes! And I too, have tasted (although not eaten) a moon
>> Rock
>>
>> http://www.callistodesigns.com/ebay/licking-the-moon.jpg
>>
>> And yes that was a real Moon rock, thanks to Greg Hupe'.
>>
>>
>> Just a little something to be silly,
>> Leigh Anne
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 8:14 AM,
>> JoshuaTreeMuseum<joshuatreemuseum at embarqmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/michael-farmer-meteorite-broker-
>>> 1278.php
>>>
>>> I too often chow down on these tasty morsels. Just
>> this morning I had a
>>> bowl of crunchy anorthosite cereal, though I hate
>> the way the plagioclase
>>> feldspar sticks between your teeth!
>>>
>>> Phil Whitmer
>>>
>>> Meet Michael Farmer, aka Meteorite Guy
>>> In the exclusive world of meteorite brokers, his rise
>> has been, well ...
>>> By Jay MacDonald
>>>
>>> Twelve years ago, a stock boy at Target purchased a
>> chunk of space debris at
>>> the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show that changed his life
>> forever.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> He has not only held pieces of the moon and Mars in
>> his hands -- he has
>>> tasted them.
>>>
>>> "I've eaten a piece of every moon rock and Mars rock
>> that I have purchased
>>> or found, just to say I did it," he chuckles. "We are
>> all made of space
>>> rock."
>>>
>>> Welcome to the out-of-this-world life of Michael
>> Farmer, aka Meteorite Guy,
>>> one of only about 20 professional meteorite brokers --
>> on this planet
>>> anyway.
>>>
>>> Building a rock-solid empire
>>> Farmer was a 25-year-old college student attending the
>> University of Arizona
>>> on the G.I. Bill, stocking shelves part time and
>> vaguely drifting toward a
>>> career with the CIA when he happened to wander into
>> the largest gem and
>>> mineral show on earth.
>>>
>>> "I bought a rock (meteorite) for $70 and got so
>> fascinated with it that it
>>> changed the course of my life," Farmer recalls. "When
>> I saw it, I thought,
>>> 'Wow, I'm holding a piece of outer space!'"
>>>
>>> Anxious to find more, he scoured the gem show site
>> until he met an old-timer
>>> who had a box of 40 meteorites hidden under the table.
>> His asking price:
>>> $4,000 for the box.
>>>
>>> "I had no money at the time, so I had to beg and
>> borrow to buy the box,"
>>> Farmer recalls. "When I started researching the
>> meteorites, I found that
>>> that they were from a very rare collection, and I
>> quadrupled my money on
>>> those stones in about 48 hours. That's when I realized
>> you could actually
>>> make money doing this."
>>>
>>> Within a year, Farmer had earned enough to make the
>> first of dozens of trips
>>> to Africa, initially focusing on the Sahara Desert.
>>>
>>> Why the desert? Prepare to be mentally humbled.
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> http://www.meteoritecentral.com
>>> Meteorite-list mailing list
>>> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>>>
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>
>
>
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Received on Mon 17 Aug 2009 05:11:48 PM PDT