[meteorite-list] [IMCA] Hammers & Orientation

From: Mark Ford <mark.ford_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:05:36 -0000
Message-ID: <29A9DB45B84970458190D7D39BD42C4956BF1C_at_gamma.ssl.atw>

Ha! very good Martin, sounds just like something the European Commission would actually implement!


Or ... we could just say, 'if the rock in question hit something other than the ground, then it's a hammer!?'

Best,

Mark


-----Original Message-----
From: imca-bounces at imcamail.de [mailto:imca-bounces at imcamail.de] On Behalf Of Martin Altmann
Sent: 12 March 2009 00:54
To: imca at imcamail.de
Subject: AW: [IMCA] Hammers & Orientation

Oki.

Give me 20 minutes. But don't take it to seriously....

1) A hammer is a single stone who hits and remarkably damages a man made
object.

Alpha) A damage is a change of the object which must be at least 2 inches in
diameter and 1 inch deep,

else it is
beta) a scratch.

In any case the damage or the scratch has to be recognizable with unaided
eye.


I) A man made object has to be at least 2 feet tall, else

2) the stone is a hitter.

Is a man made object filled with more then 50% of its volume by liquids and
if it owns the property of auto-motion - then I) is overruled
and the man made object is

Ib) a human or an other animal

and the 1) and 2) is called

3) strucker

if Ib) looses not more than 20% of its liquids and the property of
auto-motion is not suspended for more than 110 years.

Else 3) turns into

4) killer.

If 4) happens but Ib) shows neither alpha) nor beta)

It is a

5) blaster


1), 2), 3) & 4) applies only on the very object which hits the very objects
I) & Ib)

All other similar objects which fall from above in spatial and temporal
adjacency,

shall be identified furthermore by the suffix

 -ette.


If 1) - 5) is subdivided into smaller entities,

A) it has to be done under the surveillance of a lawyer and a member of the
board of directors of the IMCA or the latter substituted by at least 3 full
members, with the following conditions:
- they shall not stem from the country of the fall
- they shall not be related or related by marriage with the finder, the
cutter, the owner nor the surveying lawyer.
- they had and have to abstain from any commercial meteorite trades.

B) the subdivided portions of the 19 -5) have to be numbered according a
partition scheme (still to be defined by IMCA) and registered by IMCA.

* any further partitition follows A) and B)


Any 1) - 5) and alpha) and beta) has to be certified by
and any hammerette, hitterette, struckerette, killerette and blasterette has
to be certified by
two regular lawyers of the county of the occurrence
and has additionally to be testified by either
the special hammer agent of IMCA
or at least 3 regular members of IMCA with the same conditions like in A)
and it has to be done within 5 days after the fall.


>From each hammer, hitter, strucker, killer and blaster
20% or 20g, whatever the larger amount is, has to be given for free to the
treasurer of IMCA as deposit for references and commercial purposes.

20% or 20g of the strucked objects or humans or animals has to be given for
free to the treasurer of IMCA as deposit and for references and commercial
purposes.

>From each hammerette, hitterette, struckerette, killerette and blasterette
10% or 10g, whatever the larger amount is, has to be given for free to the
treasurer of IMCA as deposit and for references and commercial purposes.

If all these conditions and requirements are fulfilled,
the board of directors will convene to vote for the official status of the
stones.

Else no stone shall be named "a hammer".


...

Something like this?
Martin


-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Dave Gheesling [mailto:dave at fallingrocks.com]
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 12. M?rz 2009 00:54
An: 'Martin Altmann'; imca at imcamail.de
Betreff: RE: [IMCA] Hammers & Orientation

Martin, David & All,
Whether we, individually speaking, attach some value to the term or not, is
it in widespread enough use and potentially ambiguous/misunderstood to merit
some reasonable attempt at standardization by IMCA?
Best,
Dave
www.fallingrocks.com

-----Original Message-----
From: imca-bounces at imcamail.de [mailto:imca-bounces at imcamail.de] On Behalf
Of Martin Altmann
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 7:19 PM
To: imca at imcamail.de
Subject: AW: [IMCA] Hammers & Orientation

Well David,

you're right, but maybe I should explain better, why I have my difficulties
to attach that importance to the topic, which others do.

When I made my first website about meteorites long ago, I took on the front
page a quote by Franz v.Kobell, which I had found in an old popular book,
which I once had bought as a boy on a fleamarket -

"For how long many a meteor stone may have flown his circular flight as a
small descendent of a planet, through the midst of the immense masses of the
great regents of the skies, what revolution may have torn him away into the
wide, strange stellar space and have separated him from his mother Ceres or
Pallas or whatever her name, how many things may have befallen him during
his voyages through those dizzy heights, which man can hardly comprise in
their extent, except for those moments of sublime feeling, which at the same
time make him bough to HIM who hath created and disposed as HE pleaseth?!
Such are the thoughts that rise in us, as we look at the black, mysterious
stone, which now lies cold and motionless in our cabinets and which,
methinks, in bright nights, when he sees the distant stars twinkling
outside, may yearn back to the times of his freedom with its audacious
flights, that he relished in."

- because even if he wrote that more than 160 years ago, it met best my
fascination I felt for meteorites and it describes still today at best my
motivation for carry on in that often so friggin hard job as a meteorite
dealer.

I know, today we are much more spoiled by the sheer number and by the easy
availability of even the rarest types than in the 80ies or in the 90ies,
(although the amounts coming from deserts aside the equilibrated OCs are
much more clear and manageable most are thinking).

But for me there are a hundred aspects more fascinating on a very stone,
than whether it hit a roof or whether one of its fellows killed a lizard or
knocked off a bull.
Are meteorites meanwhile so boring for the collectors (to collectors, not
meteoritic laypeople), that they need such a gimmick to be desirable for
them? Why they don't collect coconuts instead? This one hit a tourist from
Michigan, 46 years old, a dentist - that one a dog, named Fluffy - and that
made a dent in the roof of a car....

When I get such a stone in my hands
http://www.meteorite-times.com/Back_Links/2004/December/mbale.jpg

honestly, than I'm thinking in that moment to anything else but to this
http://www.planetarium.montreal.qc.ca/Information/Expo_Meteorites/Images/fic
hes/small/image_mbale4.jpg

http://www.planetarium.montreal.qc.ca/Information/Expo_Meteorites/Images/sma
ll/image_144.jpg

Hadn't Allende so many more to tell to us about our origins, than that a few
stones lied on a roof?

If we cut a stone and for the first time after 4.5billion years it opens us
its strange splendour, telling us the lore from these exotic worlds out
there, we never will get hold of.... shall we say then: Kool, what a
sensation: it has a dry blade of grass or a speck of wall paint sticking on
a corner....

So I have my problems to take that hammer-thing seriously.

Whether a fence is more a man-made object, than a curb stone; if I fall dead
from my chair with a meteorite in my hand, cause I worked to much, whether
than this specimens qualifies in the same way as hammer or killer as if it
had fallen on my nob and if it was a Gao, what that would mean to the rest
of the 9999 stones, whether they are than a hammer&killer, a fellow hammer
and secondary killer..

That are funny stories, a nice extra, small curios - more it isn't to me.


Yah of course these are excellent anecdotes to tell to laypeople, but that
hammer-hysteria is raging among meteorite collectors now and not laypeople.

And of course - on TV each film - or each article in a newspaper about
meteorites can be sorted in 2 categories.

First, uuuh sweet poor dino, rolling his eyes - kaboom your dead. Big Apple,
kawooosh, Tour Eiffel, zoshhhh, Big Ben baaang, Golden Gate Bridge
Tsunamissimiiii, ugly Barringer hole....
message: meteorites - we all must die.
In such films/articles it's even not necessary to show a real meteorite.

Second. The Gold Rush. Meteorite Hunt. $$$$$$$$$$$

So of course it's interesting for laypeople to hear what meteorites all have
smashed.
But we are meteorite collectors. Don't we collect meteorites for other
reasons?

As told, no offense intended - this is also only my very personal access to
meteorites - and I don't disregard these, who collect perhaps only hammers,

But - again personally - I see no such urgent need for an "official"
terminology, categorizing, ranking of "hammers"
or better to say - I see no harm, if something like that wouldn't exist.


...if I had a hammer, lalalalala la laa
Martin
 

________________________________________
Von: imca-bounces at imcamail.de [mailto:imca-bounces at imcamail.de] Im Auftrag
von Spacerocks UK
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 11. M?rz 2009 07:51
An: imca at imcamail.de
Betreff: Re: [IMCA] Hammers & Orientation

Members!
As a comparative new-comer to the IMCA, but as the UK's largest dealer
(sadly in several ways!) may I make a couple of points?
* Whether Michael invented the term 'hammer' or not, he is definitely the
person one thinks of first in relation to its use in this context * Although
I personally don't use the term on my website, I think it adds to the
excitement and drama of a description: I always mention the 'pan of soup'
story when showing a customer a piece of Juangcheng, although I'm sure my
bits were just found on the ground! (Which I'm quick to affirm to
clients!)
* Although I concede that, strictly speaking, we should? differentiate
between meteorites that actually hit something and fragments that merely
land on the ground, this is, IMHO, slightly nit-picking. Apollo Astronaut
Alan Bean sells his old paint brushes for big money, although he didn't take
them to the Moon with him: their enhanced value comes from their direct link
with the Apollo 12 Moon mission.
* Like Michael (and many others here, I'm sure) I sell meteorites to pay the
bills and augment my income as a free-lance lecturer (I retired from
full-time teaching three years ago) Now, meteorites don't sell themselves
over here, so I sometimes have to emphasise their dramatic features: age /
possible?role in panspermia / cataclysmic impacts such as KT etc etc. The
bottom line is we sell meteorites to a wide range of clients and, as long as
we're not guilty of misrepresentation, highlighting their more exotic
features is just good salesmanship!
* Lastly: it's a shame if we allow semantics to cause rifts in what is,
after all, an organisation we can all be proud to be part of....
Respectfully,
David Bryant
IMCA 1898

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Received on Thu 12 Mar 2009 10:05:36 AM PDT