[meteorite-list] It is a sad day.....

From: Jason Utas <meteoritekid_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 23:31:47 -0800
Message-ID: <93aaac891003082331i4458ee68q29c7c4b7a90d2b8_at_mail.gmail.com>

Greg, All,

> ?These laws that restrict what can be taken off of BLM land, etc.....where do they come from? ?Where do these laws come from? ?Who creates these laws?

What's your point? This wasn't addressed in your email or my reply,
so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
We are, of course, talking about the government, but if you're going
to choose this as your example of an unnecessary or "wrong" law,
perhaps you should challenge the laws that prohibit the collection of
vertebrate fossils or indian remains by amateurs, as well. They
amount to the same thing - but are more readily enforced.

> ?Also, I'd like to address the following in your recent post. ?Speaking of meteorites, you wrote, "....it wouldn't stop anyone from hunting for them; it's easy enough to say that you're looking for *anything* else...and if they ask you what the brown rock that you've found is, do you really expect the BLM officer to know what a meteorite looks like?
>
> ?In other words, *break the law*. ?Is that about right? ?Whatever works, huh.

Hardly. Have you ever jay-walked? Did you ever have a sip of beer
before turning 21 (or 18, depending on the era).
I know that we do a better job of documenting our finds than most
people out there, and a trained scientist probably wouldn't do better
-- at least, I don't see what else they could do in terms of
documenting a find.
The thing is -- I understand why those laws are in place, and while I
suppose we may technically be breaking them, if they are indeed
official laws, the simple fact of the matter is this: I have never
sold or traded a find away, and never will. I have also fully
documented every find - coordinates, labels, we have trip logs for
each trip, in situ photos without gps, with gps, all photos
laboriously annotated by Peter, and the records are on two computers,
backed up on my external hard-drive, and are in paper form as well.
When I die, unless I have children and they love these things as much
as I do, our collection will likely go to the Smithsonian, with
certain provisions that none of the samples be cut beyond 10% or some
such thing.
That or some other institution.

I understand why laws against the collecting of vertebrate fossils are
in place, and I wouldn't try to excavate any were I to come across
them, for fear of damaging them and losing valuable scientific
information.
But I know damn well how to document meteorites, and we do a good job
of it - as well as can be done.

So when you tell me that I'm breaking a law...kind of, I suppose. I
have never sold or traded a find, and never will. They will all wind
up in an institution. They are all very well documented, and, to be
frank, given the level of documentation that we have, it would be very
hard to confuse a single one of our finds with another.
So while you may claim that I may be *technically* breaking the law in
taking them, but I'll be damned if you even try to say that I'm
breaking the spirit of the law.

Jason

>
> ?Greg
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
>> Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 22:43:03 -0800
>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] It is a sad day.....
>> From: meteoritekid at gmail.com
>> To: geeg48 at msn.com; meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>
>> Greg, Ron, Chris, All,
>>
>> And some here might disagree with you about your point of view;
>> "something that [you]'ve observed over the past few years" isn't fact,
>> it's opinion, and if you want to start a debate about how large
>> governments are bad, I think you should take it elsewhere - and
>> perhaps stop stating your point of view as though it was fact.
>>
>> With regards to that sort of a decision about meteorites - nothing's
>> changed recently, and even if it did or had, it wouldn't stop anyone
>> from hunting for them; it's easy enough to say that you're looking for
>> *anything* else...and if they ask you what the brown rock that you've
>> found is, do you really expect the BLM officer to know what a
>> meteorite looks like?
>> This whole topic is inane - all of the meteorites that we've found on
>> public land belong to the government, and they've yet to start
>> claiming them, with few exceptions.
>> Be happy with that, and if that changes, let me know.
>>
>> Personally, I agree with Ron Hartman. Yes, I believe that responsible
>> hunters with cameras and GPS' should be allowed to hunt. But the data
>> that's being lost by people who don't care to carefully record each
>> chip...it's just not scientific. There's a reason archaeologists grid
>> their sites meticulously in an attempt to find and use every iota of
>> information that they might attain from their field work: it's because
>> once they've been there and gone through it, that information is
>> either found and recorded, or it's lost to science forever.
>>
>> It's at least partly why native american remains and vertebrate
>> fossils are on the prohibited list - most of the people looking to
>> recover them simply don't record the scientific information necessary
>> to place them in a useful scientific frame, and that's recognized by
>> the scientific community and by politicians (I know, there are other
>> political reasons why we can't pick up indian relics, but at least
>> take vertebrate fossils into account).
>>
>> Unless you advocate the legality of collecting all such materials in a
>> commercial fashion, I really don't see how you can ask for meteorites
>> in particular. It just seems like a political self-interest argument
>> that you're only putting forth because *you* want the right to do what
>> *you* want, regardless of what's better for science.
>>
>> I'm seeing a lot of loss.
>>
>> Until a few years ago, every single fragment from every single lakebed
>> in California was carefully documented, recorded, and submitted. It's
>> the only reason that we were able to map complex strewn-fields and
>> fragmentation fields on many lakebeds, and we made sure to grid
>> several lakes in such a way as to find nearly two-hundred stones on
>> lakebeds that were "searched out." Stones ranging from about a pound
>> down to half a gram.
>> This isn't happening universally anymore.
>>
>> Which isn't to say that many people aren't doing spectacular jobs of
>> documenting their finds, but perhaps there should be some sort of
>> qualifying criteria for the ability to pick up these scientific
>> treasures.
>>
>> On our last hunting trip, amongst other things, we recovered a single
>> twelve-fragment stone from a California lakebed. The initial seven
>> fragments were relatively easy to find; we spent an additional four
>> hours crawling over the area, which resulted in the finding of five
>> more fragments, three of which weighed about 0.2-0.1 grams, one of
>> which was nearly sixty feet away.
>> I don't know if we found all of them, but I know for a fact that if I
>> did miss any, they were in that 0.1 to 0.2 gram size-range, and, given
>> the fact that daylight was fading, I couldn't have done better. We'll
>> be returning there anyways, to "clean up." The total weight of all of
>> the fragments was something like fifteen grams.
>>
>> http://picasaweb.google.com/MeteoriteKid/PersonalFinds#5426012774669234562
>>
>> Perhaps we shouldn't have photographed every find, or GPS'd them all,
>> or measured the distances between each so that we would be able to
>> draw a map of the field later.
>>
>> But we did, and now that information will be available to science
>> forever, and it will not be lost. Was it worth four hours of our
>> lives to take care of that? Four hours that we could have spent
>> hunting elsewhere - or perhaps getting food?
>> Perhaps, perhaps not, but that information is now safe.
>> And many hunters nowadays don't put forth the effort. Some do. Many do not.
>> It's why, while we do have information regarding the Franconia, Gold
>> Basin, and Ash Creek strewnfields, we do not have good maps of any of
>> these, aside from Jim Kriegh's original map of Gold Basin, which is
>> now still useful but relatively obsolete.
>>
>> You tell me what's better: the right for irresponsible hunters to lose
>> information, or the protection of this irreplaceable scientific
>> information. The rocks aren't going anywhere. Even if it takes a
>> century for the appropriate scientific programs to come about that
>> will recover them, they won't age much in that time, if at all.
>>
>> The age of profiteering off of dinosaur fossils by people like Edward
>> Cope and Othniel Marsh undoubtedly uncovered a vast amount of
>> information and fossils - to quote Wikipedia, as unreliable as it is,
>> "Unfortunately, many valuable dinosaur specimens were damaged or
>> destroyed due to the pair's rough methods: for example, their diggers
>> often used dynamite to unearth bones (a method modern paleontologists
>> would find appalling). Despite their unrefined methods, the
>> contributions of Cope and Marsh to paleontology were vast: Marsh
>> unearthed 86 new species of dinosaur and Cope discovered 56, a total
>> of 142 new species."
>>
>> This, in my mind, is what many people are doing today in the field of
>> meteorites. Yes, many meteorites are being recovered, but look around
>> you at the staggering scientific losses that are occurring
>> simultaneously...
>>
>> And Chris, too, is right. The existence of an un-enforced law that
>> "protects" meteorites in the United States is likely the sole reason
>> that we don't have more prohibitive and widely enforced laws. Be
>> happy with the BLM website, and the fact that they likely couldn't
>> enforce the law even if they exhibited a wish to (and they haven't, by
>> and large).
>>
>> Jason
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 8:59 PM, GREG LINDH wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Jason,
>>>
>>> Just stating an observation about something that I've observed over the past few years. My statement wasn't just about our current administration. The statement was a generalization about government. I stand by what I said. The meteorite thing is just one example of the intrusion of government into the lives of people. The only reason it is bothering the members here is that it affects them directly. I don't see any reason that people shouldn't be able to hunt for meteorites on any land, except Indian land or private property (without permission). All the restrictions have *never* made sense to me. My post's subject is directly attached to the subject of meteorites. Bottom line: it is the unwarranted intrusion of government that upset Ruben. No? If this is indeed a new ruling that eliminates meteorite hunting, then my topic seems quite relevant.
>>>
>>>
>>> Greg Lindh
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------
>>>> Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 20:36:04 -0800
>>>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] It is a sad day.....
>>>> From: meteoritekid at gmail.com
>>>> To: geeg48 at msn.com; meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>>>
>>>> Really, Greg?
>>>> Politics?
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 8:17 PM, GREG LINDH wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi Ruben,
>>>>>
>>>>> Everyone should take this to heart....the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. Our government is getting quite big, no?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Greg Lindh
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ----------------------------------------
>>>>>> Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 18:51:50 -0700
>>>>>> From: mrmeteorite at gmail.com
>>>>>> To: damoclid at yahoo.com
>>>>>> CC: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] It is a sad day.....
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Richard and all,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This is NOT just for Oregon and Washington (Hell, who is hunting
>>>>>> meteorites there anyway?)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> John Blennart has been talking with government people who have assured
>>>>>> him. "All the old Forest Service and BLM web sites will be changed to
>>>>>> read the new rules for meteorites."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This is REAL! John has been saying this was in the works for weeks now
>>>>>> - It seems that the recent interest in meteorites made them look into
>>>>>> doing this.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Rock On!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ruben Garcia
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Website: http://www.mr-meteorite.net
>>>>>> Articles: http://www.meteorite.com/blog/
>>>>>> Videos: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=meteorfright#p/u
>>>>>> ______________________________________________
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Received on Tue 09 Mar 2010 02:31:47 AM PST