[meteorite-list] Pterosaur egg

[Sterling K. Webb]

Hi, All,


    Could I remind everyone that what is being argued about here is all
hypothetical.

    Apart from Capt'n Blood, who as broker is obligated to protect the
privacy and confidentiality of both buyer and seller I believe, no one
has any concrete first hand knowledge about this matter.

    No one knows the seller. No one knows whether he devoted 18 years of
his life to the quest, expending $130,000 of his own money to search for
the egg or whether he tripped over it in his driveway one morning. No
one knows anything about his morals, ethics, character, or even why he's
trying to sell it.  Maybe he's had it for years and now he needs a heart
transplant operation.  No one knows.

    No one knows the buyer, especially since there doesn't appear to be
one yet. No one knows what his motive would be, either.  No one knows if
he plans on donating to a museum for a bronze plaque on the case or
putting in a mayonaise jar and burying in under his back porch. Equally,
no one knows anything about the morals, ethics, or character of this as
yet hypothetical individual, or even why he would buy it.

    We are calling each other communists or free-booting thieves of
knowledge, vandals or totalitarian bug-a-boo's or worse, and no one
knows anything about this actual specific situation, whether it's a true
egg or an egg fraud, or anything else about this matter.  Yes, a few
good general observations in the abstract have been made, but the
reality should be the determining factor, and none of us knows it.

    As for fraud, this prominent List is a data miners' dream, for the
oppotunity to steal hundreds of email addresses for a hundred other
dirty tricks.  If a grifter is trying the Pterosaur Egg Con, three
guesses where he got the idea.

    To return to initial point of broker ethics, my stock broker once
said to me, after years of handling my pitiful little economic gambles,
that if we happened to be in the same room or group of people, he would
never reveal that we had any business relationship of any kind or even
that we knew each other, unless I mentioned it first.  "You have a right
to your privacy," he said.

    Brokerage (all kinds) has its principles, too.  Privacy is an
important principle, too, and often entails legal obligations as well.
I'm betting Michael wishes he'd never asked the innocent question, "Does
anyone want to buy...?".

    People, we don't know anything.

    Now, about this 100 kilo lunaite I found in my driveway this
morning...


Sterling K. Webb