[meteorite-list] Spreading the faith...

[Darren Garrison]

...Of meteorites.  I had an evangelical moment this week.  I have a nicely
crusted piece of 869, around 23 grams, about the size and shape of a pinky
finger, that I thought was a good shape/size to wear.  So I drilled a hole near
the top and threaded it onto a lanyard, and wear it whenever I'm out of the
house.  So I'm at the garden center of Home Depot asking a employee a plant
question, and she asked me about the rock (which I wan't even thinking about)
and I gave her the mini-sphiel on meteorites.  She asked reasonable questions
(are the black on the inside, too) and seemed suitably impressed.  Had a similar
event a few months back with a talkative guy in a hospital waiting room.  He was
browsing through a recent issue of Popular Science with a cover story on
asteroids, so I showed him a chunk of an asteroid that I had in my pocket (I
wasn't just happy to see him).  Turns out, he had seen a segment on meteorite
hunters on TV just a couple of days ago-- I don't remember which segment, but
I'm sure it was one about one of the list members.

Just thought I'd vent.

Apropos of nothing, here's a couple of oldies but goodies to keep in your
critical thinking toolkit:

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/baloney.html

http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/W/Jonathan.D.Wren-1/The%20Fine%20Art%20of%20Baloney%20Detection.htm