[meteorite-list] NYT story

[Impactika at aol.com]

Hello everybody,
 
Thank you Eric, and you are quite right, this was not an exact quote!  ;-)
My interview lasted quite a bit longer than yours, but he only asked about 
the meteorite world and market in general terms, and never mentioned Gemel 
Kamil.
I have been doing some research, and contacting people, and I am now 
writing a point by point rebuttal that will be published in the April issue of 
"Insights", the IMCA newsletter, in just a few days. 
Just a bit of patience please.
Thanks.
 
Anne M. Black
_http://www.impactika.com/_ (http://www.impactika.com/) 
_IMPACTIKA at aol.com_ (mailto:IMPACTIKA at aol.com) 
President, I.M.C.A. Inc.
_http://www.imca.cc/_ (http://www.imca.cc/) 
 
 
In a message dated 4/5/2011 3:39:30 PM Mountain Daylight Time, 
star-bits at tx.rr.com writes:
I was driving home on Friday when a guy called and identified himself as a 
reporter from the NY Times.  He said he talked to this scientist (I didn't 
catch the name) who thought collectors were bad for meteorite studies and 
then he said he talked to Anne Black and she said that was B*** S***!  I 
remember thinking that I doubted Anne used that phrase ;-)   He asked me about 
gebel kamil and exporting it from Egypt.  I told him I knew of no law in Egypt 
that even mentions meteorites let alone making export illegal.  I told him 
that there were laws about artifacts, but they don't mention meteorites and 
meteorites are not artifacts.  I never said I thought I was "beyond" Egyptian 
law because my gebel kamil was purchased in the USA, I just didn't know of 
any law that applied.  Conversation ended quickly after that.  The photo of 
the "looted" 60 gram piece is not one of mine.

I was surprised to be the featured bad guy/dealer in the article.  
According to my cell phone the whole conversation lasted only 4 minutes and 26 
seconds.  The response on my end has been rather quiet, 3 new customers, 2 people 
who wanted their hematite identified as a meteorite, one guy from the 
Harvard business school who thought we should get with the scientists and come up 
with a classification system because that would make everybody happy and 
the meteorites worth more (told him the reporter forgot to mention such a 
thing already existed), one guy that thought it was an interesting story and 
wanted help make an Indiana Jones type movie out of it (sent him to Mike 
Farmer), and one liberal retard who vented not only on stealing history, 
destroying the environment, but also on Arizona psychos selling automatic weapons 
etc, etc, etc.   Another quiet day at the office.

Eric Olson  

http://www.star-bits.com