glassfacts.info

While almost certainly not the fault of glassfacts.info, Damion Prior, first prize winner in 2/5 item, is said to be from Dallas, while his web site says he is from Austin. And Damion's web site is, for me, an example of useless "features" which delay loading, especially on dial up. The first of which is a set of blue vertical bars that follow the mouse cursor. Clicking on a word on the screen drops most of the words to the bottom and flicks on a new menu. Choosing to look at Sculpture gets eventually to an image with a stack of boxes to the right that turn out to be keys to quick change images. Oh, by the way, don't use your back arrow - it takes you to the Enter page of the whole site.

A perfect example of a website produced by someone who has all the tricks...and used every damn one of them. What a waste of bandwidth!!!

While I agree that flashy (and especially _Flash_) web sites are irritating, I found some interesting things on the site. Chiefly pointers to other sites....

Mike Beede

[Do you have a fact checker for that site? Or are these "facts" just something you guess at, when you're not busy soliciting advertisements? In yesterday's entry, on tektites, you state they are of unknown origin, when most people who have studied the subject (except for someone at NASA, which flies rockets but isn't composed of gemologists) agree they are glassy spatters resulting from meteor impacts which melt the rock they hit and spray it around the crater. Here are some links supporting this consensus:

's a lot of information on the Web, but not all is factual. Try to getto the bottom of things before adding to the confusion out there...] Andrew Werby

"...they are believed to be from outer space that theory has yet to be proven"

All of your sources agree to varying degrees:

says:"...thought by most scientists today to be melt products of terrestrialrocks formed by hypervelocity impacts of large, extraterrestrialobjects"

says:"Rather it is a natural glass reported to be formed by the heating ofsilicon rich rocks at the impact point of a meteorite. That are manypossible ways in which it can form but the meteorite theory has themost industry acceptance...and is the most fun." says:"I believe I fairly state that the consensus of the vast majority ofthe planetary science community is that tektites are terrestrial impactmelt."

So I used the words "believed to be" and your sources used "thought by", "reported to be" and (my favorite) "I believe I fairly state that the consensus...".

I'm more than glad to make correct mistakes when I make them -- but the bottom line is that the my definition is factually accurate.

Tektites are believed to be from meteor impacts but that has not been proven. That sentence is factual and accurate.

As for my diligence in research accuracy, I'm very careful to rely on what I believe to be credible sources. I'll trust information from NASA over "yourgemologist.com" every time.

If you don't like the site, you disapprove of my research methodology, and/or you have a moral opposition to advertising then I invite you not to visit the site.

- Paul

Andrew Werby wrote:

advertisements? In

glassy

consensus:

history,

Thanks for the catch Mike. I fixed it.

- Paul