Update on moon rocks:

December 24 -- NASA has released the following:
   On December 17, 2002, Tiffany B. Fowler and Shae L. Saur appeared before a United States Magistrate Judge, Middle District of Florida, and pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit theft and interstate transportation of stolen property. On December 18, 2002, Thad R. Roberts pled guilty to the same charges.
   Fowler, Saur and Roberts, students working at NASA's Johnson Space Center, conspired to steal a 600-pound safe that contained priceless lunar samples and Martian meteorites. A fourth individual, Gordon S. McWhorter, was also charged with conspiracy to commit theft and interstate transportation of stolen property. McWhorter is scheduled to go to trial in January 2003.

This story is still really surreal to me. There's a lot of things I'd like to know, but it's not easy to get information. I tried exploring the issue a little while I was a feature writer at the Chronicle. I found the issue is very divisive even among peolpe who have no direct connection to it. Just making it through a night of interviews with the student astronomy group was hellish. It was clear that everyone had strong feelings about it, and the club and department had been very affected. But they were firmly united in the position that nothing should be published about it in the school paper. "Why don't you write about our research, our successes? How does writing a Thad article help the school?" I never interpretted "helping the school" as the function of the paper. I wanted to say, "I don't write about the research because this incident is obviously more significant, even to you. When you get this worked up over your research I'll write about it." But instead of saying that, I gave up and wrote about some research. I think in order to be a good journalist you have to be comfortable with seriously offending a lot of people, all the time.