The Cast Iron Park Bench

Windowpane Observatory was one of the original places offering a name a star registration. Our name a galaxy registration has been active since the mid 1990s as a fund raiser for astronomy research. Lately, though, we’ve been getting fierce competition from a free name a galaxy web site, which cropped up on the internet a few years ago. Not only is no payment asked for when someone names a galaxy, the free name a galaxy web site owner criticizes the fee that we ask for. For our fee, a person gets a full color certificate in the mail along with a personal signed letter from a real astronomer, a star chart showing where the galaxy is in the night sky and a scientific profile of the galaxy itself.

What does one get for free at the free name a galaxy web site? A computer-generated certificate that must be printed at one’s own expense. But, as with most anything that’s free, there’s a catch. The name a galaxy web site demands that a person provide a name and e-mail address, regardless of the fact that all that is ever emailed is a computer-generated code that is unnecessary to the process. Why is this? You may question that the free name a galaxy website is the performance of a a spammer who is gathering up email addresses and then reselling them to a third party.

This no-charge name a galaxy site operator pronounces that he has no intention to sell e-mail addresses. But what is his intention, then? What is his reason for stealing our name a galaxy conception and turn around and create a free galaxy naming site? If he’s not gathering e-mail addresses for spammers, then perchance he’s just a mean guy. Our phone number is distinctly publicized on our internet site, but his is not. So this makes it impossible to call this guy up to ask him what he’s up to.