Justin wrote:
...as I mentioned to some I have thrown around the idea of working my butt off to see if I could submit and abstract worthy of the conference. . .

Alex writes:
Justin, I would not worry about submitting an "abstract worthy of the [LPSC] conference" so much - just put something together. I would advise, however, that you have others review any work before submission because LPSC doesn't allow corrections. At any rate, "worthy" is in the eye of the beholder. There is no real review, other than shoehorning the abstract(s) into the appropriate session(s) and deciding who gets to give oral presentations or who is relegated to print-only and/or posters. Virtually anyone can and does submit, all of which can be discerned by some of the borderline crackpot/pseudoscientific submissions (e.g., Horvath et al.) from this year's event, usually sent in by people who do not even attend. I guess this is convenient to the author(s) who don't have to defend their work among professional scientists.

Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii