Crystal balls

Or why the Large Hadron Collider is a colossal waste of time and money, Part 2. Because, using just a small piece of shiny rock, those boffins at CERN could have discovered everything worth knowing about our Multiverse and found out what happened before the Big Bang:

Crystal Cap Amethyst assists in exploring the multitude forms that life encompasses, not just the physical and material reality. It connects you to the immensity of life and attunes you to the most profound guidance. Crystal Cap Amethyst takes you into civilzations not as firmly corporeal as present one. You connect to Lemuria and live beyond the stars in other galaxies and universes, bringing back the wisdom and skills you garnered there. The stone conveys you to the start of our present universe and beyond to experience what went before.

With more New Age wibble than you can shake a dowsing rod at, The Crystal Bible 3, by Judy Hall, (an authority on 'spiritual development ... crystal healing, karmic astrology and past life therapy' no less) retails at £13.99 although, if you were to take its cosmological, archaeological and therapeutic claims seriously, its true price would be far above rubies (which are, apparently, most effective when embedded in a matrix of granite - 'The powerful lifeforece of Ruby or Garnet is magnified and focused by its granite matrix. It assists the transport of Qi around the body, energizing every cell. Excellent for repairing a broken heart, physically or psychologically').

My son has a copy of The Crystal Bible 3, a well-meaning present from somebody who knew that he was interested in rocks, minerals and gems, but failed to notice that TCB3 has less to do with mineralogy and geology then with such esoterica as 'karmic incrustations', 'high vibration energy', 'etheric blueprints' and out of body experiences.

Fortunately there are still plenty of books containing Actual Facts about rocks, minerals and gemstones (how they are formed, what they are made of, where they are found, the Mohs scale and so on). Rocks and Minerals, by Dan Green is especially good at summarising this stuff in a format likely to appeal to a seven-year-old. It's also way cheaper than TCB3, at a very reasonable £6.99: