As reported in Nature magazine, we now know that starfish have eyes, a tiny eye on the tip of each bendy starfish arm. And each eye can look right back at you. And yes some of these guys light up the darkness down there at the bottom of the ocean. They do this so they can see!
Are the tourists in Kauai paying their fair share of the carrying capacity cost? What percentage of our taxes is going to support tourism? Increased crowding and traffic stalls are not the resorts’ fault. They are not to blame. They provide a service and they should be paid for it like anybody else. But what percentage of Kauai’s tax revenue is spent on subsidizing the tourist industry?
We do not need many more tourists, so we may not need more resorts. We have already completely lost the end of the dirt road kind of vibe that used to be unique to the North Shore. With traffic becoming sometimes intolerable in Kapaa and increasingly so elsewhere, tourists are going to get turned off.
So the problem may self-correct but only after everyone suffers. We do not want this industry to grow fast on this island. If it grows too large, it will spoil the island. If Coco Palms gets rebuilt, and I am one of the few who thinks it will, what will Kapaa traffic then be like?
There was a recent article, Glimpsing a Cosmic Dawn, in the New York Times Tuesday Science edition, which began: “It was morning in the universe … when light from the first stars began to tickle and excite their dark surroundings nearly 14 billion years ago.“ New radio-based technology allows us to look further into the mists of time than even the Hubble telescope. It could be that radio astronomers now have a way to get a grip on dark matter. Time began roughly 14 billion years ago and now we can see some of what was happening in the mere, first 180 million years. Incredible. (Can you really believe we can now write, “Time began 14 billion years ago?”)
Also, scientists have also just found a new form of water. Is it a liquid? Is it a solid? It is both. Yes, this water is simultaneously solid and liquid. The new form of water is called superionic water, and it is not known to naturally occur anywhere on earth, but it “may be bountiful further out in the solar system, perhaps in the mantles of Uranus and Neptune..” Scientists have been predicting its existence for 30 years but just recently found it.
Now, speaking of the @MeToo movement (that is what she said), last week a Belgian court convicted and sentenced a man for “sexism in public.” A woman police officer had reprimanded him for jay walking; he responded: “Shut your mouth. Being a police officer is not a job for a woman.”
She cuffed him on the spot, took him to jail, and the judge popped him for $3,750. Sexism, under Belgian law, is defined as “every gesture or deed” that is “clearly meant to express contempt of a person based on sex,” or considers a person inferior because of sex, or reduces a person solely to a sexual dimension, and which gravely affects the dignity of that person as a result.” Violations can lead one year and jail and fines up 3,000 euros. I like the “sexual dimension” and “gravely affects” language.
Here are three evocative lines I read from time to time:
“All killing is bad
Except in great numbers
To the sound of trumpets.”
— Anon.
The next is maybe easier to put your mind around:
“Be kind to strangers because everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”
— Philo, 3rd BC Jewish
philosopher
Where did the French come from and where did the British come from? And where did the Cornish and the Welsh come from? We have answers! I used to study this stuff and it goes like this.
Around 600 B.C. the earliest Celts crossed the Rhine and eventually became the Gauls or French. A cognate tribe of Celts kept moving south and settled in the Iberian Peninsula; this offshoot tribe of Celts migrated a century later to Britain, becoming the Britons. Nine hundred years later the Angles and Saxons pushed Britons into Cornwall, who became the Cornish, and pushed other Britons into Wales, who became the Welsh.
I find this sort of thing fascinating; it took me almost an hour to write the above, trying to get it tight but right.
You probably knew that Irish based pagan festivals include May and Halloween. First day of May, called Beltaine, was a spring celebration distinguished by bonfires, maypoles, and sexual license. The last night of October called Samain, marked the beginning of winter, on which ghosts and other creatures from the other world were allowed to frighten the living.
Here is a line from an Irish novel: “What would you like in your whiskey?” “More,” and they laughed. The same book had this line: “The stranger looked like a scarecrow deserting his post.” Just fine writing.
Sixty percent of young Republicans acknowledge that climate change is real, and 88 percent of young Democrats do. This means 40 percent of the young GOP are in denial of science. Much of that 40 percent believe in creationism I assume.
Back to “that is what she said,” at the turn of the 20th century, 97 percent of teachers were women and they were paid only slightly more than maids. New Yorker factoid.
“Assume a virtue, if you have it not, …
For use can almost change the stamp of nature.”
— Hamlet to his mother (1602)
Compare:
“Only act in cold blood as if the thing in question were real and it will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.”
— William James, “Principals of Psychology” (1890)
Next week we will talk about invasive species problems on Kauai, use of noise deterrents for birds who like lychee, mango farms that have been devastated by parakeets, hotel complaints of roosters destroying landscapes, making messes and creating health issues, golf courses complaining about pigs … and Kauai’s carrying capacity for all of them.
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Douglas Slain is a retired law publisher and recovering academic living the “Lucky we live Kauai” life and playing as much tennis as possible. He now lives in and bikes around Kapaa. He can be reached at doug.slain@gmail.com.
Fine article and a pleasure to read, Douglas!! Food for thoughts