Letters | 4-22-15

TMT will offer long-term benefits

TMT will offer long-term benefits

First let me confess, I am a supporter of the Thirty Meter Telescope. As an engineer, I love challenging projects, and the advancement of science. There will be long-term benefits that we cannot imagine — as Ben Franklin said when he was experimenting with electricity. He was asked what use it was. His answer applies equally to the telescope. “Of what use is a newborn baby?”

The protesters make the telescope sound enormous, but it has about the same relationship to Mauna Kea as the dot at the end of this sentence to the full page of the newspaper.

What I cannot understand is the university’s reluctance to give it a Hawaiian name.

I suggested the King David Kalakaua Telescope. He was an amateur astronomer and welcomed astronomy to the islands, but they will probably name it after some obscure astronomer.

Ken Obenski

Kaohe, South Kona

Educators failing student protesters

Respect for the aina is commendable, but please remember that your Native Hawaiian ancestors were also navigators and stargazers.

Do schools and the University of Hawaii not teach about the remarkable voyages that were possible only because of knowledge of the heavens?

Do they also not teach that while Mauna Kea was thought to be the “navel” of the ancient known world, priests sacrificed humans for what they believed was “sacred,” the majority of the people were serfs, and women weren’t allowed to eat bananas?

That the students have been sucked into a protest tells me that they want a cause, but their teachers and professors aren’t giving them the tools necessary for a better understanding of the importance of following what the voyagers began. Saving the aina is not about stopping discovery, it’s about day-to-day care for their homeland, and I can think of many more causes that are sorely needed on their island, education being foremost.

Susan Rhymes

Keauhou

Legitimate does not make fish collecting right

Yes, Mr. John Rabi, (letter of April 7), fish collecting is legitimate in Hawaii, according to the dictionary: Legitimate means according to law, lawful.

But how about unethical, immoral, anti-environmental, reprehensible, disgusting, unconscionable or not right.

Some places in the world it is “legitimate” to discriminate based on sex, race or religion. It is legitimate to ban girls from attending school. It is legitimate to cut off hands if caught stealing. It is legitimate to stone a woman to death if she has an affair with another man.

Legitimate does not make it right.

It used to be legitimate to slaughter whales. It used to be legitimate to kill elephants for their ivory tusks. Now there is an illegitimate black market to kill elephants and rhinosceros because it involves a profit.

Yes, there is a profit to be made by fish collecting, but that doesn’t make it right. Let’s do the “pono” thing in Hawaii and ban fish collecting. Let’s make it illegitimate.

Where are the protesters to stop aquarium fish collecting?

Dan Sabo

Kailua-Kona