Is the science more important than nature?
Nearly every day nearly everyone who has a view of Mauna Kea views Mauna Kea all day long and sometimes even into the night. It is a natural wonder and changes minute to minute.
Over the years, observatories have been placed on the summit of the mountain. Each new telescope has destroyed yet another piece of the natural beauty of our mountain. Each new addition to the mountain has become a lingering insult. Some call this progress. Some call it a sign of the expansion of our knowledge of the universe.
Until the Subaru telescope, this mountain top building was somewhat tolerable. Then Subaru decided it didn’t just want to see the universe, it wanted the universe to see it. Now, we all see Subaru when we just try to see only the mountain.
Now comes Keck and the Thirty Meter Telescope. Their purported objective is to see further than humankind has ever seen before, into the primordial universe. They want to also be seen on the mountain as no other observatory has been seen before.
When, eventually, their creation has become obsolete and is finally removed, millions of people who come to Hawaii to see nature will again see a natural mountain. Well, unless someone decides to launch space vehicles from the mountain — to advance science, of course. We have just changed gods, nothing more.
Hawaii is a very special place on this Earth. It is notable as much for what it does not have as for what is does have.
Mauna Kea may or may not be a sacred place. What I do know is that beauty is fragile and when it is gone, it seldom returns. When (if) this mountain is sacrificed to the gods of science, it will not ever again have the beauty it once had. But, hey, it is all for science. It must be good.
But what of beauty?
In an infinite universe, how far is enough to see?
Tom Beach
Waimea
Let Kenoi get on with the business of running county
What is all the hullabaloo over our Mayor Billy Kenoi?
He was a naughty boy pulling an immature prank, so spank him and let him get back to managing the county in a business manner we have not seen in decades.
As to those who want to believe that Mayor Kenoi was hanging out at a Korean bar seeking sexual favors, you’re nuts. Many men, like myself and probably you to, in our early years, ended up in such bars during the waning hours of the night (after all they were the only bars open at that awful time of the night). For me, it was places like the “Forbidden City” in Honolulu next door to “Lippy’s” across the boulevard from Kau Kau Corner and other bars in China Town where, at that late hour of the night, we were all “good time Charlies”. So, forget the sex part of the mayor’s junket. Mayor Kenoi is the proudest father of two of the most polite and respectful children one could ever hope to have, and husband to one of the sweetest ladies I have ever had the opportunity to meet.
I say, “Cool down papa, don’t you blow your horn” and let the man continue to do his fine job of managing the County of Hawaii. After all, Kenoi hasn’t come close to doing anything like what Bill Clinton has done and gotten away with, yet Clinton remains a hero in the minds of many. I, for one, will take our Mayor Billy Kenoi over the former President Billy Clinton any day.
Hugo von Platen Luder
Holualoa