how much is a plover worth?

continuing on the thoughts about the cost of saving the environment, how much do you think a piping plover egg is worth? just an egg.

go ahead, write a bit, lets see some numbers.

only in nebraska...and california

so i was hanging out with Girl last week. we were down in cortland, home of the hopluia. we had parked and were talking in the car. For a preface, let me mention that Girl is part Asian. me...im 100% wild indian. so imagine wild indian and asia talking in the car parked in downtown cortland.

up comes a woman.

a modestly clad white woman probably in her 60's. one could easily assume she would be kind, moral & respectful. not true. she comes up to my window and taps on it. i look at her a moment and think 'ok, THIS is rude.' typically the only time people tap on my window is when i get pulled over for speeding...so i thought maybe she was a cop...i roll down the window. she starts explaining that she has a petition and goes on and on and im zoned out because im still thinking about what Girl and i were talking about. (we were in a heated debate whether or not a hawaiian lay is considered patriotic.) at the end she looks at us and says 'basically its to reverse affirmative action.'

?!?!

we both kind of looked at her in shock. eventually Girl said 'no thanks' and i followed with a 'im not interested.' i wanted to shout 'wild indian and asia in the house...do you even know what youre asking us!?' but white woman quickly turned her head and marched away. which was kind of rude in and of itself.

i didnt even think stuff like this happens in nebraska...reversing affirmative action? really? i remember when i lived in california, they did this. there were too many white boy minorities not getting into college and someone thought they should reverse it. whatever.

but in nebraska?

i read about it today here. and after reading the article and our experience...im just left with kind of a sick feeling in my stomach. tomorrow is july 4th. its about celebrating our independence from tyranny...a free county where everyone can have opportunity. this country is a melting pot of minorities from all over the world. we are all minorities, but somewhere along the way it seems like some people want to separate themselves (from themselves)

but at least we get to shoot fireworks right?

the warm globe revisit

so Mike and i were talking about global warming. we came to a few general core agreements about it. and maybe one would not be able to call them agreements, but mere observations. here is how mike summed it up:

"...we first need to realize that such actions will have consequences. And, if these consequences outweigh the initial threat proposed by global warming, then the best course of action would be to just get out of the way and to try not make things worse by starving people and shipwrecking economies in the name of environmentalism."

nice.

it is a very interesting exercise to place a monetary value on things. and when i say things, i generally mean the well-being of people, life, death, poverty, quality of life, etc. if one wants to tackle the global warming argument with logic and practicalness, they need to be able to place a value to these things. or at least have some argument to justify why its important to say...save the world.

but thats hard to think about...what about on a small scale...what about saving one endangered bug? lets start with that...how much is this bug worth? is the well-being of the bug...the life of the bug..is that worth $1 dollar? yeah, i would say so. ok, agreed. but is it worth $100,000,000,000,000 dollars? one bug? i would say no. and why is that? well, i think for that much money, it would be better off to save some actual people. it would be better to save the people of a indigenous tribe in the jungles of congo. human life is more valuable than that of a bug...yeah?

well, we could get into the whole Noah's arc tale and how God put animals on the boat cause God loves his animals...sure. BUT for the sake of this conversation, lets just say a bug is not worth trillions, but is worth one dollar.

so now we need a sharp double edge sword to be able to divide bone and marrow...to draw the line. and that is pretty hard. its like the philosophical debate of a pile of rocks. if you have a billion rocks, its a pile of rocks, yeah? and what if you take one away, is it still a pile? Yeah, i would say so.

But what happens when you have just 3 rocks left...and you take one more away...is it still a pile? and one more? well then its just one and its not a pile anymore, is it?

oh boy, this could get tough.

But going back to bugs...there is a beetle here in eastern Nebraska. endangered beetle...the tiger beetle. and it is only found here.

how much is that worth?

http://lincolnjournalstar.com/news/local/doc486a8b2b41e5b255304622.txt