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Greetings paleontologists and that other guy. Ah well, I guess that there isn’t much we can do about the fossil theft. Its gone, and that’s that. Some have argued that this was not a tragedy, and I agree, in a way. Stealing as such is not a real problem, since everyone steals from everyone else, no matter what the law says. It brings me back to a question I used to ask my mother all the time as a kid: “can you go to jail for stealing a penny from a bank?” My mother, in all her wisdom, answered “I don’t know”. Although I stood confused by the lack of an answer to such a simplistic question, she went on to explain that the real problem is the mentality behind the person who steals, and not the actual object stolen. This, my friends (and that other guy) is the real problem. Everything we see, touch, feel, smell, and taste now has a pricetag, and therefore everyone feels like we own, or can purchase, the world and all its many components. I don’t care that a particular fossil was stolen, or that a certain tree was cut down, or a certain whole was dug to quarry for some rare rock. What I care about is the lack of respect for the world around us. Previous attempts to explain the importance of this fossil to that other guy are futile, for he will never understands its beauty, and therefore never respect it. He is the same person who lobbied to cut down my childhood tree fort in order to put up a convenience store, the same guy who drives his pickup truck over saplings when off hunting for that trophy buck, and the same man who throws his McDonalds rappers out the side window of his suburban Hummer. Now I must emphasize that I am not a hippy, or some fruitcake environmentalist, I’m just a kid at heart who sees the world in his own way. On a final note, all of the examples put forth by my friends (and that guy) have one thing in common, as they are all material possessions, either things we have constructed (I am Canadian, so the liberty bell means diddly squat to me) or thins we own. This, our fossil, WE DO NOT OWN! We cannot reconstruct them, hell, we can’t even re-seed them like a forest or a garden. I wish more people could step away from what is important to humans, like the war on drugs, or laws, or hubcaps, or the liberty bell, or even human torture, and focus on real importances. I also work in a rare paleontological setting, since my work is at Mistaken point, Newfoundland Canada, and I must say that I was hurt when I saw deep gorges cut out of the bedding surfaces where fossils used to be. Not because the guy broke the law, but more because I will never get to see this fossil, and thus never able to appreciate it. Ok. Enough sappiness for one day. Cheers and all that goes with it, Marc _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
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