D-Day the 6th of June
June 6, 2008 12:24 am > MAUI TODAY, > mEnvironment, Maui Curmudgeon |
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Teacher’s Day
HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY — Kalaikaiaola: Ecology PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY— Kamapim: Develop HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY — “The dust rises on the whirlwind.” HAOLE SAYING OF THE DAY — “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” (FDR)
WEB SURF SPOTS OF THE WEEK — Medical Marijuana ProCon | Industrial Hemp NORML National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws)
WEB VIDEO OF THE WEEK — The Magic Weed: History of Marijuana NETCAST OF THE WEEK — Marijuana Policy Project GOOD DEED SITE OF THE WEEK — Good Deed Foundation
TIGER CLEARCUT
They use up to three times the poisonous pesticides that farming does, and most of the pesticides they use are found on the EPA’s “toxic release” list.
- They waste more than 4 billion gallons of fresh water EVERY DAY in the United States.
- The U.S. has more than 18,000 of them, more than half the world’s supply.
- And now Tiger “Woods” (an ironic name if ever there was one) is about to build another.
We’re talking about golf courses. He’s chosen to ruin a pristine spot of Smoky Mountain beauty outside the once enjoyable town of Asheville, North Carolina. (Yuppies discovered it in the 90’s and now it’s crying out for respite from all the development - sound familiar, Maui?)
No surprise here - golf courses and the people who build them have been known for decades as decidedly anti-environmental. And frankly, as far as Woods and his ilk are concerned - you know, the people who travel by private jet - you can’t expect any respect for ecology from them. No.
But I do find it funny that a guy names Woods is about to clearcut some of the finest natural beauty left on the east coast for his own aggrandizement and for the enjoyment of mostly pasty white rich southerners who worked for decades to keep people of Woods’ color out of their game.
And it’s just a game, by the way. Don’t let a golfer ever get you to accept that it’s a sport. Anything you can do while drinking gin and smoking cigarettes isn’t a sport, I don’t care what the archaic Olympic Committee says.
The warped sense golfers have about “preserving the history of the game” is so mentally insane it begs for laughter. When they talk about tradition, they always fail to mention things like this: at Bimini Bay Resort they clear cut and filled in the mangrove ecosystem to build a golf course for the Hilton out there, and destroyed the very reason Bimini was beautiful. Today the place is a disaster, and the resort in trouble.
Or this beauty: the Battlefield Golf Club in Centerfield, Maryland is built on fly ash, which contains poisonous heavy metals and things like arsenic, which are leeching into the groundwater and local wells. Fun huh? Someone nearby your house is getting rich off stupid golfers and your kids are getting cancer. Sounds like George Bush’s America to me.
I admit I never liked Tiger Woods. In my old neighborhood growing up we called a kid like that a snot. He wants to be the world’s first billionaire “sports” figure (there’s that misused word again). A noble goal, I think, right up there with curing cancer and establishing world peace.
I just wish he would pursue his personal goals without destroying the world for the rest of us.
– Maui Curmudgeon
EVENTS ON THIS DAY - June 6th
1844: The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) is founded in London
1932: The U.S. Federal gas tax is enacted
1933: The first drive-in theater opens (in Camden New Jersey)
1944: D-DAY - Allied forces storm the beaches of Normandy, FRA
1967: The “Six Day War” begins between Israel and its Arab neighbors
1977: The U.S. Supreme Court tosses out state automatic death penalty laws
1988: George Bush I makes a campaign promise to support reparations for WW II Japanese-American internees (promise broken as of May 1989)
1985: Authorities in Brazil exhume a body later identified as that of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who conducted medical experiments on inmates at Auschwitz
1989: Burial services were held for Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
2005: The Supreme Court rules 6-to-3 that people who smoke marijuana because their doctors recommend it to ease pain can be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws.
BORN ON THIS DAY - June 6th
1755: Nathan Hale, hanged patriot
1875: Thomas Mann, novelist
1935: Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet’s Lamaistic Buddhists
1949: Richard Lewis, comedian/acto
1951: Dwight Twilley, country singer
1955: Sandra Bernhard, comedian/actress
1956: Bjorn Borg, tennis champ
1968: Paul Giamatti, actor
1973: Natalie Morales, broadcast journalist
1976: Lukas Hass, actor
