The missionaries are back...

[Chris J. Durden]

Tolerance of diverse behavior seems to be evaporating as population density 
increases. You may not have noticed this yet in Alaska. "Political 
Correctness" seems to be just PR lingo for mob rule which is neither polite 
nor correct and something to be avoided by civilized society.
..................Chris Durden

At 12:04 PM 5/26/2001 -0800, you wrote:

>         Something in the human psyche appears to require people to prosel-
>ytize for their ideas, instead of just quietly going about whatever they
>do. So once more we get intemperate postings against collecting butterflies.
>
> > If we collected birds the same way people collect butterflies,
> > there would soon be no more of them, probably what is happening to
> > butterflies.....
>
>That's simply not true, as regards butterflies in North America. Loss of
>habitat is the problem, not collecting. And collecting of birds is indeed
>going on--museum curators still go out with shotguns (and gov't permits).
>Even if butterflies were classified with birds, and possession of any part
>of a butterfly were outlawed, musuem people (which includes amateurs with
>appointments as research associates) would still be out there collecting,
>armed with gov't permits. By the way, feral cats kill 30,000 times more
>birds than scientists do. For some strange reason, the gov't does not see
>their way to regulate cats.  :-)
>
> > I can't stand people who kill something and don't eat it.
>
>There are lots of people I can't stand--but I just don't associate with
>them. They do their thing, I do mine, and everyone's (more or less) happy.
>
> > WHY do we need "voucher" specimens.
>
>As someone commented recently, you can't get DNA from a photograph. Nor can
>you examine genitalia, analyze for other chemicals (either innate, or pick-
>ed up from the environment), study morphology in general, and do much of
>what constitutes current taxonomy--without actual specimens. And there
>appear to be a lot of cryptic species out there...
>
>         The collectors don't appear to have quite the same missionary zeal.
>Perhaps they are happy to let watchers watch--leaving more to collect? :-)
>However, if a group chooses to arrange an outing without nets, I would
>not myself insist on my right to join them while wielding a net. Instead,
>I would simply go to some other spot... (Of course, if the watchers decide
>to picket all known collecting sites, then I'd be right there, net in
>hand. Nor would I approve of collectors following all NABA groups around
>in the field and grabbing the bugs being watched.)
>
>         Whatever happened to toleration? It seems to have died when the
>age of political correctness arrived.
>
>                                                         Ken Philip
>fnkwp at uaf.edu
>
>
>
>
>
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