Man in a Shed: Steve Irwin is a sad loss - but at least he contributed to mankind

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Steve Irwin is a sad loss - but at least he contributed to mankind

Been watching the various stories about the tragic death of Steve Irwin, Australia's Crocodile Hunter. Here in the UK there is a hint, especially on the BBC, that he interacted with the animals too much and wasn't a proper wild life presenter.

I see parallels with the prevailing risk averse view of life. Nature knows best - don't interfere - don't let man do anything - just restore the natural state. This represents a loss of collective confidence. Steve Irwin to me represented the reverse. Respect for nature - but with his human curiosity and courage to do things in tact.

He was no doubt a great man who gave a proactive view of his field of work. Something we could all do with more of.

He will be rightly missed.

Update:
But not by Germaine Greer it seems - her comments are put in the rightful context ( ie torn up ) here.

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The pound in your pocket

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists." James Callaghan

“The trouble with theoretical economists is that they don't understand that when you have a deficit, you can only finance it by borrowing, and you've got to persuade people that it's worth lending money to you and that they'll get their money back... there's no way of escaping it.” Dennis Healey during the 1976 Stirling Crisis.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

"To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

Inflation is taxation without legislation .. Milton Friedman