Museum of Natural History visit

I walked around the Museum of Natural History and found the overall visit terrific. My two favorite areas were the Hall of Planet Earth and the Hall of Biodiversity.

The Hall of Planet Earth had so many different rocks and stones. I took pictures with my camera, but unfortunately I can't hook it up to my computer to upload here. There were several things which caught my attention. Like when I read that the Ganges River has enough sediment to fill the Hall of Planet Earth in 6 minutes!! But what I loved about this Hall in particular was the variety of rocks, meteorites, etc. They were amazing and there is no comparison for seeing one up close rather than just on television. They had an iron meteorite, and I also saw a bonded Iron formation that was a combination of red jasper and iron magnetite and it was billions of years old!
There was also something called Godzilla! Reason being that it was the largest sulfide chimney ever found. It was 17 meters high, but collapsed in 1996; however, a second one replaced it by next year and quickly grew to 20 meters high! The Museum really lets you see so many amazing things that most of us, caught in the daily drone of life would never get the chance to view.

In the Hall of Biodiversity, I saw some of the different species of life, plants, and it showed the connection between the individuals, groups and plants and animals. Some of the numbers of species were amazing as well. For crustaceans there is around 40,000 species known, but there are an estimated 150,000. We don't give plants and animals enough credit with helping us to stay alive. If you get right down to it, if humans no longer existed, life on this planet would go on. However, if more and more animals and plants go extinct, we cannot survive without them and yet many people have the nerve to rate themselves as being superior to plants and animals. Sea otters singlehandedly maintain many a few of the pacific coast kelp habitats by eating the sea urchins there. I don't think any human could boast anything near that. They also had a list. . . a very long list of species that we know have gone extinct. But what caught my attention was when I read there were species that have become extinct without us ever knowing they existed. There so much in this world we don't know, that we haven't seen and yet we're killing it. The simple fact of the matter is people destroy or look down on anything that they feel is not their equal, and each one of them decide this according to their own standards.

The way humans look down on animals is also the same as the way they view each other. There are many people so wrapped up in consumerism and the industrial working age that they look down on people if there annual income isn't within a certain bracket. They don't seem to realize there are better standards than how much one makes. I saw pictures and read about the Siberia Khanty and Mansi cultures that herd reindeer and how the oil extraction there has made 75% of the land useless for fishing, hunting and herding. Now, if you consider the interconnectedness of everything, then think of the world as your body and imagine that 75% of your body was no longer able to be used. You would be somewhere around a quadriplegic and that is basically what we are slowly doing to ourselves by damaging this planet. We are crippling ourselves.

Because of the visit to the museum I have been thinking about many different things and I actually saw this really funny but important commercial on Animal Planet about conserving water and thought I would post it for those who don't usually watch that channel.




I also saw another show on Animal Planet called Whale Wars which has to do with the Sea Shepherds on the Steve Irwin ship (they have the blessing of Steve Irwin's wife who christened the boat) fighting the Japanese because the are killing whales in the Antarctic. The Sea Shepherds throw things at the Japanese ship and so on. The Japanese claim they have the law on their side as they are allowed to kill a certain amount of whales for research purposes; however, how many do you need to kill and how does killing them help with research. They are killing over 900 whales. The sea shepherds claim that they are killing them for commercial purposes and are thereby breaking the law, so they are trying to enforce the law that the government is not bothering to enforce themselves. Paul Watson is the captain of the Steve Irwin ship and is the co-founder of Greenpeace, but was asked to leave. As I was watching the show they talked about how Greenpeace takes pictures of whales being killed and so on and something Paul Watson said made sense. He said that Greenpeace takes pictures of whales being killed but how does that really help. He also said that if you were to see a woman being raped you wouldn't stand there and take pictures, if you saw a puppy being kicked you wouldn't stand there and take pictures. You need to be more active in affecting change and I feel he is right.

He reminds me of Peter Singer, who was arguing that by not help children in poorer countries to get food, drinkable water and proper healthcare we are committing murder. As sure as if we are holding a gun to those children's head, by letting them die, we are killing them. Words are not enough to get change to happen. Action is needed. It's upsetting that there are many people out there who are so wrapped up in shopping and being rich layabouts, who have the funds and time to do something to save this planet, but would rather live an empty, shallow life. People need to start getting more active with saving this planet and ALL life on it!