The big picture
About 3 billion years ago, nature invented sex in order to produce genetically modified organisms, and life as we know it was possible.
About 3,000 years ago, one of these life forms noticed that by selecting and mixing the genes of their food sources the new genetically modified organisms provided vastly more and better food. Thus, agriculture was born, and for better or worse, this intelligent life form exploded across the planet.
About 30 years ago, humans noticed that it was possible to modify the genes through engineering directly and more accurately than through hybridizing. It is now, or will be soon, possible to create vastly different life forms. Some will be good, some will be bad, just as in old nature.
It will be up to our wisdom to select and keep the good ones. The wheel was not invented for better wars, and the Wright brothers are not responsible for our drones. Opportunity gives us the chance to be successful; it does not always guarantee success. Stasis will get us nowhere. The way we are going right now, human evolution and population explosion will get us into big trouble.
GMO may be one technology to help us survive.
Erhard Rick
Keaau
Airline overcharges
Hawaiian Airline’s arbitrary charges for ticketing are holding Hawaii’s local population hostage. When it costs more than $300 to fly roundtrip from Maui to Hilo for local folks, something is wrong.
One day during the last week of June, the cheapest ticket from Maui to Hilo was more than $160, with other times being well over $200 on the same date for the cheapest level of service. I checked the next day, and the very same ticket was $125.
Since the demise of Aloha Airlines, Hawaiian has no real competition. In its quest for expansion into more and more far-reaching foreign and domestic non-Hawaii markets, the cost of this is on the backs of everyone flying interisland.
It’s time to look at re-regulating Hawaiian, and I as well as many others are requesting our state representatives to look at taking over the free-for-all ticketing practices this airline is so cavalier in flaunting. The questions need to be answered regarding how much of the local cost of tickets is subsidizing Hawaiian’s far-reaching hunger for more revenue and ever-increasing out-of-Hawaii expansion. We should not have to pay the burden of this monopoly’s expansion, and there should be a two-tier cost for interisland flight, one for tourists and one for locals.
Don’t hesitate to contact your state senators and representatives to let them know you back getting cheaper airline tickets for locals.
Sean Lester
Volcano
