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Native Hawaiian Panel Withdraws Support For World's Largest Telescope
sciencehabit writes: Trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) – a state agency established to advocate for native Hawaiins — voted Thursday to withdraw their support for construction of the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano. The vote follows weeks of protests by Native Hawaiians who say the massive structure would desecrate one of their most holy places. The protests have shut down construction of the telescope, which would be the world's largest optical telescope if completed. The vote, which reverses a 2009 decision to endorse the project, strikes a powerful if symbolic blow against a project that, for many native Hawaiians, has come to symbolize more than a century of assaults against their land, culture and sovereignty.
What purposes would another telescope serve? We don't need further knowledge of the cosmos, simply because there is no point. There is nothing for us out there. Nobody is going to visit other planets, let alone other stars, ever. The future is about learning to live on this planet, and we could use some tolerance. When you grow up you will learn that understanding and respecting other people's beliefs is more important than ogling at some distant pinprick of light nobody is ever going to visit.
Illegal my ass. We occupied and annexed it fair and square, replacing tribal savagery where might made right on the scale of every day life with actual laws and courts and civilized institutions. The fact that we also brought modern religion (that is to say a small-L liberal judeo-christian tradition) to replace this "the colors of the wind" bullshit is all the more icing on the cake.