Seller of small ki'i had no authority to do so

Bishop Museum's assertion of ownership over a small wooden ki'i from Moloka'i (Advertiser, Dec. 19) is wrong. Although the museum and Dr. Hyde may have been "good-faith purchasers" of the ki'i in the early 1900s, the record does not support the museum's conclusion that the person who sold it to Hyde had the authority to do so.

The museum's Federal Register notice dated May 2, 2003, said Hyde purchased the ki'i "from a native who found this idol wrapped in tapa with awa bones and red fish in a cave."

Notice that it didn't say the native had the "care" or "ownership" of the cave and its contents. Instead, the record stated that the native "found" the ki'i in a cave, and finding something doesn't imply the authority to legally transfer it to someone else. In fact, it more reasonably leads to the conclusion that he could not legally transfer the ki'i to Hyde.

To add insult to injury, the museum omitted 10 crucial words from its recent description of the cave in question, having reported in 2003 that "The cave is believed to have been a burial site."

Now is the time to take effective action

Now is a time when the world reaches out to heal the pain and loss of life wrought by forces science can only hope to predict.

Now is also a time when we give a share of that which we've cultivated over a year of hard work to our collective governments.

Now is the time to question the ethics of funneling large sums of money toward a destructive war when it is needed elsewhere.

Now is the time to write your congressional representatives, speak up and direct your resources to build a humane alliance. This is a government by and for the people unless we give that power to others.

Nature has given us an opportunity to lay down arms, use the strength and energy of our youth to pick up tools, rebuild lives, and in so doing promote compassion and tolerance.

Now is the time.

You can help disaster victims by going online

Given the tremendous human suffering created by this latest natural disaster in Asia and Africa, I am sure we all want to help. In our hyper connected age, it is quite easy to do so.

In case your readers are not aware of the following, this is a link to an online contribution site for the American Red Cross. With just a few clicks, you can contribute to the Disaster Relief Fund: https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp.

Gifts starting at just $5 are appreciated.

Please keep your dog safe from fireworks

The Hawai'i Dog Foundation (www.hawaiidogfoundation.org) wants to wish everyone in Hawai'i a very happy and safe New Year. It is our hope that while we are enjoying our New Year's fireworks, we will consider that their explosive sounds are magnified many times over in the sensitive ears of our canine buddies.

Each year, dozens of dogs are so petrified that they run away and some are never found. Please keep your dog safe and secure inside your home. If possible, keep them cool and outside the range of the sounds of the fireworks.

An ounce of prevention will prevent a lot of heartache for you and your dog.

Why close the lane in opposite direction?

Your editorial about the need for reform in crash review policy was well stated.

The other day there was an accident in the Kane'ohe-bound lane of the Likelike Highway, yet one of the town-bound lanes was closed by police as well. Cars waited in line to get through the tunnel and had to move to the shoulders to allow emergency vehicles to pass. One wonders the reason for closure of lanes going in the opposite direction of the accident.

Save parking for UH-area residents

If you live by the University of Hawai'i, especially the Manoa campus, you know that street parking is hard to come by. This is because it is taken by the students. When I lived in Hawai'i, I would come home early just to get good parking.

I have recently moved to California and have noticed one difference. In California, if you live near any college campus, you need to obtain a free parking permit that lets only residents in that area park. This way, parking is for residents only. The residents living near these college campuses should not be forced to deal with the consequences of the University of Hawai'i's lack of responsibility in not being able to provide ample parking for its students.

This time resolve to become a vegan

The past year has witnessed major national wins and losses. The Republicans won by retaining political power in the November elections. The Democrats won because they are not stuck with the losing battle for a democratic Iraq.

On the domestic front, we've been losing the battle for our health, with obesity assuming epidemic proportions. We've been losing the battle for our environment, with more animal wastes dumped into our water supplies. And, we've been losing the battle for our souls, with more and more animals subjected to factory farm and slaughterhouse atrocities.

Amazingly, each of us can do a great deal to turn the above around with one simple New Year's resolution — a resolution to replace meat and dairy products in our diet with wholesome, delicious vegetables, fresh fruits, beans and whole grains. With every supermarket featuring a large variety of soy-based veggie burgers and hotdogs, deli slices, ready-to-eat frozen dinners, ice cream and soy milk, it's got to be the easiest resolution we will ever keep.

Hawai'i is leading the fall into the educational abyss

The Honolulu Advertiser published a Gannett News Service report that demand for foreign workers by engineering companies, universities and other employers has prompted Congress to authorize an additional 20,000 H-1B visas for fiscal 2005 ("Skilled U.S. workers lose jobs," Dec. 20).

These visas are used by technology companies, hospitals and universities to fill jobs requiring specialized skills. Because of the high demand, petitions for all 65,000 visas allotted for the year were filed on the first day they were available.

The chairwoman of a coalition of companies and universities that supports more H-1B visas is quoted as saying, "We're in a global competition for this talent," adding that high-tech companies using the visa program are looking for people who can do specialized research. It's the kind of work that requires people with advanced science degrees. Foreign students in the United States and elsewhere pursue those degrees, while fewer U.S. students are doing so, she said.

This has ominous implications and is directly attributable to the "success" American public educators have had advocating wholesale abandonment of academic rigor with such dismissive pejoratives as "drill and kill" hurled at well-established methods that have worked for centuries. Parents and other taxpayers have acquiesced to a massive dumbing down of curriculum over the last 40 years.

The beginning of this monotonically downward trend exactly coincides with the massive infusion of federal "Great Society" funding — tax dollars wasted on a myriad of snake oil purveyors and transient feel-good fads, money dumped into the bottomless pit of public education with zero accountability for results. Hawai'i, with no curriculum whatsoever, is arguably at the leading edge of this plunge into the abyss of academic chaos.

It doesn't take much skill to read the tea leaves. While pampered American children, chock-a-block with self-esteem, continue to lag their counterparts overseas in academic achievement, the high-tech, information-intensive American economy is now almost as dependent on well-educated knowledge workers as it is on foreign crude oil.

Unless a critical mass of American taxpayers takes charge of the mediocre, money-grubbing public education mélange and shakes it like a terrier shakes a rat, the 21st century will witness a passing of the torch — economic (and thus political) leadership will go to countries that take the education of their children seriously.

Tsunami warning missed best bet

Every tragedy deserves a post-mortem on what did and didn't happen in response to the event — not to lay blame but to learn lessons that may prevent a reoccurrence of the disastrous results.

The Indian Ocean tsunami deserves as much reflection as people of goodwill can possibly give it. The staggering loss of life suggests that to do anything less than an exhaustive after-action analysis would be both irresponsible and disrespectful to the dead.

It also would be dangerous if we failed to adjust procedures that could mitigate the loss of life when the next natural disaster occurs.

The local and national news media have focused on the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in 'Ewa this week, and rightly so. As the acknowledged leader in tsunami awareness and warning, the center's officials have been quoted in numerous stories on their immediate reaction to the first indications of a 9.0 earthquake in the region.

Center officials have said that within minutes of receiving indications on their instruments that the earthquake undoubtedly had triggered a tsunami, they began thinking of whom they could call.

Jan TenBruggencate's Dec. 29 story on their response noted that they "frantically worked the phones ... trying largely in vain to warn Indian Ocean nations of the incoming tsunami disaster."

Calls went out to the State Department Operations Center and the military, to embassies, to the Sri Lanka navy and to any government official they could reach.

What is missing in TenBruggencate's account is any mention of a call center officials could have made that might have saved tens of thousands of lives: They did not call the mass media.

Specifically, they did not call the Associated Press.

I have no inside knowledge of how the AP would have reacted to an urgent message from the center. However, my journalism background suggests to me that if the center had sounded the alarm about a probable killer tsunami, AP's news managers would have immediately moved a "flash" story to its South Asia clients.

Flash bulletins are sent only rarely and for only the most compelling news. This flash would have arrived at the service's broadcast clients in south Asia like a bolt of lightning and undoubtedly would have been aired within minutes — perhaps an hour or more before the waves arrived in Sri Lanka and India.

Could that call have saved tens of thousands of lives? That's impossible to know, because this chain of events is speculation. But if it had happened, it may indeed have been a life-saver.

One lesson from this tragedy therefore is that the best and quickest way to reach a mass audience is through the mass media.

I would hope that everyone in a position to warn the populace of an impending disaster would think outside the high-tech box when the time comes. We may take comfort in the island-circling Civil Defense warning sirens that are supposed to alert us to an approaching tsunami, but those sirens can and do fail.

To all personnel and agencies with an emergency-response mission: Please include low-tech phone calls in your response to our next disaster.