Monday, September 04, 2006
Another tragedy, but we saw this coming...
We knew he was going to die at some point, but I figured it would end with some type of savage death, like in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It turns out that it was a stingray barb that found its way under his rib cage, and into his heart — this has Greek tragedy written all over it. Who knew an arrow to the heel would be the demise of the warrior Achilles, and who knew a stingray barb would find its way past the rib cage into the Crocodile Hunter's heart.
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A kid died in Italy this Summer the same way.
One more reason to eat beef instead of fish.
The kid got whacked with a stingray barb to the heart? I suppose its a bit more toxic to young'ins than adults.
Animal Planet is running Crocodile Hunter footage. He knew the risks, at least that's what he continually confirms in his past interviews.
Not the toxin that did it to the kid. Barb punctured vitals.
I'd never seen the Aussie guy's show. Pretty good?
The guy (hereafter "Steve") had a real good show running for I believe over a decade. They called him an "environmentalist," but that title suggests too much Crazy. From what I saw, Steve was certainly crazy, but not in the kill-humans-to-save-animals kind of way (for example, several times he commented about how great the Yanks were in helping the Aussies fend off the Japanese army in the second world war). Steve just liked to get super close and super animated for the camera, and it did work to get the audience quite excited: both for the animal/reptile/mammal/quadraped he was examining, and for Steve.
News reports are saying that the barb shot right through an opening in the rib cage and into his heart. Bam: instant poison injection. He left a son, daughter, and widow.
I like the Aussies generally for their views of the US. Certainly different than the holier than thou Canadians among Commonwealth members.
If I hear about universal health care again, the bastards will need it all at once.
JJ, sounds like you're hearing more about Universal Health Care than I — could be an election year? I think Universal Health Care is a great idea, but only if individual physicians who have devoted their own individual years and finances to becoming healthcare providers individually desire it. That's one of my complaints about socialism, and sociology: the broad brushstrokes and the Grand Ideas often show up as a point rather than a collection of points all with infinite, individual variety (Religion, to me, tends to have a similar effect). Superficially, things look the same. Scrape the surface, and it gets interestingly weird at the individual level.
Steve sounded like one tough mo-fo, having the sense of mind to pull the poison barb from his chest just before dying.
Too bad it didn't help.
Did you see that Jonah Goldberg pissed off just about everyone at NRO talking about this? Steyn weighed in too.
Hate Derb and Goldberg and Buckley and the Indian guy...NRO.
JJ, I'd like to read what Steyn and Goldberg had to say. I glanced at NRO.com online but couldn't locate the article (the website is pretty busy and hence confusing). Could you send me the link, or e-mail me the article if some special password is required?
~mft
Nevermind about e-mailing it JJ. I found it. Goldberg was getting hate mail because he critiqued Steve Irwin about a stunt he performed some months or years ago. Irwin took his baby boy of a couple months old into a croc pen with him, and Goldberg charged him with using an infant for showboating and the like. Goldberg then proceded to run an analogy with that and Michael Jackson dangling babies over balconies, "as though they were young Simbas." Steyn rightly said Goldberg was right, saying that what Irwin did was irresponsible. However, Steyn took it in a different direction, and said we need to be more worried about what Jackson does with kids when the cameras aren't around.
Steyn is rarely outright wrong.
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