crikey!

Ok, I can't even pretend to feign an interest in Steve Irwin - or to pretend that I really care at all. I mean, you have to feel sympathy for his family - but I tend to reserve my sympathy for people who fall prey to things that are outside of their control. For example, I feel bad for the millions of people who are affected by the genocide in Darfur and Uganda - or for women and children with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. But here's the thing - don't jump in the fire and then bitch about the burn. I know that I can be a heartless bitch, but I'm okay with that.

Germaine Greer has an interesting and well written article in The Guardian today - from which I would like to take the following passages -

As a Melbourne boy, Irwin should have had a healthy respect for stingrays, which are actually commoner, and bigger, in southern waters than they are near Port Douglas, where he was killed. The film-makers maintain that the ray that took Irwin out was a "bull ray", or Dasyatis brevicaudata, but this is not usually found as far north as Port Douglas. Marine biologist Dr Meredith Peach has been quoted as saying, "It's really quite unusual for divers to be stung unless they are grappling with the animal and, knowing Steve Irwin, perhaps that may have been the case." Not much sympathy there then.

The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin, but probably not before a whole generation of kids in shorts seven sizes too small has learned to shout in the ears of animals with hearing 10 times more acute than theirs, determined to become millionaire animal-loving zoo-owners in their turn.