Don’t feed animals
The lower parking lot at the State Building in Hilo has turned into a feeding place for ducks, chickens, cats and other fowls.
There are three signs that say don’t feed the animals (one person who actually does so works in the State Building), but there always are a few that don’t believe it pertains to them, and this is a daily event.
Game wardens will tell you not to feed the wildlife for a number of reasons. One being they become unafraid of humans, which takes away Mother Nature’s natural abilities of fear to survive and also to feed themselves.
If they are concerned for the cats, which they are able to pet, why don’t they take them home, to an animal shelter or call an animal control officer so they don’t have to live in the parking lot?
Common sense tells you a paved parking lot where people park their cars, bike and walk is not a good location for this. Wailoa park is right in the back.
Lea Merrill
Hilo
Count the drinks
The blood alcohol content (BAC) article in the Feb. 1 Tribune-Herald front page makes the case for lowering the legal threshold from 0.08 to 0.05.
However, in all the discussion, it is totally misleading in the last sentence, where it gives an inaccurate example of what it means in terms of actual drinking.
It concludes that an average-weight person may have four to five drinks in one hour and still be legal at 0.05! No.
Here are the legal assumptions made in court of what this means: One drink = BAC of 0.02; two drinks = BAC of 0.04; three drinks = BAC of 0.06, etc.
At 0.06, judgment will be impaired, often affecting people’s ability to make rational decisions, particularly about risk-taking activities such as driving and continuing to drink.
For example, a woman weighing 150 pounds with two drinks in one hour will have a BAC of 0.06, and three drinks in one hour will have a BAC of 0.08. One drink will put most people at the door of 0.05. Two drinks in one or even two hours risks being legally impaired, depending on your weight.
The article was flagrantly misleading. Let’s measure this legislation in terms of “drinks,” which makes more sense.
Theodore Lesnett
Hilo
Hi-tech gun safety
This, from a letter I wrote published in the Tribune-Herald after a fatal tragic gun accident at a Boy Scout event at a local shooting range: Only in America do we have mass shooting violence, but looking at the numbers, there are many, many more gun accidents. Diehard gun enthusiasts are not going to willingly turn in their weapons, even if they are made illegal to own.
Please consider supporting this option: There are many more people injured and killed by gun accidents than murders or mass shootings. That these things are dangerous is obvious. How do we make them less so?
Almost everything we buy today has a microprocessor in it. Why not hand guns and long rifles?
An RFID chip in a ring could make these inherently dangerous weapons less so. Also, the guns that are stolen would be useless.
The ring could be a badge of honor at the shooting range: Look, I’m safe, how about you ? And it could have prevented this fatal and tragic accident.
Brian Daniel
Volcano