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Rod wrote:


>Give us an examples of wrecks people are fretting about trying to save that
>have sister ships rotting at anchor.

Dozens of Liberty ships. Granted, most of the Liberty ships people want to 
protect are interesting for what they can tell about an action they were 
involved in rather than interest in the ship itself. 

As for ships of different types, the U-352 off North Carolina,  was the source 
of much controversy, some of which Rod wrote about in his book. The Cutter 
that sank her, the Roper, is reportedly falling apart at a dock in the 
Dominican Republic.

>A 50 year old shipwreck to you is 250 years old to someone in the 22nd century.

If it still exists. Are you suggesting that EVERYTHING be preserved on the off 
chance it might be significant in the future? Where does it end?

>By superfluous you mean that if an archaeologist has a copy of the ship's
>manifest, there is no need to go to the wreck to determine the ship's cargo?

I didn't mean in the sense of a particular wreck, or its cargo but in the sense 
of a ship of a particular class when others the same type are still afloat. The 
ship itself, its structure and design. What is the "need" to verify a manifest 
to begin with?

>You say, never ask a surgeon if you should have an operation because he will
>always say yes because that is how they are trained to solve problems.  Are
>you serious? 

Absolutely. I've been in this situation and a friend of mine was in a situation 
that illustrates my point even better. He broke his back in a parachute jump 
in the Army. His orthopaedic surgeon wanted to implant steel rods in his spine. 
That would have left him partly disabled would have ended his carrer. He went 
to another specialist, a non-surgeon, who told him that there were non-surgical 
ways of handling the problem, but there was less than a 100% chance that it 
would be effective and surgery might be required anyway. The surgeon had not 
heard of some of these non-surgical techniques. My friend opted to avoid the 
surgery. He completely recovered and is still on active and parachuting today.

It's not that the surgeon was incompetent or meant any harm. He's an excellent 
surgeon, he just sees things from a surgeons perspective.

>What if you really need an operation, are you going to ignore the advice?

Not if I get it from multiple competent sources AND the benefit is worth the 
risk and the damage caused by the procedure.

>And finally, the Gettysburg thing.  The preservation of Gettysburg wasn't
>done only for emotional reasons. We study history so we don't make the same
>stupid mistakes in the future. We know much of what has happened in the
>past, including Gettysburg, because of the application of science.

The preservation of the battlefield wasn't done for scientific reasons. Lincoln 
didn't write the Gettysburg Address that he delivered at the dedication about 
science.

The emotional reasons are valid. The term "emotional" is probably not a good 
choice of words because I don't mean it in a negative way and it seems to have 
that connotation.

As far as archaeology being a science, it is not a hard science like, say,  
chemistry. It is a field of study that scientific methods and tools are used 
in (if it is done properly).

That is not a slam against archaeology. It is a valid and useful field of 
study. It just may not be as useful as archaeologists would like to think. :-)

Rick

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