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  Ronnie Bell <rbell@cp*.or*> wrote:- (Subject: Re: The "Big Wreck"):-
  > ... Aren't people who systematically remove all brass just ecologically
aware and acting responsibly as recyclers?
  rnf@sp*.tb*.co* wrote:-
  > If [a particular wreck] still exists. Are you suggesting that EVERYTHING
be preserved on the off chance it might be significant in the future? Where
does it end? ... Who cares [which direction the rudder was turned when the CSS
Alabama sank]? If it is important for historical reasons, its position now
cannot be used as reliable evidence. It may have moved during sinking. Bottom
impact may have moved it. Storms over the last 150 [years] may have moved it.
[and much more relevant text]

  Like I said before, everything has its place but shouldn't be allowed to get
too far. Like fire and religious over-zealousness etc, a lot of things
(including keeping things in memory of the dead and the past) are "a good
servant but a bad master". I know that there are these clashes of sentiment
versus practicality. In the ancient times that people like to keep in memory,
this same problem existed as now, and in Greece once the priests of Apollo,
faced with such a clash of religion versus practicality, said "Me^den aga^n" =
"Let nothing be in excess". The time may come when so much metal and area etc
are tied up in memory of the dead and the past that there will not be enough
for the living. There must be a limit to what the dead stop the living from
using. I don't want e.g. to see a time when so much of the sea is within the
forbidden distance from one or other protected wreck or other underwater site,
that there is next to nowhere left for the living to dive. Or valuable metals
left to dissolve in the sea instead of being salvaged and usefully reused.
  This crisis has already happened indeed, with land space in some cities in
England, and many old graveyards have had to be cleared of gravestones and
memorials and recycled as public open space or even as building land.

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