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Remove dissection pictures from web
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Posted on Apr 29 2005
I was one of those who raised concerns about the Marianas fruit bat dissection web page with your newspaper. It was brought to my attention by someone from Guam who happened to view this page. Since there was no information on the page about how the bats had been obtained, it did raise serious concerns. I am glad that a permit had been obtained to use the bats for this educational purpose, and that they had not been obtained illegally.
The reason why I brought this concern to your attention is that this page gives the wrong image about endangered species. It gives the impression that it is okay to kill fruit bats, which it is not. If the continued decline in the fruit bat population continues, there will be none left for our children or grandchildren to enjoy. As Mr. Garrison admits, this page needed a disclaimer or at least some text explaining what was going on, but personally I feel this page needs to be removed.
As for Mr. Garrison’s contention that the source code had been modified so that he can no longer change it, this is not true. I took a look at the source code and it is straight HTML, which uses tags to tell the browser how to display the web page. It was created in the program Netscape, using the Composer part of this program, on a computer running Windows 95. Anyone can view the code by using a web browser. This is not a programming code and cannot be modified so that it cannot be changed. A simple text-editing program, like Notepad (which is on all computers running Windows), can be used to modify this program. After six years, it is most likely Mr. Garrison has forgotten the password or username to access the web site. To get these, all he has to do is ask Saipan.com for them.
If the web site is no longer connected with Marianas High School, it needs to be removed. As long as it has MHS’s name on it, it will be connected with the school. Again, all PSS has to do is ask Saipan.com to remove the site. I think they will be more than happy to do this.
Howard Cole
Marpo Valley, Tinian
P.S. I see the site is no longer available and I would like to thank PSS, MHS, Mr. Garrison, or whoever is responsible for this. Thank you very much for removing the site.
