Me [111 a t ions
Tire nineties
riorifli
The Twentieth Century:
^oing', gfoingf... almost gone (X)
Does the 21 st century start with
the year 2000 or the year 2001?
With this question we started the
summing up of some of the most
important milestones that have
changedenriched, and in some
cases even ruined our lives in the
past ten decades wherever we hap
pened to live. We arc halfway the
year 2000. It was the heginning
of the new century for many, hut
for the 'purists' the new century
will only hegin on 31 December,
2000 at twelve midnight.
However that may he, with the
nineties we have landed in the last
decade of the twentieth century.
In Java, as children, and as we grew
older, we used to follow the flight of
what our kebon called the alap-alap
(boeroeng elang, a sort of falcon) high
in the sky. We learned that this bird had
sharp eyesight and from its height
could see its prey, swoop down and dis
appear with it behind the horizon, to
perhaps feed its young or feast on it
itself. To us the alap-alap was fearless,
majestic, and would always be there
high in the sky.
Hiulaii^ered Species
But then DDT, a pesticide, came into
use. It was all for a good cause, it killed
among others, the malaria-causing
mosquito and that was a blessing, espe
cially in the tropics. What we did not
know then, was that DDT made the
birds' eggshells brittle. Some sub-spe-
Tekst: had Lentze
cies of peregrine falcons and even the
American national symbol, the bald
eagle, were decimated and had almost
become extinct. In the nineties the
peregrines were taken off the
Endangered Species list here and the
bald eagle (who isn't bald at all, but has
a white-feathered head) has made a
wonderful comeback also. It is no lon
ger on the endangered list, but still
'threatened'. They were saved by the
ban on DDI" after it was discovered to
be so harmful, by public education, and
by laws protecting these majestic birds
and their nesting areas. At least it was
not too late to correct our mistake in
this case, and I hope that the alap-alap,
if it was ever threatened, is still flying its
lazy circles high in Java's skies. May
they never become extinct.
Jurassic Park
We take a giant step backward in time
now and find animals that did become
extinct millions of years ago after they
had roamed the earth for more than a
hundred million years. Children, espe
cially, are bewitched by them and know
them by all their unpronounceable
names. My nephew, barely six years old
then, could name them faultlessly. The
big plant-eating Brontosaurus was a
favorite, only to be overshadowed by
the carnivorous Tyrannosaurus Rex,
and then there was the Stegosaurus and
many more. He spoke of them as if
they were his playmates. In the geology
museum at Princeton they had a gigan
tic skeleton of a dinosaur whom he paid
a visit every time he came to see us.
Looking at the skeleton you had an idea
what T.Rex must have looked like in
the days when he roamed the earth
unchallenged. But even these giants
became extinct, nobody knows exactly
how that came about. Steven Spielberg
gave the world a great movie, Jurassic
Park, about cloned dinosaurs returning
to earth and through all kinds of visual
effects they were so lifelike that after
you had seen the movie you kept
looking over your shoulder half expec
ting to see at least a Brachiosaurus
ambling down the street!
So in the nineties graphic artists,
moviemakers, designers, engineers, and
even we who are not artists at all, use
our computers to create whatever
comes into our heads, and make them
appear real and lifelike. And another
movie, Titanic, was created in such a
way that you felt as if you were on that
great ship when it went down off
Newfoundland so many years ago. My
parents used to tell us about that disas
ter in awed tones, the ship, they told us,
was considered unsinkable. But the
great ship sank and another moviem
aker gave us his view of the sinking of
the ship and he, too, used special
efffects unknown just a few short years
ago. The results were awesomely real.
Cellular pliones
Another popular item of the nineties is
the cellular phone. Since it has become
so much smaller and cheaper just about
everybody seems to walk around with
one held to the ear. It has invaded ever
ybody's life in- and outside the home.
We see, for example, people talking on
their cell phones while driving. That
could be dangerous because one is sup
posed to use one's hands to handle the
steering wheel and not a cell phone.
Our lawmakers are taking a close look
moessQn
tjbr?SSijftTtTf-frtmWri
I itaiiic
18
