Getting societies priorities right

Over the last couple of months, one cannot help but notice all the attention and media frenzy regarding the now famous emperor penguin, "Happy Feet", who came upon our shores presumably in his capacity as a tourist to partake in the culinary experience that is Kapiti Coast sand. Now, don't get me wrong, he is a fascinating and beautiful creature and something you certainly don't see everyday on New Zealand beaches. But the attention and media coverage that he has got as a result is staggering - furthermore, the amount of resources being poured into him as part of his recovery is equally as flabbergasting.

My gripe with the whole thing is this - we are investing large sums of money into the recovery of an animal that resembles one of the Sisters of Mercy, that, upon release, has a good chance of either becoming the most expensive shark bait ever devised or will simply fail to heed the lessons of its previous mistakes and get stuck on one of our beaches again. And then, we will either fail to heed the lessons of our own mistakes and fruitlessly pour more funds into keeping him alive, or he'll simply gorge himself on more sand, drop dead, and subsequently consign himself to the lowly status of a novelty sandbag.

It cost more than 30k to get an animal that would've otherwise died at the hands of the natural lottery to his current state of health - are we willing to see more of our investment squandered in the name of pandering to cuteness, or should we be spending more time and money investing in sick children and kids who go to school hungry? It is quite obvious where society has got its priorities wrong.