Of course I feel guilty

I made my share of jokes over the years about Steve Irwin, and how likely he was to come to his end by being eaten by something while on camera. I know a lot of other people did the same thing. I feel bad about it anyway.

What surprises me is that, if I had to guess, I would have thought that Irwin was maybe not as wealthy a celebrity as everybody assumes he was. And I would have been wrong. But at least he's been putting his wealth to good use.

Practical approach to wildlife protection - National - theage.com.au: "The money he made as the Crocodile Hunter was put into conservation projects, including establishing the charity Wildlife Warriors Worldwide with wife Terri and buying huge tracts of land in Australia and abroad to protect and restore habitat for native species."

I give Irwin credit for fighting the battle against ignorance in ways that drew the most attention and therefore did the most good. It's getting hard to watch people die who have been trying to help the world out a little bit, while the ignorant, arrogant and selfish people in charge just keep going on. It seems like we've been dealing with the same bad guys for a long time now, but a lot of the good guys who helped balance the scales in years past are gone now.

On a personal note, Steve Irwin was a couple of years younger than me, and his kids are a lot younger than mine. I don't know why that matters to me, but it does. My heart goes out to his family.