Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

Allow me to digress from the stories of kids and their oddities for a moment (which I originally intended to do more often than I have so far). I figure the weekend is a good time for this kind of post, since most of you presumably spend these days with your family and catch up with me on Monday.

You may have heard of the new "uncontacted" tribe they discovered in the South American rain forest. I find it astounding that's there's enough forest left to host totally isolated tribes of people, but they seem pretty sure.

Incredible pictures of one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes firing bows and arrows

Of course, flying a plane just over the treetops and taking a bunch of pictures, even when doing so to prove their existence to nonbelievers for the tribe's own protection, counts as contact to me. So, so much for that.

Am I the only one that sees this and feels bad for these lucky folks?

And I agree with their reaction to these photographers in the plane-- I think it's distinctly possible they know all about all of us evil humanlike beings in the world outside the forest, with all our wicked technology and strange ways, and they've just said, "No, thanks" and kept to themselves.

Don't they have that right? Can't they just live their own lives their own way? I doubt they're capable of launching any kind of respectable attack on the U.S. any time soon, but then that didn't mean anything for Iraq in 2002, right?

I know leaving them alone and creating some kind of "wildlife preserve" around them will be a hard sell to some of the people of South America who were themselves victimized by the West and are now doing what they can to level the playing field (i.e. ravaging their forests, selling the wood, and raising scrawny cattle for McDonald's in the stubble). But hopefully they can learn from our mistakes and harness our guilt for these people's benefit.

Here's hoping! Back to the funny stuff next week.